Our Special Learning Assistant

Mrs Blakeman has been with us for seven weeks already!  She is such a gem and helps us in so very many ways.  We really enjoy all her support in our reading, writing and maths groups.  It's always great having her there to set up all the laptops and iPads and she helps with many other jobs and activities in class.

Thanks, Mrs Blakeman, for all you do to make us happy and to help us with our learning in Room 5.

Peachy the Peach Tree

Peachy the Peach tree has lost all his leaves - he has his winter look now.  This is the season that he rests and stands firm against the wind, rain and chills.  He will slow down in his growth and doesn't need much food.  We will keep a close watch on the buds on his branches for in the springtime they will burst into blossom and into leaf once again!  We are lucky to be able to keep an eye on him from our classroom windows.

Art Update

We have made a number of new art works which are on display in our classroom.  

Here are the ones we completed to depict Autumn - we used our textured painted paper to make a still life collage of fruit, showing the harvest time.  The bold, colourful autumn leaves are pastel and dye creations.

We enjoyed making these paper bag monkeys with a buddy in response to a big book entitled "Monkey's Shoes".

Our teddy bears have layers of tissue paper collage.



Here are our completed pieces of calendar art - these are all about us (our faces, the first letter of our name, our favourite animal or pet, our favourite toy, our garden and our house).

Our Toy Shop

Our class has a little toy shop in it. We are learning to recognise all the coins and are reading prices as well as handling dollars and cents. 

Here are some shop keepers and customers visiting the shop.

Our Favourite Toys

We enjoyed sharing our favourite toys today.  All our toys were different which made it so interesting - some were small, some large, some had wheels, some didn't move at all, some were soft, some were solid and others were shiny and bright!  We then compared our toy with our buddy's toy to find similarities and differences.  Toys certainly bring us lots of joy.

Discovering Toys and Games from the Past

We took a step back in time at an amazing place this Thursday...visiting Howick Historical Village was a wonderful taste of life in a bygone era.  Even though a few of the children had already been before and had enjoyed discovering the quaint nooks and crannies of this little museum town, they were treated to four hands-on experiences that were novel and informative.

Our first experience was held in the drawing room of the Manor House where we learned some nursery rhymes and how they came to be.  Jack be Nimble was one of these and then we played a game where we jumped over the candlesticks but fortunately they weren't lit.

Our next session was held in the old Pakuranga School building which was filled with all sorts of toys which our great- great -great grandmothers and grandfathers would have played with and which are still going strong today.

These toys were mostly hand made and made of wood.

There were a huge range of toys for us to play with and we were fascinated to see how they worked.  Most moved using the laws of gravity or by winding, pulling or squeezing. 

Following that we visited the Schoolhouse where the resident "Teacher" met with us and conducted a handwriting lesson.  The children were a little apprehensive at her stern, Victorian approach but showed her how wonderfully well they behave and how clever they are at answering questions.  They used some charcoal and a slate on which to practice the various handwriting strokes.  She was impressed that they kept to the rule that "children are seen but not heard".

Our last activity before lunch was to play parlour games where Mrs White taught us some really unusual but very entertaining games such as stepping through a rope and passing it on, guessing who had the ring, a Blindman's bluff game and some ball catching games too.

After lunch we were free to explore any of the buildings and places we wished so in groups of four we wandered around happily with our parent helpers and teachers.

All of us were reluctant to leave - there were still so many more things to see and do.  Fortunately the wonderful people at the Historical Village gave each of us a free pass so that we could bring our mums or dads along next time and show them around!

Getting Technical with Trains in Technology

It was our class' turn to have a day of Technology with Mr Rankin on Friday and we had looked forward to it all week! 

We had amazing hands-on opportunities to discover how trains travel on various tracks and how they work.  Our vocabulary was indeed widened with new words such as "freight, passenger and steam" as we worked with the variety of locomotives. As train operators we learned how to get the train to stop at the station, using switches.  We also worked on a different set of train tracks where we needed to move the points to get the trains to change tracks. Mr Rankin also demonstrated how a steam engine works.

The following videos and photos portray the exciting learning that took place!

Autumn Posters

We used a Comic Life programme to make these colourful posters depicting the beauty of Autumn.  To do so we imported images from Google and placed these in a template. Lastly we typed a heading and placed this to complete our poster.

Happy Hannah

Hannah is our Star of the Week and is a delightful member of our class.  She is such a star at bringing Nude Food every day.  Thank you to you and your Family, for helping to make our school a clean and tidy place, Hannah! 

Gymnastics

Term Two is a time for Gymnastics throughout the school!  We have our turn to use all the equipment in the hall on Thursday afternoons.  Look at all the different skills we are learning as we work on the various stations -

 Moonhoppers - using feet to propel ourselves upward

 Skipping skills - forwards and backwards

 Forward rolls - heads tucked in and hardly touching the mat

Springboard - jumping and landing with knees bent

 Step board - jumping from side to side

 Beam - balancing

Ana demonstrates walking across the beam unaided!

 Mat work - half & quarter turns, star jumps, stretch jumps 

Our Autumn Art Creations

To celebrate World Environment Day the Junior school held an Autumn Art competition.  The amazing pieces of art that were created in Room 5 are shown below and it was just wonderful that their were so many different ways that the children used autumn leaves and recycled materials.  Congratulations to all those who won Nude Food prizes and to everyone who participated!

World Environment Day

June the 5th is World Environment Day every year.  As always it is a day for focusing on our beautiful environment and how we can take care of it.  We live in such a picturesque and peaceful country and are so fortunate in having plenty of rain and enough sunshine to grow food.  This year the message is "Think, Eat, Save" and it encourages us not to waste our food.  

Gentle Greer

Greer is a great reader who reads fluently, with good expression and this was noted on her special award this week.  We're so pleased you enjoy reading, Greer!

An Amazing Autumn Walk

Autumn is a beautiful, crisp season, filled with vibrant colour and heightened awareness of the changing months of the year. 

On Friday afternoon we set out from school on a short walk down to the Tarnica reserve, home to seven most beautiful, majestic maple trees. They had already dropped most of their huge leaves which covered the green grass in pretty patches.  This eye-feasting scene was a perfect invitation to touch, gather, bunch, crackle, mound, scatter and play... an exciting way to celebrate the season!