Term 4

Term 4 began with a hiss and a roar for all aspects of our life at school - except for this blog! As you will have noticed we have not made any entries this term but not through laziness but rather due to a technical glitch with Google Chrome.
Anyway we headed off to swimming at 11.30am each day.  The children really enjoyed their lessons and everyone made excellent progress over the 2 week of teaching.   Thank you to all the Mums and Dads who helped with the dressing and supervision of the children.

        

                                            
We also managed to fit in Reading, Maths, Writing, Religious Education and 30 minutes of Athletics practice. The children were very tired so it was great to have a long weekend.   The children wrote some fantastic stories about how much they loved swimming. These were presented to the tutors on the last day of our lessons.  Mrs Sleeman was also impressed by the standard of the children ideas, their drawings and their writing. All children received a Principal's award sticker from Mrs Sleeman to recognise their efforts.

I will post more tomorrow with pictures of the Athletics day events.

The Term so far!

This post contains photos of our work this term.  It shows some of the children listening to instructions given by others using Yuan's FM device.
 

                                     

The children making a human model of the way our ears hear sound and how our brains make sense of sound.

                                     

 'Strike' concert. A touring group from 'Strike' a leading New Zealand percussion group gave the children a fantastic introduction to the unit of work on Sound.

                                                       

                         

Playing the musical instruments they made during the Technology Unit. 

 

We have also had a visit from a family of rabbits!!

                                 

                                  

                                  

Hello again

Apologies for the lack of 'blogging' over this term.  My husband and I are now back in our 'temporary' home and have our internet connection up an running again. So please keep looking at our blog to see and hear about all the great things we are doing at school.

We have children making excellent progress in reading and writing, others are progressing well with number recognition and addition and subtraction - hopefully getting the hang of  'imaging' this rather than relying on counters and fingers. This week we have been interchanging with Room 2. Room 1 people are making pan flutes and harmonicas while the children going to Room 2 are making castanets and xylophone from bottles.

More soon with some pics!

Week 6

We had a busy time during Week 6.

Writing continued to be linked to our Science topic.  We made traffic light jelly with red, green and yellow jellies. We added apple and banana to each layer. On Thursday afternoon we ate our jelly with the ice-cream we made 2 week ago. Everyone tried vanilla, plum and cookies n cream ice creams.

                                   

Week 6 was also the last week for the Number strand in Mathematics.  All the children have had their assessment data updated and this will be shared with you at the upcoming parent interviews.

We also had our last drama lesson on Tuesday. Hopefully I will be able to add some photos up later this week.

Some of the children went on a nature walk around the playground with Mrs Redmond. They found all sorts of things to add to our Prayer table. This was a nice introduction to the Religious Education strand of God our Creator' for these children. Friday 20th June is our Prayer Service in the Church at 12 midday. God our Creator will be our theme.  The children each have a line to learn and say at the Prayer Service.

Friday was very busy. Lachlan started school and he looked absolutely like a very grown up school boy in his new school uniform and school shoes.  A big welcome to you Lachlan and a very warm welcome to your family. We hope you have many happy times at school.

Elissa visited school for half a day too. We did enjoy your company and hope you had a great time.

Wednesday

We have been very busy since our last post. It is great to see the children learning new skills. This week we have seen everyone acquire new learning in Reading, Writing and Maths.

I have put a link from our blog page to the Starfall website. If you click on this link you will be able to help your child with phonics and number practice at home.

At the end of last week the children learned to take photographs using our class digital camera. We took photographs of things we noticed in our playground - and some even took photos of other children taking photos!

            

            

On Friday, everyone took home a pair of hand knitted slippers. These were kindly knitted by an elderly lady from our Sacred Heart Parish. The children were able to choose the colour they liked the best. Every child has also been given a warm winter hat to wear in the playground to keep their heads and ears warm.

On these cold mornings we have also been learning some new warming up exercises. This has created lots of laughter, with Hey Baby, Lets Rock and Roll being the class favourite.

Our Kitchen Chemistry unit is continuing to create interest.  Today we made butter by shaking cream in a jar until all the butter fat clumped together.  We drained off the water and spread the butter on to crackers. We really enjoyed our snack.  Mrs Gibson and Mrs Sleeman thought it was the best butter -EVER!  On Friday we will share our butter with children in Room 2.  They will be making bread for us and we will make butter for them.  We will eat our bread and butter together!

