Outdoor Education

Last week, we participated in Outdoor Education Activities. We went Ten Pin Bowling, Caving and to the Adventure Forest. In Ten Pin Bowling we had to be persistent and resilient to try to bowl the pins down. In Caving and the Adventure Forest we certainly needed courage, persistence and be a risk taker to overcome these challenges. It was exciting and fun!

Challenge

Our concept this term has been Challenge. Mrs Wendt set us some fun mini challenge activities i.e. domino runs, juggling, sled skiing, balance board, string games, origami, computer activities(agent ani, questionaut), and elastics. We had to use skills such as persistence, resilience, risk taking, and problem solving to overcome the challenge.

Eco Waste

Anna from eco-waste came to our class and worked with the children on creating a more sustainable planet. We looked at shopping smarter to reduce waste, what we can recycle and reuse. Our challenge was to have a zero waste lunchbox. Our class achieved 92% zerowaste lunchboxes.

Cultures Day

We held a school Cultures day, where the children dressed up in clothes from another culture and Room 13 had a cultural feast. Children bought dishes from their own cultures or kiwiana food.

Zahna Violin

Zahna is in a violin concert and is playing music by Handel and Bach. They are both composers from the baroque era. Zahna dressed in clothes from the baroque period and played the violin for us.

Please enjoy!

Maui Comic Strips

We looked at a Story Library book that had various Maui stories presented as comic strips. We decided to retell our favourite maui story as a comic strip. We created our comic strips first as a story board, then dropped our pictures into kidpix to colour them in. We then imported our kidpix pictures into comic life and added our text and speech bubbles. These are the comic strips that have been completed so far.

Tivaevae Art

As part of our culture unit and geometry, we looked at Tivaevae patterns. We talked about symmetry, repeating patterns and use of light and dark colours.

The Girls in the Kapa Haka

We read Girls in the kapahaka by Angie Belcher. We looked at the structure of the book (a bit like this is the house that Jack built) and added a new verse (sentence) of our own. We then created our page in kidpix and made a book.

Our Culture

We have been sharing our cultures with the class. Our class comes from a variety of different cultures. We decided to celebrate and inform others about our culture using comic life. We had to search google images for pictures relating to our country, flag, traditional activity, food, clothing, what its famous for, designs, and a greeting. We took a photo of ourselves using the capture feature and had to create one of our pictures using kidpix.

Maori Art

We have been creating Maori Artwork using a variety of skills. First we had to weave a mat as a background out of either flax or coloured paper. Next we created a design based on Maori symbols. We then layered this design using 3 layers. It was quite challenging and has taken a long time to complete. Here are some finished pieces of art.

Making Poi

Today we made poi. We made them out of wool, plastic bags, newspaper and dacron (pillow filling) It was quite easy, the hardest part was tying a knot and knowing how to plait!

We will be learning some simple actions with the poi.

Toka Tu Moana

Our school watched a performance by Toka Tu Moana. We were dazzled by their skill at poi, haka, taiaha, and hand games. Their performance was based on a legend of how the seasons came to be. The main character was Maui who was very cheeky and very vain. After the show our Diving Deeper Maori group learnt the Haka.These are some pictures of the show.

Culture Day

The school held a Culture Day today as part of our immersion on Cultures. We started the day watching a virtual marae DVD that takes you on a tour of a marae and tells you the tikanga (protocol) of a marae.
We then went to our school hall to take part in a powhiri. We were the manuhiri and were welcomed on by Kowhai Whanau. We then were the tangata whenua and welcomed Rimu Whanau. During the rest of the day we had a rotation where we did titi torea, art and made ika harakeke (flax fish).

We have been learning about different language features to make our writing more interesting. Some children have made keynotes to use as a teaching resource or an assessment to see if children know what a simile, alliteration, onomatopoeia or metaphor is. Click on each slide to find out.

We went on the Hero Factory website and created our own Super heros. We made up ID cards for each of our heros.

Silly Similes

We have been learning to use rich language to make our writing more interesting to read. We used photo booth to take silly pictures of ourselves and thought of a simile to describe ourselves. Enjoy our movie.

We were inspired by Room 10's descriptive writing. In groups we brainstormed nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs that described our animals. We then looked at language features like similes, alliteration and onomatopoeia that we could use to also describe our animals. We wrote our own descriptions and used comic life to present our work creatively. Please enjoy.

Balloon Racers

Last week we had a homework challenge to create a balloon Racer. We have learnt that they work on Newton's third law of motion. The air rushes out of the balloon backwards and pushes the car forwards in the opposite direction.
We had a competition to see which car was the fastest, went the furtherest and was the most creative.

The children were very creative, and all the racers were made out of recycled materials.
Enjoy our photos.

Forces

Mrs Pene found these cool interactive activities on the BBC website that help teach you about forces, friction and magnetism. You can click on the website address below to find the other activities about forces and magnetism.
Click on the picture below to find out about friction.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/physical_processes/friction/play.shtml

Gymnastics

This term as part of our movement theme we have a special gymnastics coach, Ben. We have been doing some really challenging activities. Mrs Wendt was surprised at how many children can't do a handstand, cartwheel or backward roll. We need to practise these movements at home.

Experiments

We have been carrying out experiments that test Newton's Laws of Motion. We made parachutes and balloon rockets.

Our Mums

Please read our thoughts about our mums. Happy Mother's Day!

Simple Machines Interactive Site

Click on the picture above to link to a cool website

where you can learn about simple machines while

you play games

Movement Experiments

We have been undertaking simple experiments to look at the types of forces that cause movement. We have learnt about gravity, friction, push and pull.

Movement Immersion

We are studying Movement this term. We had a wheels day and Jump Jam as immersion activities in week 1.

Milky Way Inquiry

Here is Zahna and Gia's Inquiry on Ian Falconer

I will post more inquiries when I can as I have had problems uploading them

Boys and Reading

Fintan and Rufaro carried out an Inquiry about What books do Year 4 boys like to read

Story Inquiry

This is Brylee's and Sophia's Inquiry on Joy Cowley

Milky Way Inquiry

Milky Way undertook an inquiry in pairs for Story. They formulated a question they wanted to research about story. They used information from books, internet and interviewed children in our class to find the answer to their question. They decided how they would like to present their research to the class.

This is Sam and Isaac's Inquiry on Ross Kinnaird

Myths and Legends

We looked at various Maori Myths and Legends. As a class we retold the legend of our local maunga Parahaki. In pairs we illustrated parts of the legend in kidpix. We then made a podcast and everyone had a part of the story they retold.

An event in my Life

We wrote about an event in our lives for our own story. We made an illustration for our story in Kidpix. Enjoy!

Pepeha

We read a book called 'Child of Aotearoa.' We learnt that Maori identify where they come from by naming their maunga, awa, waka, marae, iwi and hapu.

This is our pepeha.

My Story

We are creating books about ourselves at school. These are comic life presentations we have made about ourselves.

Welcome Back to 2010

A wonderful welcome to our children, parents, grandparents and friends who may be visiting our blog to find out what exciting things have been happening in Room 13. You will see a lot of last year's work which will gradually disappear as we put new posts on our blog. Read and enjoy! Don't forget to leave a comment, we would love to know what you think of our work.