Friday, October 31, 2014

Spring Fair tomorrow

Are you ready for the Spring Fair? We would love to see you at school tomorrow from 11am until 3 pm. There are many stalls and interactive activities suited to all age groups. Look out for Room 17's stall with candy floss, popcorn and carnival activities! Eftpos will be available!


Ooohh! Aaaaaahh!

Sammi found a spider and a ghost in her lunchbox today! I wonder why?


Christmas Choir

Lily has joined the Christmas Choir and was at the lunch time practice today. The song that made the children smile the most was 'I'm gettin' nuttin' for Christmas.'


Someone's birthday

Some of us heard the teachers singing 'Happy Birthday' in the staff room during morning tea this morning.  We were curious about who was having a birthday. Turns out that it was Mr Limbrick's birthday yesterday! 

We made him a card. Most of us drew pictures of boats because we know that one of Mr Limbrick's great passions is sailing. 

Mr Limbrick loved his card and thanks us all very much for thinking of him. 


Sight Words champions

We know all our Sight Words!


Jump Jam fun

At Jump Jam today we danced to 'Who let the dogs out!' 


Thursday, October 30, 2014

Helpers still needed

We still need a few more helpers for our stall at the Spring Fair this coming Saturday. Can you fill in any of the gaps in our roster? If so, please see either teacher, or Alana. 


Doctor to the rescue

While in the playground a Room 18 boy's Lego robot broke. He called 111 on his imaginary phone, and look who came to the rescue with his medical kit! Dr Arnav! The doctor fixed the robot in no time at all!


Puppet theatre making

This afternoon some mums and one nana came in to help some children make their puppet theatres. It was fun to see them taking shape! 

Other children got to paint the external part of their puppet theatres today. They found out how to paint quicker by holding the brush like a pencil. 



Miss Bland showed us how to make a puppet using a Popsicle stick and patterned tape. We are going to be making a family of puppets in the next week. 


Studious workers

Our teachers had to do a lot of testing during the first block, so we were kept busy with a 'word search.' 


Most of us did really well and found the words starting with /fl/. Can you see how Joe colour coded his work?  That's clever isn't it?


Joe also did something else that made the teachers smile today. When he coloured in the pictures that start with /fl/, he coloured the flag to look like an Irish one! We can tell that Joe is proud of his Irish roots. 



Haka at Kapa haka practice

The Kapa haka children are learning the new school haka at the moment. This is exciting for Miss Bland because the ideas in the haka came from some of the children she taught last year. She's really pleased that some of the Room 17 children are involved in learning it!




Out the door

There was quite a bit of activity just outside the classroom today with Mr Bevan and Mr Limbrick both hammering away. 


We are looking forward to seeing what our new play area will look like!

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Speech bubbles

These children were learning what speech bubbles are during Reading time today. 


/fl/ words

We thought about words that have the /fl/ blend in them. Here is our brainstorm. 



Making sentences

After Writing time was done, some children made sentences using magnetic words. They had fun finishing off the sentences!


Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Crying "Wolf!"

We heard a story today about an old lady who cried "Wolf!" 


Computer agreement

Because we have some computers in our classroom we need to learn how to use them safely. We signed our computer use agreement and then Miss Bland showed us how to log on. We have to learn many new skills such as how to use the computer mouse. 




Saturday, October 25, 2014

Place Value

This week, in Math, we learnt that 10 ones make 1 ten. Some of us are able to form 'teen' numbers with the 1 ten rod and ones cubes. 





Congratulations!

Drum rolls for...
our Illustrator of the Week! She made a detailed drawing of each member of her family and she even labelled her picture. Well done!

Drum rolls for...
the Certificate Winner. He is an amazing thinker! He was able to apply his knowledge of needs and wants to the story of 'Town Mouse and Country Mouse'. He would rather be Country Mouse because safety was more important than having delicious food. Well done, you have displayed deeper levels of thinking!


Friday, October 24, 2014

The tinikling dance

A traditional Filipino dance that mimics a bird is called tinikling. Today Del came and showed us how to move our feet between two bamboo sticks. We have to move fast or the bamboo sticks will clap together on our feet!  



Kinds of puppets

There are many kinds of puppets. We watched some videos about different types of puppets. 

We saw some rod and string puppets, shadow puppets, sock puppets, and puppets from India. The puppets that were interesting were hand shadow puppets. 

We watched a video that showed how you use your hands and shadows to make interesting creatures. We tried to copy the lady's instructions to make a swan and a rabbit. 






Litter-free lunches

We have done so well to have an average of 20 litter-free lunches so far in the competition!  We heard that another class is not far behind us, so we want to try harder next week to have more children bring litter-less lunches. Mums, please don't wrap our food in plastic, or add packets to our lunch-boxes. Those things don't help us win the competition. 

Here is a graph showing the number of litter-free lunches we've brought to school this week. Each lunch-box picture represents two lunches. 


Sight Words champions

These children knew all their Sight a Words today! Horray!


Assembly

Today at Assembly Miss P was dressed in a beautiful sari. She read us a book on Diwali. 

Room 22 shared with us their beautiful Rangoli patterns.


Then we enjoyed and danced to Indian Music. Joe was really good at it.







Thursday, October 23, 2014

Our Rights

We watched this video that introduced us to the idea that children have rights to protect them.


Next we listened to a song about the Rights of the Child. We sang along with the part that goes "We've all got Rights!"


After the song we talked about some of the different rights that the song spoke about. We liked it how all children in the world have the right to eat good food, the right to medical attention when they're sick, the right to have a home, and the right to belong to a country. 



Thinking hard

We watched this version of the story, 'Town Mouse and Country Mouse.'



Afterwards we were asked, "If you were a mouse, which house would you choose to live in, the Town Mouse's house or the Country Mouse's house?"

Most children said that they would perfer to live at Town Mouse's house because of all the yummy food he had at his place. Harry thought about it for a bit, and said that he would prefer to live at Country Mouse's house because there wouldn't be people coming and going all the time. It would be safer at Country Mouse's house! Some children thought about what Harry said, and changed their preference!

We had a good, hard think about which need was more important - the need for food, or the need for safety. Which do you think we thought was more important?

Reading activities

At Reading time we hunted for the pictures that start with the /cl/ sound. We coloured them in. 


Some of us found /cl/ words in a word search too. 



/cl/ words

Here is our brainstorm containing all the words we remembered that start with /cl/.


Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Visiting band

The Clarence High School band from Hobart, Australia visited this morning and put on a short concert for us. It was interesting for us to see the various instruments and hear their sounds.


Some of us knew what a trombone was but we didn't know what a French horn was. (The girl, second from the left is playing a French horn.)


Here are the flautists and oboist playing 'Money, Money, Money!'


A girl called Samantha sang some nice jazz pieces. 


The show ended with a funny drama with an American West theme. The band added musical comments to compliment the play. 





Venn Diagram showing needs and wants

We learnt what a Venn Diagram is.


We thought about which position on the diagram we would place a variety of items, such as... A new lunchbox, books, and a jacket. Next we drew little pictures of some items.



Finally we sorted the pictures and pasted them onto the Venn Diagram in the right places.


We have realised that sometimes things can be both a 'need' and a 'want' depending on the situation. For example, you need jandals in summer time. However, if you go shopping and see some nice jandals but you already have some, then the second pair of jandals becomes a 'want.'