We have been working hard in our groups at module 2.
We worked in our groups and each had a question to reaseach and answer. Here are our questions and our answers.
Group 1: Has our local river in Pinlands ever flooded? Kirsten, Leslee, Geoffrey, Patrick
We interviewed a teacher at our school she told us that in those days
the river flowing passed our school, did not run in a concrete canal.
The river burst its banks and blocked the roads. Some people
took canoes down what was usually tarred road. Long ago our
school fields
were a large marshy area and often the children sailed boats and canoes
especially when the river flooded. The last time the river flooded
so
badly was about 22 years ago. Our river is called the Elsieskraal
River.
Group 2:
Phillip, Caroline, Sara, Warren
Why does Cape Town have to save water these days?
We found out that more and more people from all over Africa are coming
to Cape Town. Also Cape Town is very popular with tourists.
All these people need water and we only have so much. The people of
Cape Town also need water for plants and electricity
and in case we have very dry summers, with no rain. A few years
ago we had to have water restrictions. This means that people we
banned from
watering their gardens and washing their cars. They were fined
if they broke the law.
Group 3:
Miche, Caitlin, Garth, Michael
Our two oceans;
Our peninsula has an ocean on each side of it. On the west coast
we have the Atlantic which is very cold. On the East coast we have
the
Indian and it is much warmer. The water temperature effects the
weather on each side. Some areas are very polluted because of the
harbour, sewage or litter. Long ago there were a lot more sea
creatures around our coast. We still have a beautiful coastline and
love it when the Southern Right Whales come to have their babies along
our coast from about August each year.
GROUP 4:
Janet, Guy, Lauren and Palesa
Natural lakes and vleis in Cape Town
We looked at a big map of the peninsula in our classroom. We found
that there are many natural watery areas nearby. There are
many vleis (marshlands) which are fairly large and not very deep.
Most of the rivers off our mountain chain run off into these vleis.
(The word vlei is an Afrikaans/Dutch word for marsh.) Long ago many
of them had hippos in them and they controlled the weeds. These days
the weeds often take over and block up the water flow. It then
gets dirty and smells. One vlei is called Zeekoeivlei meaning hippo marsh!
We also learned that the whole peninsula is floating on an underground
lake called an aquifer. This was quite a surprise to
us!! Now we know why so many people in Pinelands have bore-holes. Most
of our vleis are named after something about them
eg: flamingo vlei, riet (reed) vlei, ronde(round) vlei and so on.
GROUP 5:
Keegan, Jessica, Dylan, Lauren
Weather in Cape Town:
Cape Town has a Meaditerannean Climate. This means we have warm,
dry summers and cool, wet winters. Because of the mountains and the
2
oceans we also have two famous winds. The south-easter in summer
that blows very hard sometimes and is then called a black south easter,
because the cloud over Table Mountain is dark grey. It even reaches
gale force. This blows the rain clouds up to the north of our
country. In winter the wind is called the North wester or the
Cape Doctor. This is because long ago peole believd that this wind
blew
away all the winter colds and flu. It also brings our rain. It does
not snow in Cape Town but every now and then it snows lightly
on top of
Table Mountian. Some older people of Pinlands have told us that
it actually snowed in Pinlands in 1922. We are trying to find out
more about this!
GROUP 6:
Samantha, Shane, Nicole, Harry
Rivers and their names: closest to Pinelands.
The main rivers close to Pinelands are the Elsieskraal River, the Salt
River and the Black river. We really battled to find out how
they got their names. We know that the Salt river and the Black
river join up just passed Pinelands and flow into the sea near the
harbour. The black river is quite deep and very dark in colour.
Maybe that is why it got it's name. Most of the rivers have brown
water because the water flows through land planted with fynbos.
The fynbos (type of vegetation) makes the water brown like tea leaves
make tea brown. We thought the Salt river must be quite salty to get
its name! We do know that a suburb is named after it called Salt
River. It is sad that all these rivers are very polluted. You
an not swim in them.
GROUP 7:
Puna, Sourien, Dykan, Steven
Rainfall in Cape Town: We learned at our talk at the Centre for
Conservation Education that the rainfall in Cape Town is about the
same very year. Some years it is earlier in the season and other
times it is later. We get our rain mostly in winter. Cold fronts
bring in the rain. Sometimes it rains for days and days without
because of the mountain chain. The one side is much wetter that the
other side, so different plants cover the slopes. We don't often have
thunder and lightning and when it does happen everyone talks about it for
days!
The rest of the country gets its rain in summer. Sometimes it
hails, The biggest hailstorm had pieces of hail the size of golfballs and
this was in 1983. Often it rains so much that roads are flooded
and trees fall over.
GROUP 8:
Asheigh, Mikhail, Herman, Claire
Our Beaches:
We have some fantastic beaches. Some are liked for different reasons.
Some have huge big dunes of soft white sand. The best
beaches for surfing and body bording are Big Bay, Kommetjie and Kalk
Bay. These beaches have a reef and this makes big waves. Some areas
are polluted and this is sad as it kills off the sea life and it looks
ugly. Birds eat the shiny plastic and think they are full, but
later die of starvation. There are beaches to suit all kinds of people.
The warm side has beaches where you can walk out quite far before it gets
deep. This is the side with many sharks, but they don't often bite
people because there are lots of seals to feed them. The last shark
attack on this coast was 2 years ago. The cold water side gets
deep quickly, but has less wind so you can lie and bake in the beach
afterwards. (Once you have been brave enough to get in!) Sometimes
at high tide the sea floods the beaches and sometimes
homes close by, too. Many people enjoy diving to visit the many wrecks
along our coast and see the amazing sea life. We all like
going to the beach. Some beaches dont have sand just rocks.
Dear water participants,
You can see what we have discovered by going to our website:
http://www.hccommunity.havergal.on.ca/BTaylor/links/water.htm
We look forward to hearing what you have done!
From,
Mrs Thom's Grade 2 class
Havergal College
Junior School