Ms Tan saw these elaborate paper cuttings at the Chinese Lunar New Year festival at Albert Park yesterday.
Kia ora (hello) and thank you for visiting our blog! We are a bunch of enthusiastic first and second year students who enjoy learning in the Arahoe Learning Hub (Rooms 21 and 22) at Arahoe School (Auckland, New Zealand). We hope you enjoy reading about our adventures at school!
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Spring - chun
We cut the Chinese word 'chun' from origami paper. The Chinese place these cuttings on doors, windows or walls in their homes for Chinese Lunar New Year.
Water
What did you observe about water? Fleur (Rm 22) said this poetically:
This is what we observed:
Friday, February 27, 2015
Experimenting with ice
Today we talked about the differences between ice and water. We learnt that ice is a solid and that water is a liquid. We also painted pictures with bags filled with melting ice and food colouring.
Exploring Ice
What do you have in your freezer?
Carrots, peas, bread, ice cream, ice blocks, ice...
What is ice?
It's water that has frozen.
How does water turn into ice?
The temperature of the water goes down.
We made a prediction about what we thought would happen to a block of ice. Some of us thought that it would melt within one hour and some of us thought it would take a long time. We put the block of ice on the deck and we were surprised because it was still there when we went home, one hour later!
We discussed how water can change into ice, and then it can change back to water again when it melts!
We used some coloured ice to 'paint' pictures. We worked out that it only worked when the ice began melting. We used our body heat to make the ice melt faster.
Quiet time
After lunch we needed some quiet time so our teachers let us watch some videos. One group of children were interested in watching a video of how volcanoes are formed. They also watched a video about fossils.
Surprise at lunchtime
Some big raindrops came down while we were eating lunch.
We got very excited by the rain and even more excited when we saw a cicada!
Second block fun
In our second block, we listened to a story called 'The Gingerbread Cowboy.' We were interested to see that the title of the book is at the bottom of the cover!
In our story the Gingerbread Cowboy was eaten by a sneaky coyote!
We sang an old favourite from kindy, 'Oneday a Taniwha.' Some of our friends didn't know what a Taniwha is so we described one as an underwater dragon. We tried to remember the actions. You can see us here pretending to be taniwhas with horns on our heads!
"My mama's waiting for me!"
"I know we could be friends."
Miss Vanga did some Bollyhop dancing with us today too.
Morning Karakia
We had a student lead our morning karakia today for the first time. She did a great job!
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Measurement
Today, we continued working on measurement from last week.
It was awesome to get out of the classroom to find some things that helped us to compare the size and the weight of the sticks, rocks, bark, etc.
We found so many things and used some of the terms like "longer than", "bigger than", "taller than" and "shorter than".
Rhyme
In Reading today we talked about the two words circled in black.
We looked at the words to see what was the same and different about them. We learnt that words with the same ending sound rhyme. We will be learning a lot more about rhyming words in our Listening, Reading and Writing.
Reading right to left
While we are learning that we read from left to right in English, some of our friends know languages where the words are read from right to left!
Our friend brought a story to school to show us. It is written in Farsi, the language of Iran. She is pointing to the start of the title. (Sorry for the blurry picture.)
Gingerbread person in Spain
Hi,
I heard that some New Zealander Gingerbread men had disappeared, and went online to find out who to send this photo. I am sure you will be relieved to know where one is. He is in Barcelona, Spain.
I went for a coffee to the town centre and took some photos and imagine my surprise when I saw this photo. I rushed home to send your this email.
I hope you find the rest soon!
Pablo
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
How are we special?
In a discussion this morning, Room 21 children made a list of ways we know we are special...
We come from different places and speak different languages. (Kalais)
We have different parents. (Yashvi)
We are made differently. (Ivo)
We all have different talents. (Lorin)
We all have special names. (Campbell)
We would like to know how our parents chose our names and what they mean.
Postcards
Three postcards have arrived from people who have spotted our gingerbread people! One is from Napier, one from Rotorua, and one from Wales!
QR codes
Today we learnt how to scan a QR code using an iPad. We are going to take turns listening to stories that we scan from our special story-posters.
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