Santa's Stuck!!

We had fun writing and creating today.  First we watched half of the Youtube movie, When Santa Got Stuck Up the Chimney.  You can view the video below, or click on this link.  Then we wrote our own ending to the story, how we thought Santa would get out.  After we finished writing, we coloured our brick fireplace and then made Santa stuck in our chimney.

Jenna, bonnie, shivali

Pattern hunt

Today we went looking for patterns in the playground. The children used their iPads to photograph the patterns they found. When we came back inside they took turns using their iPads to show their group's pictures on the TV using the Apple TV. We will look at more of the playground patterns on Friday and share some of our findings with you.

Under the Sea Mosaics

Today we created our own mosaics using items from under the sea.  Many of us brought items from home and we also used items that Mrs Nichol and Mrs Ikiua brought in.

The first step was to trace our tile onto a piece of A3 paper.  Then we moved the tile aside and created our pattern using sea shells, sticks, rocks, sea glass, pretend sea glass (marbles), and other items we had collected.

After we had our design ready Mrs Nichol spread some tile adhesive onto our tiles.  Our next job was to carefully transfer our design from the paper onto our wet tile being careful not to smudge the adhesive or get it onto our shells or fingers.  This kept our designs looking tidy and clean.  Some of us added little shells to fill in the gaps.

Our mosaics will dry over the weekend and then on Monday we will paint a gloss varnish over them.  We are excited to take them home, but Mrs Nichol might sneak them to her house to put on her own garden fence!  :D 

Guy Fawkes

All around New Zealand fireworks have been going off for the past week and will likely continue through this coming weekend.  Today we found out the reason behind all the fireworks. Today was Guy Fawkes Day.  We watched three short child-friendly YouTube movies explaining Guy Fawkes Day, which was really a very sad and unpleasant event!  

After we watched the movies we continued working on our mixed media collages.  Earlier in the day we had used wax crayons to colour a piece of paper with lots of bright colours. Then we painted over the whole page with black paint.  Once it dried we used the end of a paint brush to scratch in fireworks.  

We coloured a picture of Guy Fawkes, cut it out and assembled it onto our backgrounds.  We are pretty pleased with our pictures. 

This is our poem for the week that is also about Guy Fawkes Day.

Remember, remember

The 5th of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

We see no reason why

Gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

Here is the playlist of videos we watched.

End of Term News

We sure had a busy last few days of term!

One of the exciting things that happened was receiving a very special letter in the mail! 

During our Famous New Zealanders week we wrote letters to four different famous NZers.  The children chose to write to John Key, Brian Turner, Jackie Thomas or Joy Cowley.  This week we received a letter back from Joy Cowley. We were all very excited! She even wrote personal responses to the four children who wrote to her.

Congratulations to Shivali, Neve and James on receiving their 5 Goals in Writing.  Well done! 

Practising our moves for our Celebration Night performance.

Kahn and James presented excellent art work in their poem books!

 

We are so lucky to have Mrs Ikiua join our class for 5 weeks as our student teacher.

Congratulations to our class for collecting the most money of all of the Year One classes for the I Spy fundraiser.
Well done and thank you to all the parents for your efforts and support!
Our class received a gift bag full of books and a soccer ball!

This is the weather by Holly and Shivali

 

The blue bars by Shivali and Anna

 

I  like playing on the blue bars with my friends. We flip on the blue bars and Jenna and genevieve play on the blue bars.

Peer blogging

    

Today the Dolphins writing group taught the Penguins writing group how to blog.
Great collaboration and cooperation!

The weather by Shivali and holly

Writing Rebus Stories

The children had heaps of fun today writing their own rebus stories. 

When you get a chance, pop by the classroom to have a look in their writing books.

Our New Library

We are enjoying using our new library.  

We are especially excited about seeing our art work up in the library! 

 Jenna and Shivali are using their browsing cards to choose a book from the picture books.

 Liam has signed out his book and is reading it on the new big comfy chair.

 Bonnie, Bianca and Isla are using the computer to find a favourite book.

 EJ is sitting on the new comfy benches reading his book.

Kea Assembly

Fantastic job today by the Kea team for our school assembly! The children smiled, sang, spoke, acted and celebrated their learning. Thanks to all the parents and grandparents who came to watch.