Redwood Bush Walk

What a great day for our bush walk today.  Everyone had a super time and the children were all so well behaved.  Education Outside the Classroom sure is fun!

Teddy Bears Picnic

It was lovely to meet all the great Teddys' and loved ones today at our Teddy Bears' picnic.  It was a perfect day for it.

The Kiwi and Tui Syndicates had lots of fun activities going on, and the children rotated around 3 activities in the day.  There were tabloid sports with your Teddy's, making parachutes, puppets, masks, ears and tags, cards and origami, drawings and some children went on a bear hunt.

It was lovely to have so many families make an effort and come up and enjoy lunch with us.

Thanks everyone for a great day.

At the end of the day

One of our reading groups read this lovely book at reading time this week - At the end of the day.  It is the story of a classs that have a massage circle at the end of the day.

We decided to follow their instructions and see if we could make a massage circle too. 

We got into a circle, put our hands flat on the person in front of us and moved them around in big circles.  We wrote words on their backs for them to guess and used our fingers to dot rain drops all over their backs.

When we were done we leaned forward and gave the person in front a hug.  Everyone liked being hugged.

Then we leaned back and had a wee stretch, this was really fun!

We finished by thanking our friends.  We have decided this is a fun way to end the day!

How does your garden grow?

It was great to share some of our learning about what a plant needs for growth and development with our expert today.

Nana Joan (Miss Gargan's Mother) came in and shared her knowledge on gardening with us.  We had lots of knowledge too and instead of asking questions were able to answer lots!

We learnt about lots of the things she grows in her garden, what plants need and what is harmful to plants as well as seeing some of her gardening tools.

Thanks Nana Joan!

Kapa Haka

Redwood School Kapa Haka performed at the Tawa Cultural Festival recently.  They worked hard and their performance was well received.  In Room 3 we are proud of Sasha who looked fantastic for her part.  Well done Kapa Haka.

I NOTICE... I WONDER....

In Maths today we looked at this car park picture.

We were talking about the things we noticed.  The children noticed these things...
* there is one yellow car.
* the yellow car is going out of the parking lots.
* there are 4 bright blue cars.
* there are 7 spaces empty.
* there are lots of white cars.
* there are 4 people.
* there are more dark cars than light cars.
* there are 9 more dark cars than light cars.

We wondered these things...
* if this was parking lot.
* if there was snow on any of the cars.
* if there is more than 16 cars/more than 85 cars/if there are 36 cars.
* why there was only one yellow car

Miss Gargan wondered how we could work out how many cars there actually were?
We decided to count in 2's because it is faster than counting in 1's.  We got 71 cars.

Sharing our Koru's

Today we shared our Koru art and writing at assembly.

In writing we have been learning to add more detail to our work to make it interesting for our readers. 

We spent time talking about the decorative koru Miss Gargan bought and what it looked like, the children came up with some lovely ideas, the koru is swirly like a soft serve ice cream, the koru is shaped like half a heart, the koru is sharp like a mammoths tusk, the koru is swirly like a snake, the koru is curly like a gecko's tongue, the koru is a spiral like a pig's tail, the koru is like a baby in the Mummy's tummy, the koru is long and straight like an elephant's trunk....

The children did some lovely art which is now proudly displayed on our classroom wall.

Cardboard Challenge

I was so sorry to miss the last week of school, and of course the cardboard challenge which was inspired by the wonderful story of Cain's Arcade.  The story really touched me and if you haven't watched the short film made about it I encourage you too...http://cainesarcade.com/.

The Tui and Kiwi kids had a day of creativity, using their imagination and great creating and designing skills, they worked with cardboard boxes and other recycled materials.  Some wonderful parents came and supported the children, and in Room 3 Mrs Manu did a great job working with Mrs Gordon and our buddy class.

I heard it was a real success and the children had so much fun - there was so much learning, cooperative work, thinking and planning, designing, creating, problem solving and participation involved.

Check out these awesome photo's of the day.  Thanks to all the parents who came in and helped, everyone who donated cardboard boxes, Mrs Gordon and Mrs Manu.

Food and Nutrition

We have started our new topic this week - Food and Nutrition.

Harold and the Life Education van are at Redwood School.  Harold taught us about how we need to eat a variety of different foods to get lots of energy.  We are going to learn more about this in class.

The Life Education van is Harold's special classroom and it is really fun to visit.

Calendar Art

I love calendar art!  But it does really stresses me out!

I am so pleased with the calendar art this year and hope that you will like it too.  The children in Room 3 are really proud of their work, and so they should be!

We were inspired by the wonderful works of Mo Williams and had a lot of fun with the books "Don't Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus" and "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late".

If you are not familiar with the books check out this link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWEekO4ufwM

Here is a sneak peak of our calendar art

Laser Force fun!

Thanks to all the parents who provided transport for our laser force trip today.  It was so much fun, everyone had a really great time.

Kitchen Science

Kitchen Science is lots of fun!

We are observing, describing and comparing the physical and chemical changes that occur when materials are heated, cooled and mixed.

It sounds fancy but really what we are learning is that science experiments happen every day in the kitchen!!

Today we looked at bread, we smelled it, touched it, tasted it  and then we toasted it.  We compared the bread and toast and talked about what heating it did.  This is a physical change.  Cool huh!

We also made Jelly.  This time there was heating and cooling involved.  We think it is chemical change too, as the jelly crystals and water make a new substance.  A yummy new substance!

Finally we did some really fun mixing.  We added food colouring to vinegar making a physical change.    We then mixed the vinegar with baking soda.  You got it we created a new substance when the mixture bubbled and fizzed.

This is a great topic and we are really enjoying it.

Football Skills

We have the Tawa Football Club coming in to give us some football skills at the moment.......what fun! It fits nicely with our PE focus of striking with feet and the children had a blast out on the field today.

Way to go Room 3!

WE ARE 100 DAYS SMARTER

It's happened!  We have had our 100th day of school celebrations and what a fun day we had.

The children had all sorts of cool collections, pegs, candy, beads, lists, stickers, pasta, bottle tops, rubber bands, hearts, shells, sticks built into towers, flowers, marbles.  Miss Gargan got 100 books out of the library, she has promised to read them to us before the end of the year.

There were 100 hearts hidden around Room 3, our buddies came and helped us look for them....we are still looking for a few!

We had cake with our buddies, bet you can guess how many lollies were on the cake!

We had a Discovery Time with the theme of 100.  It was hard as we had to finish a task before we could choose something new to do!  There were 100 paper cups to build with, art that got 10 lots of 10 coloured spots, hats with 100 stickers on, art using the numbers 1, 0 and 0 and getting creative and 100 piece jigsaw puzzles.  The kids had a great time.

We finished the day writing 100 words in a book...we are still working on this!

Happy Birthday Hairy Maclary!

Did you hear that our mischievous friend Hairy Maclary from Donaldson Dairy turned 30?

To celebrate his birthday we had some fun activities in class,  storytellers stopping by to read to us, some writing activities, and the library had activities at lunchtime.

Happy Birthday Hairy Maclary.

Check out these fun stories written by some of the children -

The unicorn gave Hairy Maclary a ride and I got a ride too from the roller coster.  by Tara

Hairy Maclary is funny and he's soft and black and he plays with his friends.  by Krupa

Hairy Maclary is so naughty he would not do as he was told.  But one day he did do what he was told. Because he sat when he was told.  by Gemma