Matariki breakfast

Next Tuesday we will be celebrating Matariki with a range of activities including a shared breakfast at school. As part of our Inquiry/ Technology unit we designed our own individual placemats for this breakfast, using things from around the school. When we went looking we found an abundance of leaves all over the ground so decided to use these to print onto our placemats. Since we have been looking at shapes, transformation, and patterning in maths we decided to add a frame and decorate it by utilising what we had been learning in maths.

It wasn't all plain sailing and we had to use our resilience to persist until we got the result we wanted. We are so proud of our finished products.

Wellington Orchestra Visit

This morning the whole school was treated to a performance from the Wellington Orchestra. They introduced us to all the instruments and made us laugh with their musical antics.

We had a history lesson about the development of instruments through the ages:

First one of the musicians played an animals horn...

and then some played long wooden tubes...

and finally three played on some extremely long pipes with funnels on the end that sounded a bit like trumpets!

 

We even got to practise our dance moves!

During the performance they introduced us to the main music genres including marching band music, jazz and grunge!

Thank you so much to all the musicians for an entertaining and informative concert!

Imaginations in action.

One of the children's favourite places to go during Discovery is our Creation Station, or making table. Here cardboard boxes are cut, coloured, accessorised, glued, sellotaped, stapled and transformed into all sorts of things from puppets, boats, kites, hats...the skies the limit! The children learn all sorts of skills during this time including perseverance when things don't quite go as planned, working with others, measuring and approximating, and of course fine motor skills. Here's some of our latest creations.

Puppets come to town

On Friday afternoon all the year 1 and 2 children watched a puppet show by the company 'Little Dog Barking'. It was the story of a little girl called Twinkle who had a vivid imagination. The presenters wore black and they worked against a black backdrop so all we could really see were the puppets.It was a mimed presentation which encouraged the children to use their own imaginations as well!

Twinkle grabs the blanket off her bed to pretend to be a bull fighter.

Her bed  transforms into the bull!

Once the bull transforms back into a bed Twinkle  decides to go flying on it...

...all the way to the moon!

Once on the moon she sits down and tries out the cheese...

...before returning on her flying bed to her bedroom.

Back in her room her small cuddly toy turns into a life size dragon...

...which takes her on further flying adventures.

The children laughed and laughed through out the show, a great way to end a busy school week. Thanks 'Little Dog Barking'.

Story writing specifics.

This week we are reminding ourselves about the need for finger spaces in our writing, as well as a capital letter at the start of each sentence, and a full stop at the end. We have been practising on whiteboards. 

 
Whiteboards are great because we can fix our mistakes up really easily! Mistakes are ok because they are part of learning something new.