Ladybirds, boats and shoelaces

Just a quick wee note! Thank you to those who have commented -it is nice to know there's the odd person out there who reads these things!
I noticed over the last few days a plethora of ladybirds (collective noun is actually loveliness) which is very nice as ladybirds are one of my favourite insects -I was often the one rescuing them out of the school swimming pool. Anyway these ones are a lot larger than the smaller ones I normally see so took a couple of photos (and yes they are a little hard to see but I took them on my phone and I have no idea how to brighten and crop them!):

This one really intrigued me as I haven't seen one before. The below photo showed one of many of that species that have turned up around the house this week... A quick scout on the interweb showed up that NZ has many, many varieties of ladybirds (or ladybugs if you're not English or even ladybeetles) that I have never seen! Here's one link that just astonished me: http://naturewatch.org.nz/taxa/48486-Coccinellidae/browse_photos. This website's an interesting one in that it is a site where people can log in and add their own observations and photos -one person has identified over 15,000 and made almost 9,000 observations!
I also was wondering about why the ladybirds were coming inside -I assumed it was warmth although they weren't clustering together but just singly in random places... I wondered if anyone else has had a recent influx of this species...
This kind of science is the science I think is ideally suited to our classrooms. It's based on observations and noticings. I took photos which I think children could be doing too, perhaps emailing them to a school or class email address so they can show others. This could lead into a spontaneous reading, writing, information finding, diagram drawing, life cycle sharing, vocabulary building morning! I know we are all busy with our planning but I think it's really valuable to take hold of these spontaneous moments and run with them! We have the day all planned out but I can't help wondering whether children would be more engaged when they see us teachers running with their ideas! Of course, it might be that someone decides they'd like to look up weta as they saw one yesterday on the grass -again, great! Really, we're just building awe, wonder, curiosity and I'm not chasing after anything in particular but really simply enabling the inquisitiveness (inquisitivity?!?!) in the children to begin that questioning.
As the morning progresses, I might draw out some science thinking, critiquing, building an explanation as to why there might have been so many ladybirds in the house and then sharing this with others. I might get them to look at some different websites, throw questions at them -for example, I didn't realise that the ladybirds can be considered a pest and the introduced ones are pushing out our native bugs. I'm always surprised at how many native insects we have here -yet I mainly ever see the introduced species!
Running with the moment... this might also include reading an article together. Stuff and Herald can have some interesting science themed articles. They also have a few articles that I wouldn't think are so appropriate so would rather copy and past the article to a google doc (I'm a bit of a prude!). Over the last few days, I've read one on why shoelaces untie themselves (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11837794) -scientists investigated this further and have found possible reasons for the loosening and I really like sharing articles where scientists ask the same questions as we do! I also read this one about ocean liners: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=11852957 and why they stay afloat...

From Herald website

I would hope that as we read these, children might ask more questions or challenge what they read and seek out further classification.

And finally, next week is Science Week. I did mean to say something earlier but simply forgot! The theme this year is road safety and the NZAPSE website has some interesting ideas on it, especially around using maths to support the science investigations: http://nzapse.nzase.org.nz/primary-science-week-2017/. Even if you don't want to do this particular theme, why not use the TKI site and do some science activities through the week. You could always email me as I have a few compendiums of quick activities you can model or let the children do that I have used through the years. Some are great, they're not mine, but they are fun! Why not grab the syndicate together and do an afternoon with each teacher doing the same activity? Or each teacher organise one activity, gather all the resources for that activity and then rotate the kits through the syndicate?

Anyway, that's all for now