Our Camp!

Last week we were extremely lucky to enjoy a 2 day camp. We had an absolutely wonderful time and learnt loads of new knowledge about our native trees and birds, as well as some other native animals and creatures. Thanks Miss Fleet for the organisation of a fun filled, knowledge fueled camp!

On Thursday, we visited Pukaha Mt Bruce where we had a fantastic guide. She was super knowledgeable and had plenty to share with us. We were very, very lucky to see Manukura (little white kiwi) and Turua (North Island Brown Kiwi) in the nocturnal kiwi house. They were both so active and we even witnessed Manukura dancing and jumping around. It was really funny and we tried so hard to keep quiet. Another highlight was seeing Miss Fleet, and Mr Monk feed the gigantic eels. We thought it was really funny, as Miss Fleet was scared of them -we don't really blame her, they were huge and had extremely sharp teeth. We would like to thank all the parent helpers and Mrs Simpson who provided us with transport for us.

On Friday, we visited Kitchener Park, where Mr Scott guided us around and had a mound of knowledge to share with us about native bush and trees. We learnt about many new species of native tree as well as some of the issues they face with introduced species, and predators.
We then were very lucky to be able to go to the park and the pools, have pizza for lunch and have a fun, relaxing afternoon.

WALT measure perimeter

At the moment we are learning all about measurement. Yesterday we learnt about what perimeter is and how we measure it. Today we are having loads of fun calculating perimeters of places around the school.
We are measuring the perimeter of:

• The netball court
• Soccer field
• Classroom
• Construction play ground
• Our purple group learning table
• Our individual blue desks
• A whiteboard duster

New Zealand Native Tree Research

We are learning all about New Zealand native plants and animals. We recently completed some identifying and and research of native trees. Here are some of our findings.

Pet day antics!

The weather was kind enough for us to get out there and show our pets off this morning. It was really nice to be able to share our furry/feathered/fluffy friends with others and share all our wonderful knowledge about looking after these beautiful creatures. Unfortunately the weather cut things a little bit short but we thoroughly enjoyed our pet day morning anyway!

Groovy!

Friday night disco was heaps of fun! We really enjoyed grooving and dancing to awesome music, and having an awesome time with our friends. Thanks to the student council and Miss Simpson for bringing this evening together! Check out the evidence!

Cross Country Fun!

What an afternoon Friday was. The weather held out for us and everyone did an amazing job running their best in the cross country. Well done to everyone on a top effort and a special congratulations to those top placed students.
Here is some awesome footage!

Get your dancing shoes ready!

Term 3 buddy class wrap up!

To end the term we met with our awesome buddy class, room 7. We celebrated some of our brilliant writing we had done in class by reading them to our little buddies. Room 7 kids really enjoyed our narratives.
We then went out and had a fun game of capture the flag! Thanks room 7 for another term of great buddy friendships.

More Wheeling Magic

Wheels day fun!

We had such an awesome day on wheels day. We enjoyed hooning around on our scooters, scateboards, drift trikes and wheelie shoes and it was so cool to even see the teachers get involved. Thanks to room 6 and the student council for organising such a funtastic day!

The spiders and sausage sizzles were yummy for lunch, too!

Spring has come!

With the arrival of this beautiful spring, we decided it would be nice to make some nice spring flowers. Over the last week we have been painting away with lots of different tools to paint all our flower petals. We finally finished painting and we cut out and assembled our petals in the shape of a flower. They are colourful, bright and bring our classroom to light. Don't they look wonderful!

Look whats coming!!!

Condensation, steam, melting and boiling

As part of our science learning this term (What’s The Matter?), we did an experiment to explore water in its different states -solid, liquid and gas.

We boiled the jug and saw the condensation because it was cold on the outside and warm on the outside. We took the lid off and saw the steam as rise as it was set free into the air. When we put some ice in at 100 degrees (boiling temperature) it melted in less than 30 seconds into a liquid! It was interesting observing and discussing these processes. Watch this space for more of our science learning! 

Amazing Art!

In room 4 we created some awesome section art. We each had to tape off different sizes and sections. Next we chose at least two different textures (crayons, pastel, dye, paint and collage.) We did all sorts of different patterns, words and shapes. Once all this had dried Miss Fleet carefully took the tape off which was really difficult. These are our finished products that we proudly showed in assembly. Don’t they look amazing?!

