P is for Pepeha

We have had a great first week back, Term 2 has started well in Room 6.

We are busy working on our Pepeha's.  The children all have a line each to learn, you might have helped them at home.

Today we got busy doing a display.  It is still "a work in progress"

We are planning on getting these finished over the next week to have ready to display while doing our assembly presentation.

You are welcome to join us at our School Assembly next Friday 13th May in the hall at 9:10.

O is for One Hundred

Today we had a big catch up on our 100 days at school.  We have been counting each day we have been coming to school since the beginning of the school year.  When we get to 100 days we will celebrate!  We have been so busy lately that we have lost track of the day.

Miss Gargan told the children that we have been coming to school for

"one day less than 1/2 of 100" 

and we had to work it out.

We used the abacus to work out what 1/2 of 100 is.  Charlotte showed us 1/2 of 100 and it looked like this ...

We counted in 5's...5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.

We also could show 1/2 of 100 like this ...

We counted this in 10's...10, 20, 30, 40, 50

1 less than 50 looks like this ...

So we are up to day 49!

We updated our display to show 49 in lots of different ways - 

Then we got a challenge -

The children worked in small groups to solve this problem - well done Room 6!

M is for Morning Question!

We had a great morning question today!  It was related to the book Love You Forever by Robert Munsch.  It is a beautiful book and fits very nicely with our topic of change.

Our morning question has such great learning - we had some good discussions around the question, we do statistical learning as well as number knowledge.

I think the parents were a bit surprised by what the children considered most fun!!!

Based on this data we came up with the following statements - 

Miss Gargan asked a new questions - the answers are very interesting!!

After these discussions we did some number knowledge work with this data.

There was lots of good maths going on.  

*The children were able to count all the names and get an answer of 13.

*Using our knowledge of adding 1 we knew that 9+1 makes 10.  We used our fingers to double check this.

*Next we worked on the problem 10+3 - we used the counting on stragety and put the biggest number 10 in our heads, and counted on 3 - 10....11, 12, 13.

*One clever child made the observation that there are 14 children in our class but only 13 had answered the questions.  More maths!!  Subtraction this time - 14-13=1.

Did you know we did all that with our morning question???

R is for Reading Eggs

The last couple of weeks have just flown by!  What a treat to have 5 days off for the Easter break before the end of term.

Our collaborative teaching in Rooms 6 and 7 has been working very well.  Both teachers feel that the students are getting the best learning with this approach.

Over the past couple of weeks we have spent time introducing the children to the Reading Eggs programme.  Deb our teacher aide has been supporting them during reading rotation times.  The kids are doing great and we encourage you to use this programme at home to support their learning.  

The biggest challenge we face in class is having the students sign on and off the ipads using their personal logins.  If you can encourage them at home to do this independently it will help us during class time.

S is for Spider.

This week we have been doing lots of work around our poem ...The Incy Wincy Spider.  During Literacy times we read a lots of different spider stories.  We liked the Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. This inspired some great art on our walls and some fun very busy stories!

We finished out the week with a spider themed Discovery Time...we were focusing on being creative and solving problems ourselves.

We had some fun sensory activities looking for the spiders in the rice.

We have read lots of great books about spiders this week.

We got creative with lots of different making bits and pieces.

Playdough spiders are fun!!!  We know there are two parts to the body and eight legs.

S is for Seasons

As part of our Inquiry Unit on change we have been doing lots of talking about how time passes. We have been looking at the things that take a short time and things that take a long time, the days of the week, months of the year, and of course how people change as the years go by.

The children in Room 6 and Room 7 enjoyed a big book about Grumpy Bear this week.  Grumpy Bear went to sleep for a long time and that lead into some learning about the seasons.

While Miss Gargan and Mrs O'Leary were teaching reading the children worked in table groups to create these great seasons posters.

B is for Box!

This week we have been having lots of fun during our shared reading time.  We have been reading the book    It's Not a Box.

We have had so much fun as we have been learning and creating through play.

First we played and talked about boxes...

Then we created...

Then we did some writing...

And now we have a great wall display...

Well done Room 6 - so much fun!

P is for PMP

We started PMP this week.  PMP is a great programme and it has been running at Redwood School for a long time now.   PMP helps children to develop a perception of themselves in relation to the world around them.  All of these movements and experiences prepare the brain for learning.

On top of all this it is loads of fun!!!

There is lots of great language when the children crawl "in" "out", "through", "between" and "forwards".

This memory actitivy helps the children to develop their sequencial memory.

This activity where the children toss a bean bag in a hoop helps develop both hand and eye co-ordination - these things are important when you are writing.

Spatial awareness impacts reading and writing - as we develop a good sense of spatial awareness we develop our understanding of left and right, how to lay out a page when writing and forming letters the correct way.

Isn't it great that all this important learning can happen in such a fun way!  A big thanks to the parents who come and help run this programme, we can't do it without their support.

B is for bucket filling

We have been learning all about bucket filling in the Kiwi Syndicate over the past two weeks.  It is a great way to share and show kindness and the children have a really good understanding of the things they can do to fill other peoples buckets.

Today we brainstormed ideas before Discovery Time of ways we could enjoy working and playing together and fill our own and others buckets.

The children did all these things during our session and had lots of fun.  When we got back to Room 6 they wrote stories about what they had done at Discovery Time.

Today at Discovery Time I played with Alex.

Today at Discovery Time I played with the girls.

Today at Discovery Time we were in a box.

Today at Discovery Time I played families with Olivia, Sophie and Millie.

Today at Discovery Time I played trains with Jayden.

Today at Discovery Time I made a flag all by myself.

Today at Discovery Time we played families only.  Olivia and Olivia and Millie only.

Nice work Room 6 - it filled my bucket to see you all playing together so imaginatively.  You were being creative as well as exploring things.  I loved seeing you play so well with your friends.

Sija's Shell

Today Sija brought in some interesting news.  She found this snail shell in the bush when she was in Picton.

We all had a good LOOK, LISTEN and SMELL.

We noticed ...

Olivia noticed that it was a big shell.

Alex noticed that the snail was not inside the shell.  She wondered if the snail died.

Luka noticed a little curl in the the middle of the shell.

Sophie noticed the little curl in the middle of the shell was golden.

Charlotte noticed there was also lots of brown bits.

Sija noticed it had a smell on the inside.

Alex noticed that it was grey on the inside.

We all listened and couldn't  hear anything.

We wondered ...

How big the snail was?

If the snail grew too big for the inside of the shell.

What fun news - Thanks Sija.