Room 3 2017

Everyone went to the park near Day's Bay for our end of year class picnic. This was a great chance for all the children and their families to relax together. The children loved running around the huge space and especially enjoyed the lolly scramble! Special thanks to Katherine and Hayley for organising this for us. Have a peek at us all having a fantastic time!

Over the past two weeks the children have enjoyed taking part in a range of activities outside of the classroom. They were fantastic at the Athletics Sports and so proud to show everyone their new skills. The students also had a lot of fun when the coaches from Kelly Sports came and taught them a variety of games using a wide range of equipment. On Tuesday, they went by bus to the NewDowse to see the 'Tickle my senses' exhibition and take part in the followup workshop. Before this, they enjoyed playing in a new playground and visiting the aviaries. Later in the morning they visited the children's library. They met the librarian who explained what was available for them to borrow from the library and then she read them an exciting story. Following this they went down to the returns area and put a book through the slot. They then went behind the scenes and scanned the returned books.

Over the past few weeks, we have been listening to a wide range of stories that feature strong character descriptions. This week we used plasticene to create colourful 3 D creations of the different characters and props chosen from these stories. We then retold each of the stories to our class using the characters and props that we had created.

What a fantastic day we had on Friday as we celebrated the achievement of the Green Gold Enviroschool Award. We started the day by watching the hangi being prepared and then we joined in with the powhiri. After that we listened to speeches including those by our Year 7 and 8 leaders and then our Kapahaka group performed on stage. All this was then followed by the presentation of the flag, certificate and special tree, which was planted in our playground. We watched the hangi being lifted and then we all ate the yummy food together. The fire engine and fire fighters came and that night we had a special disco.

Room 3 have been learning how to use similes in their stories to make them more interesting for other people to read. These are the stories they wrote about their mum or dad. We hope you enjoy reading them. My Mum is like a restaurant cook and she smells like a rose. She bakes cupcakes. She is as beautiful as a thousand flowers and I love her. by Sabine My dad is really fast. He is as fast as a dog called Bolt and he is really nice. By Oscar My mum is an angel. She is like a soft feather. She is so, so nice. She really likes me. By Amy My dad is like a great wrestler. My dad is the best in the world. My dad is like a star. By Luca My mum is good at tennis. She looks like a rainbow and a rainbow rose. She is beautiful. She is as yellow as the sun. By Yasmin My mum is as cool as Starwars. My mum likes Starwars. My mum took me to Paraparaumu. My mum let me sit next to her. My mum cooks nice stuff for me. My mum gave me two ten cents because my mum is nice. by Daniel My dad is like a hand...

This week Room 3 were the hosts of the Junior School assembly. Theo and Georgina were wonderful presenters. During the assembly six of us read out our fantastic recounts about Jack and Jill to everyone. We have finished our calendar art and it is on display in our classroom. Some of us made butterflies using crayon and dye while others made sea creatures using pastels.

We are loving Kapahaka. This week we learnt some new waiata and also how to use poi and ti rakau. We were shown what to do and then we practiced in our classroom.

Wow! What a fabulous first week back we have had. Everyone has had a lovely holiday and have now returned to school eager to do lots more fantastic learning. On Monday we sang 'Happy Birthday' and ate delicious chocolate cake with cream on top because Theo and Chevron have now turned six. On Tuesday Sam had his first turn at horse riding and loved it. He was very clever to do all of the obstacle course especially on such a big horse! On Wednesday we did Kapahaka with Mr Chadwick in the hall. He taught us some new waiata and we loved doing the actions that went with them. Tino Pai Rawa Ruma Toru! On Thursday we began our new Inquiry. This term we are learning about our body and we are going into different classes each week to find out about the different parts of our body. On Friday we are going to start some new activities in Enrichment.

Chevron is very good at Kapahaka so he did Kapahaka sessions with the students in years 3 and 4. We were very impressed when he showed us the haka he had learnt. We are all looking forward to doing more Kapahaka each Wednesday next term. Amy got a new kitten and bought it to school to show us. We all took turns to pat it and it's fur was so soft. We asked her lots of questions about her special pet and then as a class we discussed how to care for animals. We also thought of lots of 'wow' words to describe her kitten. Oscar has just started to learn the violin. He told us what he had to do to care for the instrument. As a class, we discussed what is involved in being a performer and also what being a member of an audience involves. Oscar then demonstrated how the violin is played by both plucking the strings and using the bow. We really loved his performance and look forward to watching him perform again for us soon.

We love Letterland! We have worked really hard with our learning so we had a Letterland Party! Can you guess which favourite Letterland character we are dressed as?

In Physical Education lessons we have been learning a whole lot of fun gymnastic skills and using the equipment in a variety of ways. In fitness we have been learning a lot of fun skills using a skipping rope. We had an amazing 'Jump Off' to show everyone how clever we have got.

We had an Art Extravaganza. Before this we read lots of books including 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak and 'The Magic Hat' by Mem Fox. We then created some fantastic art works using mixed media of our favourite Wild Thing and our own Magic hat.

Room 3 are all fantastic readers. Ethan, Cameron, Hugo, Daniel, Shannyn, Yasmin, Sabine and Oscar have all achieved the twenty nine levels of the Reading Rocket. Each week a lovely kind grandma comes into our classroom and reads special books aloud to us. We also do a whole range of fun literacy activities during our rotation time. Have a look at some of the fun learning activities we do.

As part of our Inquiry we have been going into other classes around our Junior School to learn about some Myths and Legends from Japan, Australia, France, Holland, China and New Zealand. We have students in our Junior School who have English as their second language and have joined us from these other countries.

We are very busy with our learning already in Room 3. We have started our Inquiry and each week we go to another classroom in our Junior School to learn about different Myths and Legends from a range of countries. We are also learning how to skip with a rope so that we can do the 'Jump off' at the end of the term and show all our friends and families how clever we are. Room 4 joined us on Friday in the hall for our first session of gymnastics. We especially loved having fun with the feathers.

This week we did some drama and dance with Mrs Hooke. We had to make ourselves into different shapes when she said 'change.' We also took turns to make comments to each other about the various movements that we had created. Look in the photos to see some of the movements we did.

Last week we had the World of Mathematics presentation visit our school. Room 3 took part in the hands on fun problem solving activities with our friends from rooms 1 and 4. We worked together in small groups to solve the different problems and then recorded our answers in our own booklets.