G is for goodbye!

So this will be my last post for 2014 and G is for Goodbye to the wonderful children and their families I have worked with this year.  It has been a lot of fun, and very rewarding for me to see that amazing progress these children have made over the year.  I will enjoy watching them as they grow through their years at Redwood School.

Today we made kites and enjoyed the parachute with Room 5 - activities we had hoped to do as part of our Education Outside the Classroom last week.  We never got to them with the bad weather.

I hope to see lots of families at the school picnic tomorrow, and the final assembly on Wednesday.

Merry Christmas, have a wonderful break and do stop by and say Hi in the New Year.

B is for bush walk

Thankfully the rain held off today for our bush walk.  We left school soon after 9 am and walked to the Brasnose Place entrance of the Redwood Bush walk.  It was about the perfect distance for us, and we arrived back at school close to 11am ready for our ice block treat.

Thanks to all the grandparent helpers, we appreciate your support!

T is for Teddy Bears Picnic

What a fun day our Teddy Bears Picnic was.  It has been a tradition in the junior school for a number of years now and seeing the fun and enjoyment the children had I think we better keep it going! The children were mixed up into teams and rotated around 3 different activities.  The teachers all had really creative idea's and there were lots of fun activities.

In Room 3 the children enjoyed the popular book Corduroy bear book, then they made their own Corduroys.

Look at these cute bear activities!  One is made with puff paint and was cooked in the microwave!  The other is a shaker.  Too cute.

In Room 9 the children made these awesome little bear garlands.  Sweet!

Panda Bears and Origami Bears - more fun!

Teddy Cards!

In Room 5 the children went on a Bear Hunt and in Room 4 there used all sorts of building things to create safe houses for their bears!

It was lovely to meet all the special bear friends the children brought to school today.

We finished the day with a Teddy Bear treat!

Room 6's dinosaur site

Don't forget to keep checking back in and seeing what work we have been doing on our dinosaur site.  I have uploaded some student work here

Student work

Dinosaur poems

S is for Swimming

We are into Week 2 of swimming and already we are seeing the progress the children are making.  Awesome effort everyone!  The kids are really enjoying the whole experience, the bus trip, the excitement of getting ready and hanging with friends as well as the lessons.  Here are a couple of pic's to give you the idea!

Arriving and ready to get started.

This is such fun!

Lesson time,

All done and back at school!

W is for Wonkey Donkey

Craig Smith did a great job with the kids from Kiwi Syndicate this afternoon, he entertained us all with his wonderful books - he writes in songs, and we enjoyed his show.

Craig shared his new book Square Eyes with us - if you are not familiar with his work check out his website here Craig Smith

T is for Tyrannosaurs

The Tyrannosaurs Meet the Family exhibit at Te Papa is AMAZING.  We loved our day out - for some children it was their first time on a bus.  Te Papa had a great education session for us, we spent time digging for fossils in the dinosaur pit, and enjoyed the exhibit.  There was also time to visit some of our other favourite things at Te Papa.

I will add photo's to our Dinosaur Site so visit it for more information.

Room 6 Dinos

D is for Dinosaurs

Can't wait to get into this topic!!  We have lots of really fun things to do, and the Te Papa trip is going to be fantastic.  Make sure you have sent back your forms so that we can get this organised.

I have created a Google site on Dinosaurs, and we will be doing our research from this page in in class, as well as sharing our learnings....click on the Dinosaur tab above to get to this site.

C is for Cleanup

Thanks so much to the parents and grandparents who supported us this week while we were out participating in the Keep New Zealand Beautiful event.  Despite being rained on we managed to fill some trash bags and tidy up our community a little.

We are almost at the end of our What Rubbish? topic - we have done a lot of learning - tomorrow we are going to try making paper from the scraps we have been collecting all week.

R is for Reuse

Thanks for the egg cartoons you all sent in - thanks Fifi Colston for your inspiration - and well done Room 6 reusing an egg cartoon to make a pretty good looking crown!

D is for Dress Up

The children in Room 6 love the dress-ups.  They had fun dressing up today and then writing about the experience..

