Happy

We were thrilled to lead today's school assembly. All children chose a role... and either spoke, handed out positive choice awards, or were our 'secret spies'. We sang the song 'Happy' and made a video on the 'video star' app to share with the school. Well done Room Two! You made me proud!

Rodney's Return!

Rodney and Kiera are back from their holiday. Rodney (our pet rat) had a great time cruising the Pacific on a P&O cruise. He also left the ship to visit three islands. Here he is enjoying the beautiful white sand in Vanuatu with some new friends...(look hard, he's well camouflaged!). Kiera enjoyed sharing about her experience today with the class.
Welcome home Rodney! Where will your next adventure be to?

Floating Paperclip

Today for our writing motivation, we explored how to make a paperclip float. How is this possible? With a little thing scientists call SURFACE TENSION. Basically it means that there is a sort of skin on the surface of water where the water molecules hold on tight together. If the conditions are right, they can hold tight enough to support your paper clip. The paperclip is not truly floating, it is being held up by the surface tension. Many insects, such as water striders, use this "skin" to walk across the surface of a stream.

Nutrition day

We enjoyed celebrating the end of our nutrition unit with a community healthy lunch. Our class was responsible for making the roasted vegetable and pumpkin soup. Despite blowing up the whiz stick, we found and alternative method and mashed the pumpkin until blended. We enjoyed telling the team and visitors about the nutritional benefits of our product. We also enjoyed the fruit salad, healthy club sandwiches, air popped popcorn, and ham hock and vegetable soup created by the rest of the team.
It was a delicious and nutritious way to end our inquiry!

Science Sparks

We have been using simple science experiments as motivators in our writing this week. Yesterday they conducted an experiment called 'The exploding sandwich bag'. Today Mrs Seymour and the class experimented with popping balloons. There was great hilarity! Enjoy reading some of our work.

The Exploding Sandwich Bag -By Issac

Really! An exploding sandwich bag? I didn't quite believe it could happen either but I just witnessed it! The baking soda and vinegar caused a chemical reaction, making it puff up. As the air was trapped the bag expanded and after 10 seconds...BOOM! Vinegar was flooding the ground!

Balloon Pop - By Harry

Have you ever sat on a balloon to pop it? We just did! BANG! The room filled with laughter like a trip to the circus. It was hilarious when Mrs Seymour sat on the balloon. When I tried it, it lowered me like an elevator. Some of the girls were really anxious and I had to pop theirs for them! It was a really awesome experience.

Multidice

We  have been enjoying learning and reviewing our multiplication tables. multidice is a board game we have been playing in class to reinforce and practice our times tables. Our target by the end of year three is to have instant recall of our 2x, 5x, 10x tables. By the end of year four our target is 3x, 4x, and 9x.

Autumn Fun

We had a great morning playing in the autumn leaves at Warren Park. This was great motivation for our environmental writing.

Rodney's adventures

Our class pet Rodney the Rat, has set sail with Kiera on a cruise of the pacific! Lucky Rodney...if only there was room for all of us in that suitcase! Kiera sent photos through the other day to let us know how Rodney is getting on. You will be pleased to know that he hasn't been sea sick! He is loving the comfortable cabin and looking out at the ocean. Kiera told me that Rodney was getting a bit fat after gorging on giant Oreo's, but not to worry...the family were sending him off to the gym!
It's awesome to hear about your travels guys! Enjoy your week at sea.

Remembrance Tree

On Friday, the school planted a kowhai tree in memory of a much loved staff member, teacher, and friend - Sue Hollowood. We sang a waiata and set yellow balloons free to the heavens. Rest in peace Sue.

Ben's Baby Sister

Ben became a big brother in the holidays. It was wonderful to beet the gorgeous 'Piper' on Friday morning. What a lucky little baby to have you as a big brother!

Unusual animals

The class did a magnificent job researching unusual animals for their homework at the end of term. Here they are sharing their work. We found out about panda ants, the vampire deer, fire ants, leafy sea dragons and many more fascinating creatures! The award for the most revolting certainly goes out to the naked mole rat! Check this disgusting creature out! Thanks for bringing this foul rodent to my attention Olivia...I haven't slept for a week!

 

Maths Buddy

The school has been given the online numeracy programme MATHS BUDDY to trial for a term. This is an excellent programme that provides tutoring and practice activities that align with the NZ maths curriculum. Let's make the most of this fabulous resource while we can!

Your child will be given their own login and password. Their login details will be in their homework books on the front page. We will go over how to use the programme on Monday in class.

The website link is on the right hand side of this blog.  I have set students with tasks to complete over the next few weeks. Have fun!

Happy Mother's Day

I hope all of you are spoilt this mothers day! The children have been working on mothers day poems and have recorded messages for you on fotobabble. Most of these are now loaded onto their individual blog pages. Some children still need to record these on Monday as we had a few technical glitches! Watch this space!

Numeracy

We have been working on addition and subtraction strategies that help us when we are dealing with larger numbers. Here is Ethan using standard partitioning to solve a maths problem. It is important that learners demonstrate this kind of place value understanding before they move into using formal algorithms.

Golden Pond

We walked to Golden Pond retirement home today and spent the morning with the elderly residents. We enjoyed sharing our stories and teaching them how to use some of the ipad apps. What a fabulous experience!

Pic Collage Creativity

Getting creative with iPad apps!

We have been enjoying using the camera, pic collage, and art rage.

Te Reo

We have been practicing the months of the year in Te Reo. Here we are matching the words in our group rotations.