In Te Moana Īta we have been practicing our explanation writing skills. Explanation writing has an opening paragraph that introduces the process and paragraphs that describe the stages of the process clearly broken down. Have a read of some of our pieces - check out more on our St Anthony’s Author’s Website!

How do Snakes get their Food? 

Hiss hiss squeak! That's the sound of a snake catching a mouse. Snake’s love mice for breakfast. So I’m going to tell you how do snakes get their food? 

Snakes have teeth but they aren't very good at chewing. Instead snakes swallow their prey whole. Some snakes like the African Rock Python can swallow prey as big as an antelope! 

The snake’s mouth is structured in a way that allows it to open very very wide. A snake can open its mouth 4 times the size of it! They can open their mouths 150 degrees and sometimes even wider.  

Snakes love yummy warm and cold blooded animals like rodents and rabbits for breakfast. Birds and eggs for lunch. Frogs, slugs and fish for dinner.

That is how snakes get their food. 

By Joseph

Have you ever wondered how honey is made? Well here’s your lucky day.

Only honeybees can make honey. Bees collect juice called nectar from the blossom. They suck the nectar out with their tongues. Bees take the pollen from the flowers and sprinkle it onto other flowers. They see ultraviolet markings on petals that are invisible to humans. 

Bees convert the sugar to honey wax. By chewing wax until it becomes soft. They store honey up as food to last through the winter. They get energy from honey and they need honey to feed all of the bees.

That's how honey's MADE!!!!!

By Suki

How does a flower's life cycle work?

Do you ever wonder how a flower’s life cycle works? Today you are going to get all the information about how it works. From seed to a full grown flower.

It starts off as a seed. People first plant the seed with soil then they wait for it to grow. Fun fact: did you know that a flower needs 95 days to grow until it is an adult flower. For the seed to grow into a proper flower the seed needs water and sun.

After you plant the seed and wait for a few days you can see a difference. That is called a small plant where it has little baby roots in it. The roots make the stem grow fast so the more roots grow the faster the stem grows.

Then the small plants turn into adult plants then that's where bees get their pollination from. An adult plant is a full grown flower.

So that’s how a flower’s life cycle works from seed to a small plant to a full grown flower.

By Monesa

Geometry

We turned into real life compasses on Monday with Te Moana Wēta so that we could experience exactly what it is like for a compass to draw a circle. We used skipping ropes to help us - it was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be! It helped us to really see what the radius, diameter and circumference of a circle is.

3D Shapes

Te Moana Īta’s next activity was to construct 3D shapes out of ice blocks sticks and blutac. Gravity proved to be our biggest challenge and we had to think carefully how to position our ice block sticks to help them stay upright.