Daffodil Day

Today was Daffodil Day at school and we raised $23 in our class by donating a gold coin. What lovely generosity! 

Here we are being daffodils in the garden. I don't think Miss Eyre's in this photo but that is one great big daffodil!! 

While counting the money, we learned that .50c plus .50c equals $1.00. And that the $2.00 coin is the same as 2 $1.00 coins. 

We also learned about thirds today in fractions, but we'll blog about that another day!! 

Have a fantastic weekend! 

Our chinese numbers song

http://safeshare.tv/w/DXMxBIhQPg

Click on the link above to listen and sing along with our chinese numbers song.

Ancient China

Today we had a sensory experience while learning about Ancient China. We are learning about Ancient China because they transformed the world we live in today. We watched a Brainpop Jr short movie on how China has changed the world. Tell your whanau about some of the things that we invented in China.

We drank some peach flavoured tea and watched it brew. We weren't too keen on that! Engari (but) we loved learning how to use chopsticks and we practised using them to eat noodles, which the Chinese also invented. 

We read and looked through a few books on China so that we could see what China was like in the old days. We had lots of questions from looking at the books. 

We also had a try at calligraphy, and we wrote out all the numbers in Chinese from ling (0) to shi (10).

We learned how to play marbles, a game which orignated in China. Then we practised some juggling as the Chinese are also really good at acrobatics! That was fun!

Even Miss Eyre liked using the chopsticks. 

Saqqara had lots of questions after looking in the books. 

Oscar's mum brought in some Chinese things from her house for us to look at. Oscar was our laoshi (teacher) and he explained them to us. 

We also watched a video to help us learn our numbers in chinese. And we listened to a lot of traditional chinese instruments while we were learning and experimenting. What a fun morning!

Our special visitor, Rango

Nic's son Luka loves lizard and brought in his pet Rango for us to meet.  

Luka did a fantastic job of telling us all about Rango, 

where she comes from and how he looks after her. 

He even brought in her food to show us what she eats. 

We all got to pat Rango. Tell your family what she felt like. 

Thanks Luka and Nic for sharing your interesting lives with us!! 

Stadium Building

Today Room 6 took a look at our courts and field to work out a stadium design.  Our  goal was to work as a team to build a stadium on the edge our school sports fields.

We studied photos from the Commonwealth Games and identified with arrows what stadia had in them. Next we got into groups and into Minecraft to start building.  

Take a look at what we like best about our efforts so far.

Aotearoa song - We love being Kiwis!

Here is a song by Stan Walker that we like in our class. It is in Te Reo Maori and makes us feel proud to be a part of our beautiful country.

http://safeshare.tv/w/qFyCLckJzB

We hope you like it to. 

Ruma Ono

Halves and quarters

Today we learned more about fractions. We had 16 people in class and we split ourselves into halves, and then quarters. Miss Eyre was impressed that we showed teamwork and great discussion to figure it out. 

Then we drew a porohita (circle) in our maths books and put unifix cubes into halves and quarters too. 

Miss Eyre started gave us small numbers but we needed way more of a challenge and we took it upon ourselves to see just how big we could go! 

We worked together to help each other to learn. 

Kyle even split 300 into halves! 

Being scientists

Our poem this week has been about the water cycle.  Ask me to sing it to you. There are lots of big words in it that I should know what they mean! They are the words evaporation, condensation and precipitation. I will know what actions go with them. 

We were scientists and did our own experiment to see the water cycle in action. Tell your whanau what equipment we needed next tell them how we did the experiment and what we saw happen. 

Can you see the precipitation about to drop?

We love learning about the earth and how water transforms and changes. 

A day of encouragement

Last week we read a story about encouraging others to be who they are. This lead to further conversations about encouraging our friends and family more often. As we kept on talking about it, we decided as a class that we wanted to pay it forward by giving encouragement to those around us. 

So after weekend news writing today we had a brainstorm about some of the things we could say to fill the buckets of people around us. Then we picked the ones we wanted to write down. 

At morning tea and lunchtime we gave out our encouragement. It made lots of people smile, and as Diya said, lots of people said "Ohhhhhh".  

We are such a lovely class. 

Our day at MOTAT

Today we had a trip to MOTAT to learn about transformation and changes from 100 years ago.

Tell you family what you saw today. What was your favourite thing to see or do? What were 3 interesting things you learned? What surprised you? Did you do something for the first time today?

I would also like to thank all the parents who came today - all 12 of them! When Nic and I were added to the mix, that was 14 adults to 19 children; that made my life very easy today. All parents engaged in meaningful conversations with their children and other students in my class, and I could hear them using their white hat thinking when talking about the facts, and the 'good old days'. It was a bit unnerving seeing some toys that we used to play with in a museum, but we all had a good laugh about that, too.

So here is a great big

Thank You! for all of your help and support today. 

We did have to wait for our bus for a wee while.

We learned about Sir Edmund Hillary being the first man to climb the tallest mountain in the world. That is why he is on our $5 note. 

Look at all this old transport.

We had fun in the old school house. Miss Eyre told us not to have fun, because school sounded like it wasn't fun at all in the old days, especially when compared to how awesome Room 6 is! :)

Miss Eyre didn't think teaching sounded like that much fun either. That was confirmed by the rule about not being able to hang out by the ice-cream shop!

In the village we found lots of old shops and products they used to sell. Some were the same, but lots were different. We wondered what 'nut meat' was....

The mirror maze was exciting, and confusing!

How many Faiths' can you see?

Simone and Suzanne pointed out their first bikes. 

The tram was late too, but we were very patient waiting for it. 

Use your muscles, Heavenly!

Who's that funny looking teacher?

She sure loves taking photos of herself!

When we went in the Discovery Room we learned a lot about the old days. 

Tell your family what you played with in this room.

Mackenzie had to use the chamber pot. 

Looking pretty swish!

Looking like Mr Maindonald in their cheesecutter hats!

What did you discover on this table?

The double decker bus was fun on the way home. 

Phew, what a big day!