Thursday, August 30, 2012

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all our dads!

 
We drew some pictures for our dads to tell them what we love about them.




 
We love our dads!
x o x
 
 


 

Q is for 'quarter'

We studied letter 'q' this week and were lucky enough to see an American quarter.  We learnt that quarter means 25 cents.  We noticed that the quarter has the face of a man on it.  In New Zealand our coins have the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on them.


Trying a unicycle

We tried sitting and balancing on a unicycle for the first time yesterday!  It was such fun!  We had to support our friends so that they could balance on the seat.  It was much harder to balance on the unicycle than we expected.  Some of the unicycles were too big for us and we wobbled a lot.



It was much easier to balance ourselves against the railings of the fence.

 
 
It was a bit scary when we lost our balance
but when we got back on top we kept right on smiling!


Ordering numbers

We are learning how to put numbers into the right order.  It isn't as easy as it seems!


Funky clowns

We've been colouring, cutting out and assembling some funky clowns to decorate our classroom.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Zirka Circus performance at our school

We had a special treat this morning!  Four clever acrobats from the Zirka Circus came to our school and put on a short show for us.  It was amazing to see how flexible and agile they are.   They moved so gracefully together to create complicated shapes with their bodies.  We were surprised to learn that the youngest acrobat is only 13 years old!

 
 
This is what two children said about the performance we saw today -
 
"I saw four acrobats doing flips on each other.  They were so flexible!"
 
"Two girls made a bridge then two girls went on top.  It looked scary.
They fell down gently and made another shape."
 
 
 
WARNING
 Please don't try and copy what the acrobats are doing in our photos 
unless you have an expert with you to make sure you are safe.
(These acrobats performed today in front of their coach who was there to check on their safety
 
 
 
 
 
Zirka Circus is in Te Atatu at the moment!
Check out the website below for more information,
including how to book tickets to a performance. 
 
 

Action words in Te Reo Maori

We are beginning to learn some action words in Te Reo Maori. 
If you know the A-E-I-O-U song then you can sing along with us! 

Making graphs

Some children have been making graphs this week during Maths time.  One group of children had to cut out pictures of hats and sort them out according to colour.  They pasted the hats to make a graph. 

 
Here are some statements that we made about the information on the graph:
 
I can see one brown hat.
 
There are 7 yellow hats and that is the most.
 
The black hats have one less than the yellow hats.
 
The brown and white have the same number.
 

Big Tops

We have been making Big Tops this week.  Here are the first ones that were finished.
There are so colourful and inviting!

 
Now we are adding the circus performers like clowns, acrobats ...


and performing animals.
 

Friday, August 24, 2012

Saying Goodbye

We've only been a class for six weeks and today we had to say goodbye to one of our classmates who is moving to Australia. We will miss L and wish her family the best.  Oh, and thanks so  much for the Tiny Teddies you shared with us today!

School Assembly

We had a whole school assembly today.  Here are some of us sitting up like 'super listeners' ready for the procession of nations to begin! 

 
Some children walked into the hall wearing their national costume and carrying their national flag.  We heard the National Anthem for each country too.  There was a big cheer when the children representing New Zealand walked in!
 



Thursday, August 23, 2012

Clown puppets

Look at the cute clown puppets we made this week.

 
Now we will be clowning around with them!

Eggs

Today we found a big nest full of eggs! 
It was on the ground in some bushes so we think it belongs to a local duck. 
How many eggs can you see?

 
Ah ha!  We were right!  The nest DOES belong to a duck!
Look at her fluffing out her feathers to guard her eggs and keep them warm.

 
At lunchtime a pretty monarch butterfly
landed on a swan plant and laid lots of tiny eggs!
I wonder how many caterpillars will hatch out?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Making orange juice

This week we are studying letter 'j' so as a special treat our teacher brought some oranges.

Some lucky children got to juice them...

 
taste it...


 then try some pith!


How did the juice taste children?
juicy
nice
yum
delicious
scrumptious
sweet

At the Library

Some of our class visited the Library at school today. 
We found books and spent some time reading to ourselves. 


We have a little story-teller in our class.  She 'read' the story of Cinderella to her classmates.

Elephants are clever

Our teacher told us that she has seen an elephant paint a picture!  We were surprised and curious about that so she brought the painting in to show us.  The elephant held a paint brush in its trunk and painted long green stalks then it dipped the brush into red paint and painted bright red flowers.  What a clever elephant!


Here is a video of an elephant called Srisayam painting some flowers.

Clowning Around


Because we are learning about the circus this term we are also working on a circus act! Some of us are doing hula hooping, others are juggling and spinning plates. A few of the boys are learning how to walk on stilts. Here are some of the children from our class practicing their act.







Sorting objects

Some of us are really clever at sorting objects.  Here are two sorting games that we have been doing.  The first one is sorting objects by colour.


The second game is sorting objects by shape.