Cool Christmas Activties

http://www.helpkidzlearn.com/advent_2010/advent_calendar.shtm

http://www.adventcalendaronline.com/demo/

http://resources.kaboose.com/games/santa-flibriks.html

http://www.northpole.com/Clubhouse/Games/

Seeds, seeds, seeds!

This week we are learning all about seeds! 

We are learning how to plant seeds and how to look after them.

Today we planted our seeds. We used soil to fill up our pot and we buried a seed into the soil. Next we watered them to keep them hydrated! We don't know yet what will grow from our seeds so it will be exciting when we start to see sprouting from our pots!

We also read books on seeds. We learnt that seeds need 3 things; water, air and sunlight. We have put our pots in a place where our seeds can get all 3 of these important things.

We just can't wait to see what happens...

A big thank you to Mrs Matchett who came in to help us plant our seeds. 

Top 20

We are up to our number 18 on our top 20 list of cool kids things - Kapa Haka.

Tomorrow we will write about number 17 - baking. Keep checking in to see our awesome stories. 

What's Happening? 31/10/11

Happy Halloween everybody! Today has been very busy for AM class.

We started the day with writing. We used our imaginations to pretend we were flying on a magic broomstick on Halloween night. Some of us were witches, others were riding with their witch friends! Our writing needed to include something we could see, hear and feel as we flew on our broomsticks. Below are a few stories

I am on Laura's broomstick. Laura is my witch. I can see stars. I can hear wind. I can feel wind blowing in my face. Flying on a broomstick is really really fun.
Emma

I see a scary bat down below. It is trying to get me. I hear flap flap flap and I feel something touch me. It was the bat!
Cameron


In the spirit of Halloween we read poems about witches, pumpkins and scary Halloween night. We also made scary pumpkin masks. See the photo below.

What's happening in reading?


Last week the Willy Wonkas' took home a book called "you can make a happy cake." It taught us how to make a happy cake by following a recipe and using the right ingredients. Today the Willy Wonkas' got to make a real happy cake. Then the rest of the class got a turn at making a happy cake too. We had two yummy happy cakes to eat. Mmmmm yum! Check out the photos below....

Willy Wonkas' with their cake ready to ice

Icing the cake 

Before

After

The best bit about baking - eating it! Yum!

A HUGE HUGE thank you to Mrs Rush for coming in and helping us make our yummy happy 
cakes!


 

Wonderful Writers

Below are the stories of Celestine and Brooke C. They wrote about their holidays. Their stories were so wonderful they got a principals award from Mrs Jennings!


Guess what Alexander? I went to my Nana and Papas house. I had a big nightmare. I felt really afraid and scared that NZ would lose against France! But when I woke up NZ won and I was so proud of NZ.
Celestine



What a cool holiday! I watched the Smurfs in 3D. This guy called Gargamel he was trying to get the Smurfs but he couldn't. When I saw Auntie Geraldine she said "you can take the box with the rugby cards." I lit up with excitement. I got Toeava and Sonny my Mums favourite player.
Brooke C

Week 1 Term 4 happenings

Welcome back!

Wow! What a wonderful start to the term we have had already. On Tuesday we all had news to share about our fun holidays so we did donut news. We started off our writing for the term with holiday adventures. We all had so many cool things to write about and we wrote wonderful stories. Lots of us wrote about the All Blacks and their exciting win of the Rugby World Cup. Some of AM class even got to share their fabulous stories with our principal Mrs Jennings! After morning tea we read a funny poem about a spider in a shoe. We all imagined what we would do if we found a spider hiding in our shoe. Some of us thought we would put it outside back to its home. Others thought we would get Mum and Dad to do it for us! After lunch we looked at some Kapa Haka videos. We focused on the costumes that performers wear. We saw headbands, long earrings, feathers, piu-piu (skirts), poi and even some moko! This term we will be learning lots about Kapa Haka in preparation for our performance in week 6.

Check out our top 20 page to see some of our wonderful stories on holidays! 

Also, a big congratulations to the All Blacks for winning the Rugby World Cup! AM class was very excited to watch the nerve-racking game! We all feel very happy and proud! Miss Martin was lucky enough to be at Eden Park to watch the game and she was super thrilled to be a part of such an amazing event!

Top 20 Awesome Kid Things

You will now see a tab on our blog called Top 20 Awesome Kid Things. 


This is a countdown of all the good things about being a kid. It is also about appreciating the little things. On this page you will find our writing about things we think are cool! We will be doing this during our shared writing time.

It will be updated regularly so keep having a look as we countdown.

