More science, with Niko and Nic

Our science today took on a nature element where we met 2 special guests. 

Niko's mum, Nic brought in ...... Two Leopard Geckos! They are called Rango and Django and they belong to Niko's older brother, Luka. 

Niko was fantastic at answering all of our very interesting questions. 

We asked what they liked to eat; where they came from; what their tongues and tails were like, and where they pooped from! 

He wasn't hurting Niko, he was climbing up for a cuddle!

We had so many questions thanks to our fascinating subjects. 

We all got to have a wee pat of the lizards. We were so careful of them. What did they feel like?

What did you think of them?

Tell your whanau what else you learned about Leopard Gecko's today.

That's a nice hat you have there, Niko!

Luka's also has a reptile club starting up at school, so if you would like to learn more about lizards, then you can visit Room 23 on a Tuesday and Thursday after lunch eating. It's called the Herpetological Society. (I had to google that to make sure I had it correct!)

At the end of the day we enjoyed learning a game called Tapuwae netball with Mr Noakes and Room 19. It was pretty fun. 

Our resident scientist, Nicole

Nicole brought in her science experiment last week. Her equipment was a bottle of Diet Coke (which worked better than normal Coke she said), and a packet of Mentos. Can you remember what she did and what happened? Tell your whanau. It was pretty cool.

As we are writing our own autobiographies at the moment, Miss Eyre showed us a real published one that she is reading by Amy Poehler. We liked how she had real pictures and report cards in their from her own childhood. 

Lily and her reading group read a book called Pencils and Pens this week, and we discovered how people used to write in the olden days. We learned about slates and slate boards. Lily surprised us the next day by bringing in a slate board to show us. What a natural teacher you are, Lily!

Paying It Forward - Dr Seuss Style!

We have decided that our Pay It Forward Challenge this year will be to make some Dr Seuss inspired books for the Kindergartens around our areas. We know that Dr Seuss first started writing kids books to help children to read, so we thought we could do that, too!

Yesterday we visited the kindy next door, Sturges Rd Kindergarten, and we collaborated with the students there. 

We asked them what books they like to read and what types of characters are in those stories. 

We discovered some interesting characters, and used our Green Hat (creativity) to come up with combinations of some animals eg. A Duckosaurus!

Our new little friends liked helping us, and we liked gathering information from them. 

Today we collaborated further in our groups. With the information gathered yesterday we are now creating our new characters and thinking about the plot for our narrative.

It is pretty fun making up new Dr Seuss words, which can be any crazy, dazy, mazy old words!

We used our devices as art tools today as some of us might design our characters on them. We also took a few photos to remind ourselves so that we can keep on thinking on the weekend about our book project. 

What amazing teamwork. 

We have also learned new vocabulary this week.

Tell your whanau what these words mean:

vocabulary

synonym (not to be confused with cinnamon!)

definition

compromise

collaborate

Our final skateboarding stunt

This time Isaac was our stunt man. We have had so much fun learning how to skateboard. There will be a skateboarding holiday programme at Western Heights these coming holidays, which I am sure lots of Room 12 will be wanting to be a part of, if you are looking for something to do.

More fun learning

We are studying Tiny Houses, which are small houses of the future which maximise space and have cool space saving furniture. Check out the links on the side of the blog to learn more about them. Here are are using our Green Hat Thinking (creativity) to design and create different houses and ideas. 

Yes, that's a spa pool on the top! That's the kind of design that I like> 

Here is one of our favourite maths games. We haven't quite decided on a name for it yet (maybe 'Guess the Three Digit Number'). Tell your family what happens in the game and how you win. 

We even play it by ourselves for fun. 

Whaea Trish comes in every Thursday to teach us Te Reo Maori. We are getting pretty good! Whaea said that today she mainly spoke to us in Maori and we all understood most of it! 

The Daily 5 - Our Literacy Programme

Here we are doing the Daily 5. Look at the pictures and tell your whanau what is happening in each photo. 

We learn our spelling words here during Word Work.

What do you like best about Word Work?

This is Work on Writing. What are you writing about at the moment?

Julius is doing Read to Self, and Niko is happy doing Listening to Reading. 

We have these plumbing pipes called Phonics phones. What do they do?

We like to find wee nooks to read listen to books on our devices. 

Check out those great spelling words!

Can you read Niko's words upside down?

Dannel looks like he is engrossed in a great book. 

Miss Eyre also has a great library of her own that we all love to borrow from. This has been especially helpful while our building project is going on.