W is for Welcome!

Welcome to 2015

I hope you have all had wonderful summer break.  I have enjoyed the time off, catching up on chores and gardening, enjoying the sun with family and friends and I also managed a get away with my husband.  As a result I feel well rested and relaxed and am rearing to go with the new school year!

I look forward to meeting you all over the first week of school, getting to know your children and starting our year together.

With my children on the Devonport Ferry in Auckland.

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.