Week 10 Blend - sw

This week we are focusing on the blend 'sw.' This morning we made a list of words that start with 'sw.' There are a lot of 'sw' words that are verbs so we acted them out. We practised swinging, swaying, sweeping, swooping and swirling. After lunch we made swan masks. Don't we look great?

What's happening in reading? 30/09/11

Every Friday AM class take home poems for their home reading.

This weeks poems were on pirates! We loved them so much we thought we would share them on our blog for everyone to enjoy.

The Hungry Caterpillars, Rainbow Fish and Cats in Hats read the 'The Pirate.' The Wild Things and Willy Wonkas read 'The Pirates' Picnic.'

See the videos below...






Enjoy your weekend everybody! Be sure to check out 'what's happening next week' on the right sidebar to see what exciting things we have planned for week 10.

We are Artists!

This Term we have been learning to be artists! We have looked at different art from all around the world. We have been inspired by Japanese Batik Art, Australian Aboriginal Art and famous French Artist named Mondrian. All of our artwork looks amazing and we have worked so hard! If you haven't seen all our art yet, come in and check it out.

Backing Black Day - Friday 9th September

On Friday we had a "backing black" day where we dressed in black (or any other colour of our choosing - for different Countries) to show support for the All Blacks and to celebrate the start of the Rugby World Cup. We all looked awesome! After morning tea, we made a fern on the school field and it looked amazing. Mr D put together a video montage, check it out below...



Here are the photos of AM class backing black...

GO THE AB'S!

Ole Soccer Term 3

 

For the rest of the Term we will be learning new soccer skills with Ole Soccer Academy. These sessions will take place every Thursday from

11.05-11.45am (starting Week 6 - Thursday 8th September). If it is fine we will be outside on the field. If it is wet it will take place inside the school hall.

Can you please ensure children have appropriate footwear on these days so that they are able to participate fully.

Many thanks,

Miss Martin

Another Fun Reading Game

I have just found a fun reading game for children to play at home. Children build a character and create a story around their character. It's all fictional (you can have a crocodile for a pet) and is good for story building and using imagination, plus it's great practise for reading at home!

Check it out...

http://www.starfall.com/n/level-b/me/load.htm?f

Verbs

This week we started looking at verbs. We learnt that a verb is a "doing word" and there are lots of them in books we read.

We made a list of some verbs we could think of, check it out in class....

See what other verbs you can think of at home!

Read

Run

Writing Week 4

This term we have been focusing on narrative writing, which is retelling a known story in our own words or using our imagination to write a new story.

On Thursday we read the story "Me and My Dog" by Margaret Mahy. We listened to it on the listening post and also acted it out. Then we re-wrote the story in order, using our own words. We all worked really hard and WOW was Miss Martin blown away, she thinks they are some of the best stories we have written all year! She is very proud of us and we are too.

Please come in and read our stories - you can find them in our writing books!

Dance Term 3

This term we have been doing dance with JB class on a Tuesday. We are learning lots of new dance skills and new language too. Two of the things we have been focusing on is moving to a beat and changing our movement when the music changes pace. When the music is fast we can do lots of small, sharp and quick movements. When the music is slow we can do slow, soft and floaty movements. We have also been learning to change the size and shape of our dance.

We have been practising these skills to a song called Ying Yang - its great because the music changes pace often. Below is a video of us dancing to Ying Yang. Watch us change our movements when the music changes.

Learning in a winter wonderland!

Wow, what an eventful start to the week we have had! Isn't the snow just amazing?! We are all hugely enthusiastic about the snow and have enjoyed experiences of the winter blast at home and at school. On Monday we spent some time out in the snow, it was fun trying to catch it with our fingers and tongues. The snow stayed in our hair and coats when we came inside and we enjoyed watching it slowly melt in the warm classroom. When we weren't out in the snow, we spent time looking out the window watching the fluffy snow fall from the sky. We could even see the snow sitting on our skylights! In the spirit of snow and all things winter we read a snow poem which we took home to share with our whanau for reading. We also made snowmen. They are unbelievably awesome! Aren't we talented? - See below

On Tuesday we wrote fabulous stories of our experiences in the snow. We used our 5 senses for inspiration. Have a look in our books at school to see our interesting stories about the snow.

Here we are enjoying the snow outside.

Keep Warm!!!

Maths Week!

This week is maths week. Throughout the week we will be completing different maths challenges and we will even compete in a maths treasure hunt on Wednesday! On Friday we are having an open morning from 9am-10am for parents and caregivers to come in and see what we do in class for maths. Come along and have some fun!

There is an official Maths Week website which we will be using during the week. Each child in AM class has their own username and password that they will take home so you can log on at home and play fun maths games. Check your child's book bag for their username and password.

