S is for Sausages

Thank you all for supporting our fundraising efforts.  Our sausage sizzle was very successful.  A special thanks to all our helpers on the day.  The children enjoyed being a part of the project.

We sold around 350 sausages and raised $564.00.  Our kind builder will use this to purchase the materials needed to work on this project.

All of the money coming in!

Busy on the barbeque!

Working in the kitchen!

Sausages, sausages and more sausages!

And the main team is rewarded for their hard work!

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???

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 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.

C is for Cow

Loving the cows the kids drew today.  They are looking amazing on our wall.  Love the stories that the kids wrote about their farm trip too!

F is for Farm

WOW - what an amazing day it has been.  Such a great visit to the Dairy Farm in Upper Hutt.  We've had a really great experience today - be sure to ask your child to share their adventures with you.

Thanks so much to the parents who came and helped, we couldn't have managed without your support.

I expect that all the children will sleep well tonight!!

Here are a couple of photo's to start your conversations...

Heading into the Calving Sheds

We touched and patted, watched and observed, and some kids got to feed the 2 week old calves by bottle.

We walked up to the paddock to see the 200 milking cows in their paddocks.

We took a good look at the milking machines to see how they worked.

We were ready for lunch and so grateful that the weather was on our side today.

It was a long bus ride there and back, but that's half the fun..... right!!

K is for Kitchen Science

We've been having some fun with our kitchen science topic.  We spent time looking at cooling and now we are looking at mixing.  It was very timely that Miss Gargan got a special mission from New World Little Kitchen.  She made this video clip and it has been uploaded to the New World Little Kitchen Website.  We are going to be learning about heating next.  Lots of fun!

H is for Harold

This week we have had Harold and Kapa from the Life Education Trust visit us at Redwood School.

In Room 6 we have been learning about Food for Energy and why we need a balanced diet.  We helped Harold create a healthy menu for his friend Jocko's birthday party.

There are some fun things on the Life Education Trust's web page for kids
 Life Education Trust.

O is for Our Stories

It was lovely to share our learning with so many families today, thanks for your support.  The children have had fun learning their own stories, it was a fun way for our inquiry topic on the First World War to lead us.

P is for present!

Room 6 received a present in the mail today....

It was very exciting..we didn't know what it was but we all had a touch and a guess...

we wondered if it might be....some lego, a bunny, chocolate, an instrument, a ball, a dress up or a book!

We read on the box that the package had been sent from another class with 5 and 6 year olds just like us, what would they send us?

LOOK....they have sent us Anzac Ted!!  We loved this book.   We can't wait to take him places and share some of our learning with him...

P is for Pataka

We had a great trip to Pataka this week.  Actually all the teachers were saying they have never had a bad experience there, what a little gem it is locally.

Thanks to the parents who came with us and supported us while we were there.  In the education room we learnt about a local soldier who served in the First World War, we made poppies and reflected on our learning about their significance.

When then moved into the gallery and laid our poppies under the soldiers portraits.

Then we spent time looking through a solders kit and talking about all the things in it, and why and how they were used.  It was very interesting.

Today in class we talked about how the soldiers might have felt, it would have been such a tough time for them.  The children were saying how sad they would have been leaving their families, how scared they must have been not knowing what they would have to face next, how bored they would have been with all the same food.

We wondered what life might have been like for our families 100 years ago.  We are going to spend some more time looking into this over the next few weeks.  We would love any information you might have on your family 100 years ago.

B is for biscuit

This week in Room 6 we read a great journal story called Anzac Biscuits by Phillippa Werry.  We have done a lot of work all week on this story and the children have been developing some good topic vocabulary, they have done lots of inquiring and even wrote summaries of the story.

Today as a Friday fun activity we followed the recipe in the journal story and made the Anzac Biscuits.

The children have a good understanding of the history behind Anzac Biscuits, so ask them about what they have learnt this week.  I think you might find that one cookie each wasn't enough - so if you feel like trying them at home, here is the recipe from our story...

A is for Anzac

With Anzac Day tomorrow, I hope you all have a lovely three day weekend.  It's been a great start to Term 2 in Room 6, I was so impressed by all the children this week.  The behaviour has been fantastic and it has been a pleasure working with the children.

Our Big Idea is Past, Present and Future this term.  We will be focusing on Their Stories, Our Stories with WW1 and what life was like 100 years ago as the focus.  We spent time this week looking at the meaning behind why we celebrate Anzac Day.  We made a poppy wreath for the Fields of Remembrance Service.  The children all showed respectful behaviour at the service, and it was a opportunity for them to be a part of this nationwide commemoration.

Will and Mackenzie presenting our wreath

F is for Fire Truck

Did you hear we had a fire truck come to school today?  It was very exciting.  Thanks to the Tawa Volunteer Firefighters who took time out to bring the truck up to school today.  We loved counting the hoses....there were 27 hoses....wow!!

We learnt about all the different things the firefighters do, and got to have a really good look at the truck.

It was very cool and we are looking forward to starting our Fire Wise learning next week.

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!

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!!

B is for Bannocks

Thanks so much to Kerri and Will, Tia's parents who came in today and shared with us about their home The Shetland Islands.  We learnt lots of cool things about Shetland and it was a real treat to taste the bannocks.  Yummy, Thanks!

If you would like to learn more about these interesting islands check out this cool webpage that Tia's family prepared for us.

Shetland Islands