Behaving like Particles

Last week we learnt about particles in the forms of solid liquid and gas. We know now that particles are made out of one hydrogen atom and two oxygen atoms.  In a solid, the tiny molecules are packed tight together and vibrate when they move. In a liquid they are loosely packed and slide past each other. In gas form they are very loose and random and they bump into each other when they move. In these pictures when we are linking arms, we are a solid, when we are touching each other’s shoulders we are a liquid and when we are free we’re gas. Behaving like particles was so much fun!

Turner's Sports Tournament

We are very very proud of those children who attended the Turner's Sports Tournament at North Street School today. The boys came away with the first place trophy after convincingly winning all three of their games. Well Done boys! And the girls did very well in coming runners up in the netball competition after winning 2 of their 3 games. Awesome work and wonderful sportsmanship by all players today! Great work everyone!

 

Colyton Sports Exchange

Well done to Room 4's Hugo, Mitchell and Alex who took part in the Colyton Sports Exchange on Tuesday. Everyone played really well, displayed some wonderful skills and showed awesome sportsmanship. We are very proud of you all for your efforts on Tuesday. Ka Pai everyone!

Statistic learning

Room 4 maths class has been learning all about tally charts, bar graphs and pictograms. Here is a wonderful example of how far we have come. We can even draw our own bar graphs accurately without a template. Ka pai room 4!

             

Kakariki literacy circle

In kakariki literacy group we have just started reading a story called 'Because of Winn Dixie'

We are going to be trying out a new type of reading (literacy circle by Sheena Cameron) to really engage, explore and understand the books we read.

Today we had to bring a picture of our own dog and some personal memories of our dog to share with the group. This was a way of us showing our personal connections to the story. It was really nice to talk to each others about our dogs and our wonderful and some funny memories of them. 

Olympic sport drama

As part of our learning about the olympics, we had some fun each taking turns at acting out the different sports. There were a lot of laughs and some very awesome acting!!

Failure is your success!!

We have been learning about being determined and how a part of being determined to succeed sometimes means failure. We have looked at how we can let this influence us but also what we can do when we do fail. De Bono's Thinking hats helped us to explore the positives (yellow hat), negatives (black hat) and our feelings (red hat) around the idea of failure. Here's what we thought! 

Yesterday's flying action!

Thanks for making the video for us all Miss Simpson!

A surprise from the air!

Today, a New Zealand Air Force NH90 helicopter came to visit Halcombe School. The 7-11 tonne air craft landed on our school field. What a surprise this was! We were lucky enough to be allowed to explore the inside of the helicopter. Many questions were asked and we learnt many interesting and mind blowing facts about the ‘Warrior’ and the air force. We learnt that the beautiful piece of machinery sitting on our field is worth 60 million dollars.

Some of the awesome things we learnt were:

·        It carries 3 tonne of fuel

·        It weighs 7 tonne empty and has a max weight of 11 tonne

·        The propellers spin 5 and a ½  times per second

·        Can carry up to 18-20 people

·        New Zealand owns 8 of these particular helicopters

·        They can have guns attached if necessary

·        It is nearly 20 m long

·        The max flight speed is between 300 and 320km/h

We had a great time and learnt so much. It was a one of a kind experience. Thank you to the New Zealand Air force and the parents involved for organising such an amazing visit. We are all feeling inspired!

Motivational video responses

Today, in room 4, we watched this motivational video about believing and being determined.




After watching, we made notes and discussed what the key messages were that we gained from this video. Here are our thoughts.

Didn't we do well?! Great listening and thinking Room 4!

Gymnastics is under way!

We had a great first couple of sessions in gymnastics this week. We set goals and discussed what we wanted to improve on, and we are now into practicing, learning and perfecting our gymnastic techniques.

Here are some of our starting out pictures. There will be more to follow as the weeks go on and our skills improve! Keep an eye out!

AAA Collaborative Art!

To kick off term 3 we thought it would be a great idea to remind ourselves and refresh our school values -Attitude, Achievement, and Adventure. We have started our pieces and have worked amazingly well altogether. We used crayon to create patterns, colour, and relevant words to do with our value. This is our progress so far. Watch this space for our completed collaborative pieces.