I dressed up like a policeman.  Miss Gargan took a picture of me.  I was a little bit scary.  Hannah was a witch.     Izak

I dressed up in the New Zealand hat and....there was a long thing.   Luca

I dressed up as a dinosaur a Mum helped me put on the dinosaur dress.  Chhung Li

I am a witch I am mean.  There is a princess and I am going to eat her.  I don't like princesses!  I felt like a real witch.  My cape was silky.  My witch hat had a spike on the top.   Hannah

I dressed up like Batman and I felt brilliant.   Miles

I dressed up as a witch.  The cape was purple and my witch hat was pointy.  I looked pretty.   Addison

I dressed up like a star man.  Miss Gargan took a photo.  It was red and white with stars and a little bit of red.  I t was brilliant and fantastic.  Harley

I dressed up as an octopus.  His name is Henry.  It was fantastic.  Harper

I dressed up like a fireman in a top.  I put on pants.  I thought it was funny.  Cooper

I dressed up to look like a witch and I had a pointy hat.  Madison

I am batman.  I would fly to Italy to see Luca's family and all the other families in Italy.  Nicholas

I put on the New Zealand hat.  I loved it.  It was brilliant.   Kayden

V is for visitors

Today we had a day full of visitors in Room 6!

Jack from Room 15 came and shared his invention, made from recycled materials.  He did some pretty clever things using plastic cups and a paper towel roll......perfect timing Jack that fits so well with our topic at the moment!

Next we did some buddy writing with the children from Room 7.  We had to find out 3 things about our buddy and then write about them.  We found out some really interesting things.

AND then Mrs Arlidge came in as part of the Read Aloud programme and read some really cool animal stories to us.  Thanks Mrs Arlidge.

Never a dull moment in Room 6!!

D is for Discovery Time

The children in Room 6 have been working on the Key Competency of Relating to Others in their Discovery Time sessions lately.  Discovery Time is a great time to practice and learn through play.  We have been working on cooperating with others to complete tasks together.  We had lots of fun with some of the following activities -

We can transfer these skills to our independent group work during literacy and numeracy times.

W is for Wheels

We had so much fun last Friday.  Thanks to the PFG for the pizza, it was a really yummy.  The wheels afternoon was a real treat.  Go Room 6!

F is for Fractions and Fruit Salad!

What an awesome discovery time we had today.  We have been learning about fractions, how they are part of a whole and becoming familiar with the language.  So we did one of my favourite things, we made maths part of our everyday world by using food!

We made a fruit salad using wholes, halves and quarters -

Of course we enjoyed eating it when were had made it too!!

You can expose your children to the language of fractions at home by making them aware if you are cutting their sandwiches in half or quarters, when you cut different food items into parts of the whole.

O is for One Hundred!

Today we are all One Hundred Days smarter!  

We celebrated in style with lots of fun activities....thanks everyone for your great collections of 100 things..great counting, there were sea shells and pretzels, stars and jelly beans, stickers and rainbow looms.... to name a few.

We enjoyed cake with our buddy class at morning tea - in the shape of 100...can you guess how many lollies were on it?

We did a lot of counting today!  The children made cool 100 day hats - 10 sticks, with 10 things on each stick - they looked pretty cute!  It was fun counting all the cans that were donated...and building with them!  We will donate them to a local food bank.

The afternoon was busy too - we made pictures of what we think we will look like when we are 100!!  And of course there was the fun of letting the balloons go!  

What fun it has been counting and learning for the past 100 days.  Thanks Mrs Morpeth, parents and  children for a great day...see you tomorrow it will our 101st day of school for the year!!

B is for Book Swap

We had a great time at the book swap at the end of Term 2.  I hope everyone has enjoyed their new story over the holidays.

Our school library initiates the book swap.  It encourages the children to donate a pre-loved book and in exchange the children receive a book swap token.  The token is like currency on book swap day.  The children have a great time selecting some holiday reading.

P is for PMP

Room 6 will be stopping our PMP program at the end of this term.  It is a fantastic program that we run in our junior school for our youngest students.  It has so many benefits for the children.

PMP is a Perceptual Movement Program.  It helps children develop perception of themselves and their world through movement.  It is also loads of fun!!

We start the week with a Floor Session where new equipment and language are introduced and the skills for the rotations are explored and practiced.  All of the Year One children and teachers do this together.

This week our new equipment was the scooter board.  The scooter board is great for gross motor skills, hand eye coordination and fitness.

We have two rotation sessions during the week.  These last for 20 minutes and consist of  4 different stations, each run by a parent help.  The rotations all have a variety of activities and they always cover Balance, Fitness, Hand-Eye Coordination  and Locomotion.  They also involve things like spacial awareness, language, problem solving, confidence, rhythm, , body imagine and body control, directionality.

Here is sample of some of the things we do

The body rocker is great for balance, as well as spacial and body awareness.

The dizzy giddy is one of the most popular pieces of equipment, it is good for balance,  body control, rhythm, timing and muscle strength.

Developing and growing your short term memory.  If you can remember three things like cup, fish, star, you will also be able to remember instructions such as "get a glue stick, pen and your scrapbook".

PMP has been so much fun, thanks to all the parents who have been involved.  Our younger students will continue to enjoy their PMP sessions.