Term 3 - Week 10

The holidays are here and I hope everyone is looking forward to a well deserved break. We have had an amazing term and the children have all been working very hard.

We have been busy this week getting our masks ready for the Mask Parade. The parade is on Friday 16th October (the first Friday of Term 4) and Nayland's theme is The Lorax. Each syndiacte is taking a different part of the story and Whenua are dressing as the Lorax himself. Here are the children hard at work making their masks:

We had an exciting sharing time on Monday. Cohen has Scotland as his team for our Rugby World Cup sweepstake. Over the weekend he found out lots of information about Scotland and told us all about it. Here he is with all the things he brought along. 

Patrick went to the Hope Fair last weekend and managed to knock over a coconut. He also brought it to school so we could all have a look. Well done Patrick.

We have been learning another new maths game this week and it is lots of fun. The children each start with 15 pompoms and a pair of tweezers. They take turns rolling the dice and 'stealing' the amount of pompoms they roll from the other player. The winner is the person with the most pompoms when the timer goes off. The children have been playing awesomely together and showing great sportsmanship. Well done!

Malachi worked very hard to make this amazing pattern with the peg boards. He copied it from a picture so had to look very carefully. Ka pai tō mahi Malachi.

We ended the term with our Book Character dress up day on Friday. It was great fun and our class was filled with many different characters Here are the children:

Have a great 2 week break and I will see you all after the holidays.

Term 3 - Week 9

We have had some lovely weather this week, it is beginning to feel like Spring really has arrived. The children have had a great time playing outside and are especially enjoying the sandpit. This week Room 16 has been working with Room 15 on our pallet art. The pallet will be hung in the Harakeke Garden at some stage next week for everyone to enjoy but here is a sneak preview. Can you guess what it is?

 We have been learning lots of new games as part of our maths programme. Here are Sam and Stirling playing a game called Roll, Add and Colour. The children take turns rolling two dice and adding up the number of dots. Then they get to colour in a picture with the answer in it. The winner is the person who has the most pictures coloured at the end of the game.

We have also been using the bears to make patterns. Here is Malachi with his amazing pattern of red, yellow, yellow. Super work!

Cohen, Anna and Sid have all filled another Star Chart - what an amazing attitude to learning you have. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of Sid with his chart but here are Cohen and Anna.

Don't forget we have sharing time every Wednesday in Room 16. We are working hard on becoming active listeners and asking a wide range of questions. Here are some photos from sharing time this week. There were certainly a lot of interesting things brought along.

Siuila brought these flags as she is supporting NZ in the Rugby World Cup

Sid brought his game Twister. It is lots of fun but very tricky.

Our stars of the week this week were Skyla and Alena. Alena received her award for being a great friend. She is always comforting children who are hurt or upset, well done Alena. Skyla got her certificate for amazing reading. She is working hard to learn all her red words and is making amazing progress. Ka pai!

Term 3 - Week 8

Only 2 more weeks until the holidays again, once again the term is flying by. We have been busy this week getting all the samples ready for our Sample Files which will come home before the holidays. Our calendar art is finally complete and hanging up in the class for you to look at. Here is some the the art work:

Don't forget orders need to be in at the school office by Friday 18th September.

With lots of children collecting dominoes we have set up a swap box in the class. The box is out every morning before school and the children are welcome to swap their dominoes for any they don't yet have or add any they don't need. We have had a great time playing with the dominoes, building some pretty impressive looking towers.

 As the weather is improving we have been enjoying spending some time outside. The sandpit is often open at lunchtime now and we even had a play on it on Friday afternoon.

We are also making use of the bikes kindly given to us Nayland Kindy earlier in the year. We ave 3 of these bikes and the children love using them whenever they can. We are still working on following the road rules!  

During Discovery Time this week some children chose to make origami boats and float them in the water tray. Here is Sam concentrating very carefully. We used a video on YouTube to help us, but the instructions were very difficult to follow. Next week the children would like to have a at making a jet so we will see how that goes.

If you would like to have a go making a boat at home here is a link to the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiAWx8odStA

Here we are enjoying some oranges that were kindly donated to us.

Term 3 - Week 7

This week the children of Room 16 and 6 were lucky enough to visit the Life Education Bus. The children loved meeting Harold the Giraffe and learnt some important information about how to look after our bodies. Here are the children on the bus:

We have been busy making and testing string telephones in class this week. We used 4 different materials to join our cups and then tested them to see which one the sound travelled through the best. We made sure our test was fair by keeping the length of the material and the cups the same. Here are the children trying out the telephones. If you want to find out more about them come and see our slide show at the Science Evening on Tuesday.

We had an awesome Discovery Time on Friday and the children chose lots of different activities. Some children made instruments, others put on a puppet show or played with lego. It was great to see the children working together!

Cohen made a guitar out of a tissue box and some rubber bands. 

Siuila used bottle tops and cardboard to make a clicker.

Lots of children worked together to build SandMan Land. It took them a long time and they worked very well together. 

Lots of children have competed their sticker charts this week. Here they are showing them off:

Our stars of the week were Zac and Neve. Zac has been working very hard on his reading and I am amazed at his progress and Neve is a caring and considerate class member. Well done to you both!

Finally, don't forget to call into the class next week to look at the amazing calendar art created by the children.