In our last blog we talked about making patterns using the sun and investigating how much impact the sun was having on us in the classroom.  We've continued to explore both the sun's energy and other forms of energy that we use every day.  The idea of transferring the suns energy into something that we can use is really exciting but hard to 'see' happening.  The solution, sun prints or cyanotypes!

Sun prints are created by using a paper that has blue molecules added that are sensitive to ultraviolet light.  When the paper is exposed to light a chemical change happens developing the deep blue colour.

These beautiful prints were displayed art Art Waikino and we received some fantastic feedback about them.

​Learning happens when we are able to explore a concept in more than one way, using our prior knowledge over a period of time.
That being said, we had to try to use the suns power in a similar way using different materials. Some of the questions we had were, would the sun be able to make prints on fabric?  What if we used things we already had?  Could we use the same leaves that we had used before?  How would letters work?

For our second take on sun prints we used fabric (love old sheets) and collected an assortment of natural items to create a pattern with.  We looked at our previous work, identifying the leaves that made a great print and assembled everything ready to go.  There was an air of anticipation as we packed up our leaves, flowers and grasses and headed outside to add textile ink to our wet fabric.

We then had the job of recreating the designs that we had put together in class using our found objects.  This was easier said than done as the wind had other ideas, we had to use small rocks from our garden to hold down the leaves.  Patterns made it was time to let the sun do it's work and we left our fabric to dry.

Then came the big reveal! After doing the sun prints we expected big things, what we found wasn't quite what we expected.  Some of us were pretty disappointed, we couldn't see much a change, whereas a few of us saw beautiful patterns.

Isn't the sun amazing?  We are continuing our learning about how it helps us, what it's made of and how it impacts earth and what lives here.  We will continue to investigate how we can use the sun's energy to make and do things.

Have you seen our fantastic Haiku's and collages in class?  If not come in and have a look, they are very clever.

To start this term we have begun by taking notice of patterns.  There are the obvious patterns such as colour and shape and the patterns that occur around us every day in things like routines and expectations even social interactions.  A. Litchield says that " Pattern recognition is the ability to recognize order in a chaos. Patterns can be found in ideas, words, symbols, numbers, and images. They can also be found in behavior, routines, and in nature." 

​Being able to recognise patterns is traditionally thought of as a mathematical skill and practicing patterns definitely helps with our Maths but it is also an important skill when learning to read and write, recognising letter groups and patterns and makes beautiful art.
" By understanding patterns, children are able to make predictions about what should come next." Litchfield and therefore it is an important skill to master.

We started to create patterns with things we found around the room.  To begin with, most of us chose to create linear patterns, a pattern that was in a row.  It was easy to see what would come next and really easy to count the number of repeats so we could explain it to someone else.

We challenged ourselves to create patterns that were not linear, that were more three dimensional.  It was tricky for some of us to keep the pattern repeating.  We noticed that when we did this the pattern could change and sometimes it meant we had more that one pattern in our arrangement and that we could describe it in more than one way.  

We have been challenged to learn our times tables, this week we practised our 2 x tables and we began to make the connection between what we were seeing and the mathematical language of multiplication.

Next week we'll be using our knowledge of patterns, nature and the sun to create artwork for Art Waikino.  We can't wait for you to see what we come up with.