The maths week website is: http://www.mathsweek.org.nz/

Happy Maths Week everybody!

Welcome Back to Term 3!

Welcome back! It is lovely to see everyone again and we have all enjoyed catching up with each other. We have already had a great start to the term! On Monday we had a Powhiri to welcome our new principal Mrs Jennings. It was really cool and we are excited about having a new principal.

On Tuesday we were very busy. We started our day with Jump Jam in the sunshine, it was so fun! Then we learnt about 1/2's in maths. We did lots of awesome activities where we had to find half of different objects. We can now find 1/2 of lots of different shapes. We even learnt how to share out water equally into 2 parts. Ask us to show you at home! Check out the pictures below...

This week we are also learning about "th" words. "Th" can be tricky because sometimes it can make different sounds. For example; Thomas starts with "Th" but we can't hear the h because it is silent. It is also hard to hear the difference between words starting with "th" and "f". We learnt a trick for "th" words - when our tongue goes between our teeth we know we are making a "th" sound and not a "f" sound.

On Tuesday we did some thumb painting. Have a look at our awesome pictures...

Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

Kia ora! Welcome to Māori language week! This year the theme is "Manaakitanga" which is the reciprocal nature of hospitality, caring and nurturing. Manaakitanga is about how we make people feel welcome when they are in our company, and how we care for others when hosting visitors.


This week we are learning heaps of new words (kupu) to use at school (kura) and at home. We are also learning how to greet and farewell each other and describe how we are feeling. We will be singing lots of fun waiata and reading cool Māori stories too!


Here is some new kupu we learnt today....Give them a go at home! 


kutikuti - scissors
pene rākau - pencil
tēpu - table
pepa - paper
matapihi - window
karaka - clock
tūru - chair 

Photos from our science adventures

Tasting the vinegar and baking soda - our materials...

Smelling our materials 

Feeling our materials 

Our first experiment - pouring the vinegar

Measuring the volcano's height

Recording the height of our volcano

Our class science adventures...

This term we are focusing on science! Our class topic is making volcanoes. We are learning to observe, describe and compare materials. We are also observing changes that occur when materials are heated, cooled or mixed.

Our materials are vinegar and baking soda. When we mix them together we get a fizzing, bubbling eruption (our volcano). We are going to change the vinegar and baking soda mixture to see how it affects our volcano height. First we are going to do a base line experiment with our 'regular' mixture which is 1/4 cup vinegar and 1 tablespoon of baking soda. Then we are going to double the vinegar, halve the vinegar, heat the vinegar and cool the vinegar.

Check out our results in class!

Ka Kite Kavindi!

Today is a very sad day for us as we say goodbye to Kavindi! 

We will miss you lots and lots Kavindi. 

You are such a kind, friendly, bubbly girl and you will be very much missed in our class because you are such a good friend to us all! 

We wish you all the best at your new school in Brisbane! 

What's going on in SCIENCE?

We have been learning about solids, liquids and gasses.
Did you know that everything in the world is either a solid, liquid or gas - even us!
Today we looked at supermarket items and talked about whether they are a solid, liquid or gas. We are getting better at identifying what is which, but it's fun to practise! See what solids, liquids, and gasses you can find at home! 


The video below is a song about solid, liquids and gases. Check it out!

What's new in our blog?

I have just added a new gadget to our blog called 'Cool Links'. You can find it down the right hand side of our blog right under our class picture. Click on a link to go to a particular game or video. I have added the Mummy Addition Game and the Skip Counting Rap Song so you can practise your maths at home! You will also see a link for online reading books - you can choose to read and listen to a fiction or non-fiction book.
Keep checking in to see what new links are added!

Miss Martin :)

What's happening in reading? 20/05/2011

In reading, quite a few people have moved around the reading garden - congratulations to them - I'm so proud of you and all your progress! 

This week we have been doing some fun reading activities around our books. The Willy Wonkas and Wild Things read a book all about birds. They read about roosters, peacocks and endangered birds. On Thursday they were very clever and made hens all by themselves by following the instructions in the book! On Friday, the Willy Wonkas and Wild Things also performed a play called Eggs, Eggs, Eggs to the rest of the class. They were all a different character and were very good at changing their voices!

Have a look at the picture below of the rocking hens they made. 

On Monday, the Rainbow Fish read a book called 'Sam's Painting.' In the story Sam paints her house and her dog, Bingo. On Tuesday the Rainbow Fish got to paint their own pictures of their houses and pets - they looked absolutely beautiful. Have a look below at their amazing work.