              

               

               

               

Tomorrow is Syndicate sports so please remember to bring a change of shoes and sports clothes to school. Also a reminder that the school sports shorts are still available from the School Office at a well discounted price.

Week 4: Wednesday

We are having an exciting week in Room 1. Amidst all the routine learning activities we have managed to fit in so many exciting activities.

The week began with our usual Monday Music lesson from Adrienne Hale who is our visiting music teacher.
Drama lessons continued on Tuesday afternoon. 

Today we all had a turn to sit on Mr Williams big blue motorbike - a Kawasaki named Ninja.  Mr Williams showed us the carbon fibre exhaust, the mirrors, flashing lights and the petrol tank. He showed us where to hold on while we were sitting on the back seat. Mr Williams revved up the engine and tooted the horn. When we went back to our room we drew a picture and wrote our story. Everyone thought this was very exciting and noisy.

Today we also made ice-cream in a bag as part of our Kitchen Chemistry unit.  Gus's mum Luisa helped us so we were able to work in very small groups. We made 3 different flavours of ice-cream  - vanilla, plum and cookies n cream. Ask the children how to make ice-cream at home.  

Tomorrow is our PE afternoon. Please make sure your child brings a change of clothes and sports shoes for their PE sessions.  Don't forget that we have uniform PE shorts for sale from the Office


Last Friday we finished writing our booklets that outline the all the steps in making Gingerbread 

Hands.


The children are showing you some of the work they are most proud of - their favourite pages!

Please feel free to make a comment that we can share at school.

Wednesday

Yuan went on a message to Mrs Gibson's office. Yuan was also very responsible at reading group time. He taught new people how to sit nicely and to point to the words when we read them.

Zaria enjoyed reading time today - she did good job too.  She read Purr-fect again and got a new book called T-shirts.

Carlyle forgot to put his lunch away - he thought this was very funny and he has finally remembered to take home his windmill. Carlyle was writer of the day today. He learned how to put a comma between the words in list. 

Kerri said, "Thank you for a great day - I enjoyed playing with Zaria and Summer." Kerri got a sticker because she can now recognise all the letters of the alphabet by name and she also knows the sounds they represent.

Summer said, "I finished all my work and I played with Kerri and Zaria." Summer was very happy at school today.

Fynnie said, "We all played together and we played chasing games."

Lofi said, "I liked playing with Fynn."  Lofi was Handwriter of the Day because he made many beautiful 'h' & 'H' in his handwriting book.

Lennard liked his time in reading group and he got a sticker because he can recognise all the letters of the alphabet by name.

Gus went to the library at lunch time and he read lots of books with Mrs Williams.

Mrs Baker said her maths worked really hard today.

Mrs French thanked all the children for a great day.  I enjoyed my duty in the playground and loved  talking to all the children. I think we are getting very good at singing our Maori waiata and using our poi.

Tuesday

I asked the children what they would like to share with their parents today and this is what they offered:

Father Pat came to visit us and we introduced ourselves using sign language. We sang Jesus loves me  for Father Pat and we used sign language as we sang it.

At writing time we started our book which will tell you how to make gingerbread hands.

Zaria and Carlyle thought their reading book was a bit hard today.  It was called Purr-fect. They did enjoy the story and were very proud of their reading when they had finished it.

At Maths time some children learned to explain more than and less than. Other children learned how to subtract from 10 using materials.  

This afternoon we had our second drama lesson.  We pretended we were Saber-toothed tigers and cave men. We had to do the actions to music in slow motion and we had to make freeze-frames when the music stopped.  Our teachers said we were very good at this activity.

In Religious Education we learned that the Holy Spirit is like water. The Holy Spirit helps us to grow strong - just like water helps the plants to grow and be strong.

Monday

Good things we did today in Room 1.

Zaria said "We shared."

Carlyle said "I had fun playing with Yuan."

Yuan said " I am going to show dad my writing."

Gus said " I liked playing with my mum and playing with Lennard."

Fynn said " I read about rock pools."

Summer said " My favourite  page was about the little fish."

Lennard  said "I played with Gus and Cobi and Carlyle."

Evelyn went home early with her dad. Evelyn's dad had his traditional Tongan clothes on - they were going to the Tongan Mass at Our Lady of Victories Church.

Mrs French had a great day with all the happy children.

Mrs Redman liked working with Yuan and the other children in Room 1.

MOTHER'S DAY BULBS

The first of our Mother's Days bulbs has flowered at Zaria's house.  Thanks to Zaria and Carla for the photo.