Earth and Space

We just finished our unit on Earth and Space. These are some of the awesome things we did:

• We made the planets out of cloth and we painted them the correct colours. Jupiter was really big, but it wasn't as big as we wanted to make it.
• We made a very big poster of the solar system.
• Every students made pictures of the stars.
• Our class measured how far apart the planets should be in metres.
• PYF 1 came with us to see the International Space Staion 3-D movie at IMAX in Waterloo.
• We met an astronaut at the Science Museum.
• All of the students went to see the stars at the London Planetarium.
• We tried astronaut ice cream and space energy sticks at our moon party.
• We learned that Pluto is a dwarf planet.

What we learned about Art

Year 4 studied Andy Warhol's Pop Art. He painted on photos of famous people to change the image. We created our own using our photos. Check out our Andy Warhol style pop art!

Our class is finishing up our unit of inquiry about artistic expression. Here are some things we learned

• We learned about famous artists such as: Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse.
  
• We learned about the way artists can use different styles. Pointillism, symmetry, pop art, sculptures.


• We learned how to express ourselves.
  
• Leonardo Da Vinci tried to create a flying machine.


• Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and shot himself. We think he was crazy or sad.

It's a New Year!

Welcome to ICS Year 4, school year 2008/9! We have an amazing class this year, and are very excited to learn and explore with our new friends! Write to us here if you would like to share messages with our class, or just comment on the blogs we are posting. We will try to post blogs at least every half term, or more often if we have something exciting to share with the world. So keep visiting our blog, and we LOVE to get comments!!! Thanks and we hope to hear from you!

Miss Sarah's Year 4 Class

Our Ecosystem Reflection

Dear visitors,

We just learned about ecosystems!
We took some great trips. We went to the London Wetlands Centre. We saw ducks and fish, and we went pond dipping to learn about the microorganisms that live in ponds. We also went to London Zoo. We made pinatas for the gorillas, and watched them eat their food from the pinatas. We went to Kew Gardens and learned about bugs and insects in the forest environment. We went to Hampstead Heath and found out about human impact on the environment.
Our class did ecosystem projects in groups. Each student had a job to research about the ecosystem. The jobs were: zoologist, navigator, meteorologist, and botanist. Our favourtie things that we learned while studying ecosystems are:

• The tundra environment has melting ice due to global warming.
• Prairie dogs that live in the grasslands do back flips to warn each other of danger.
• Grasslands are affected by humans who are cutting the grass and hunting.
• The canopy formed in the rainforest does not let much sunlight down to the ground.
• Rainforests have ten different layers of plant growth.

I hope you like our facts, feel free to write to us with some ecosystem facts you know!

Thanks, Year 4

Ecosystems

Dear Visitors,

We are starting our new unit about ecosystems. So far we know that there are 8 ecosystems in the world. We can't name them all yet, but we will be learning about them! Maybe you can help! If you know about ecosystems, let us know!
We have some special projects and trips lined up for this unit. We are going to make pinatas to feed the animals at London Zoo. Other trips we are going on are: Kew Gardens, Hampstead Heath, and the London Wetlands Centre.
Also, we went to visit the House of Commons for our last unit, It's My Right. We learned the Queen can only go to special areas that the government allows her to go to. We learned about Henry the 8th, he used to live at the Parliament building, and he had 6 wives. The building is a special Gothic style, we think it looked a little like a church. There were also thrones for when the queen visits.

This week in Earth and Space

We have been very busy learning about space and the solar system. We made our own planets and we measured them using radius so that they would be to scale. Jupiter took up the whole room, and Pluto was the size of a golf ball! We have been collecting information for our planet reports. So far we have learned:

• Venus is about the same size as the Earth.
• Pluto is actually a Dwarf Planet....too small to be called a real planet, but we have decided to count it!
• Neptune and Saturn and Uranus have rings.
• Mars has no atmosphere.
• Mars has two moons.

We also went to IMAX at Waterloo to watch a 3-D movie about astronauts and the space station. Astronauts float on the space station.
This week we'll go to the science museum to learn more and meet an astronaut.

Also, we had healthy living week last week. We did a play about the food groups called the Royal Food Family. We shopped for healthy snacks and gave them out at playtime.

Our New Unit

Our new unit of inquiry is called Earth and Space. We already know a lot about this subject. For example, we can name some planets. The planets we know are: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Earth, Mars, Uranus, Neptune. We think Pluto is a planet, but some people say it is not anymore. That will be one thing we try to find out in this unit.
Some things that we would like to know in this unit are:
How many planets are there?
What happens if the sun dies out?
How long does it take to go to the moon?
Is the moon very big?

If you can help us with our unit, or help us answer these questions, please let us know! Thanks for visiting.