Grade 2 found out more about Maui at Kaiwikiloumoku.  He called the wind and flew a kite!  We could do that too—but it was a challenge.  Did you see the story about Maui and the kite in the booklet that came home?  The chant was in there too.  This was a project between our classes of Science, PE and ‘Olelo Mo’omeheu on those special days we call La No’ono’o.  We can look for new ways to make connections in our learning, with our friends and across our different subjects.

We knew about how air worked with parachutes from science but kites seemed to be more complicated for us to make by ourselves.  The good part was that we had directions, lots of time and could take things home to finish.  We also had the energy to decide how much to run if the wind wasn’t strong enough to lift our kite.  Do you think Maui ran to fly his kite?

Kites may never seem quite the same, now that we worked at making out own—just like Maui!  How did he know how to make and fly a kite?  What do you think he knew about air and weather to help him?

Kindergarten scientists are headed into their last unit…….what do we all need?  WATER!!! You will find it throughout our science program, everything living thing on our planet needs water and we need to find out more about it!

What kinds of things does water do?  Where can you find out more?  We are starting by investigating what water does with holes.  We will be planning our own experiments in big pools and little pools to discover new things about this vital piece of our lives on an island.

Did you know we can mix air and water and it can do amazing things?  What could you find out more about at home with your family?  I’m wondering if it would be fresh water or salt water…………

Grade 1 is checking out how scientists classify the things in the world around us.  IT looks like water—and it is!  It is also matter—it takes up space even though it doesn’t have a shape of its own.  We are experimenting to find out more about water as a liquid.

Guess what?  We can do it in science but we can also do it at the pool for PE?!  How great is that?  Shhh, don’t tell Mr. Silva that he is a scientist too.  He needs to find that out himself.

What do you notice about water as a liquid?  What kinds of liquids do you like and why?

Sometimes scientists just want to find out more about things themselves.  They can read books, observe living things and things that used to be living—specimens, they can also examine models to find out more.  Check out our Grade 2 insect center day.  We’ve been raising “mealworms” which are really darkling beetle larvae.  They aren’t worms at all—but they do like to eat meal like wheat bran and oatmeal.  We want to see them grow and change from larva into pupae and adults.  They take their time and are doing fine but we wanted to know more about insects.  Take a look at all the things we could choose from to find out our new information.

What insects do you like?  What insects like you?  How can insects be helpful even though it seems like they are irritating to us humans?  These are some of the questions we are using to find out more ideas.  Mrs. Kutsunai like the dragonfly a lot—why would she pick that insect?  Is it because there are some that live only in Hawai’i? Or maybe its because of what they eat……..hmmmmm…..

Grade 3 scientists share their ideas from their homework as well as working together in class to find out more to extend their learning.  Mr. Bones and Bonita were super ways to learn more about our skeleton.

Some people say the body is like a marvelous machine.  What do you think about that?  What better place to find out more than at the hardware store.  They have lots of machine parts there.  Bones need joints to help us move.  Could Mrs. Kutsunai find some machine parts that could remind us of our own body parts?

All kinds of people want to find out more as we explore our own human body.  We are the experiment place, ask us for what is going on now—in the lab and at home!

There is more sharing of great things in our future…….

Na Wai ‘Ekolu is an environmental studies program about the 3 waters in the Ala Wai watershed.  We teachers have had an opportunity to learn more about this with meetings in our educational community.  Cory Yap from the University of Hawai’i is an amazing field biologist that likes to work with all kinds of teachers and kids to help them learn more about stream habitats.  We are fortunate to have him come to help us explore more about streams in an experiment with a group of multi-ages students from Grade 1-10, Grade 2-12 and Grade 3-303.

Cory shared about stream life in Hawai’i in a class presentation with living examples of native and introduced animals.  He came back to teach us methods to capture stream life and separate the invasive introduced species from the natives.  Look at the cool nets we will use in teams to check out the stream life!

The natives go back into the stream and the invasive ones will go to be fertilizer in an environmental program in the back of Kalihi valley.  They will help plants grow.  Our three classes will take a morning and go to Manoa Stream to see what we can find out about stream life from the inside of the stream!  There could be more of this in our future with more classes….stay tuned and think about how you can help our native streams too!!