Arahoe Learning Hub: June 2014

Monday, June 30, 2014

White poppies

Oh, we forgot to show you a picture of the white poppies we made last Friday to represent our role as peace-makers in the world.

19 litter free lunch boxes

Well done to the 19 children who brought litter free lunches to school today.

Music with Mrs Sadgrove

We were learning about Matariki with Mrs Sadgrove.

We sang a special song about the names of the Matariki stars.

Weaving

We did some more weaving practice this afternoon. It's still very tricky for most of us.

Notice

Today a notice us being sent home asking if all the children in Room 19 could bring a potato to school for our hangi on Friday.

Making stars

We coloured stars for our Matariki teams. On Friday each child in the school will be in a team matching one of the colours of the Matatiki stars. Here are our headbands ready to wear.

Interesting Reading

The Crocodile Reading group read a story about rain, seeds and worms! It reminded them about the poppy seeds we planted a few weeks ago.

The Giraffe Reafing group read a story about counting. The animals in the story were trying to find ways to count faster. Some of the Giraffe group learnt that counting in twos is another way to count!

At the Library

We can't borrow library books today because of the holidays next week so we are spending time reading lots of stories.

Our first story was one that Kate chose. It was a story about what happened after the war. This is interesting because we are making some art to commemorate World War 1.

Our second story was a Matariki story. We are currently celebrating Maori New Year so this is a perfect story to listen to today.

Lastly we browsed the library shelves and read some stories quietly by ourselves.

Friday, June 27, 2014

Special delivery

We hope you found our school reports in our bags today. Some of us also brought home our class photo.

Litter-less Leaders

We are still getting children in our class making the choice to be litter free! Today we celebrated having 21 litter-less lunch boxes in Room 19. We also heard that our choices are starting to be noticed by our neighbours. Room 20 children and their teachers are also deciding that litter-less lunch boxes are a good thing. We think that soon more classes will follow our lead and become litter-less too.

Bouquet of Flowers

Do you like my bouquet of flowers? I made them with the materials from the project boxes today.

Worm hole optical art

During Visual Art we tried to show shading using pointillism. We are still unclear what shading means so we will need to be exposed to more shading activities in the future.

The type of art we are making is called worm-hole optical art. If we shade correctly, the picture takes shape and begins to resemble worms or tunnels.

Here are some of our best pieces of art.

Certificate Recipient

Congratulations Joe! You have been a keen learner and a prolific contributor of ideas to make our class a better place.

Ved's worm farm

Ved was thrilled to make a mini worm farm today from a plastic cup, a tin can and added another container on top as a lid. Ved explained to the class how it was made and answered some questions from his classmates.

Counting

Yesterday, Sydney's mum sent us a photo of her counting to 100. We decided to count to a hundred too.

We also played the game 'After Whale' and 'After Snake'. We were good at finding the numbers that come after each given number.

Assembly

Here we are learning a new song at our Ara Teina assembly this morning.

The song we are learning is called 'Earth, We're in it Together' which is about looking after our planet.

We also did Jump Jam today. We love moving to the beat.

Sight Words champions

We have lots of Sight Words champions this week. Well done to the a children who learn all their words! Some children earned their first treat today!

Best illustrators

Here are the children who are the best poem illustrators this week.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Sharing the litter-less lunchbox message

Today we had 20 litter-free lunch boxes in Room 19. The children are really starting to understand why it is beneficial for our environment if we do not use plastic packaging in our lunch boxes.

At lunch time several students went around asked teachers from other Ara Teina classes if they had litter free lunch boxes! We can report back that several of those teachers were really challenged today and promised that they would do better at being Earth-friendly tomorrow! Well done Room 19 children! You are doing something to change your world. We are very proud of your determination to take care if your environment.

Wormy apples

Earlier in the week we turned some egg cartons into 'apples' and some pipe cleaners into 'worms'. Today our teacher hot glued the pieces together to make wormy apples! We will take these home tomorrow.

Crunch TV Video

Take a look at the latest CRUNCH TV episode by clicking here.

You can see Sammi on this video and there is special mention of Kingston also!

Weaving fun

Kaylah's mum and her Auntie Amie visited us again today. Amie told us that Maori are very clever and are able to weave lots of things from flax like clothes, shoes, mats, bowls and even used flax for roofs!

We were shown how to plaite a headband. It was a bit tricky but many of us are persistent and kept on trying to figure it out.

When everyone's headband is finished we will be ready to wear it for our Matariki celebration next week.

Little Bear's Little Boat

Little Bear's Little Boat is an interesting story about a bear who outgrew his little boat. We realised that the bear grew because he is alive but his boat didn't grow because it isn't. Alex said we are alive because we can grow too otherwise we would still be babies!