My Dad

Thoughts about our dads.

Colours

As part of Mrs Batchelor's challege rotation children had to make a colour mosaic. Children chose a theme colour and took photos of objects that were mainly reflecting this colour. They then made a mosaic using comic life.

Not only did 8-year old Mac win the School cross-country, he also won the Whangarei Primary Schools cross-country and the Northland Champs!
Mac said "I felt really nervous at the start of the race but once I started running the nerves vanished. The most challenging part was trying to overtake the other people because when I sprinted they sprinted.
We are expecting big things from Mac in the future, watch out he could be
the next Nick Willis!

Sustainable Coastlines

Chris from Sustainable Coastlines visited our school last week. He challenged us to think whether New Zealand is a clean, green country!!! We were rather shocked to see evidence that it isn't! and that the story of rubbish starts with a simple act of dropping a piece of rubbish in the road. We were devastated to see the impact that plastic rubbish in particular is having on our coastlines and sea life. So come on people stop and think before flicking that piece of rubbish out the car window or dropping it on the footpath and road.

Challenge Rotations

We have been involved in Challenge rotations over the past 3 weeks.
Mrs Wendt's inside rotation involves children completing various tasks.
Children can choose from origami, mancala challenge, questionaut (laptops), ipad challenges,
juggling, domino runs and whai(string games)- there is an instructional clip on you tube for children to follow-string games Jacobs ladder. Here are a few photos of us working.

Calendar Art

We have completed some artwork for our Calendar art which parents can order in Term 4.
Our theme was Seascape and our inspiration came from a book called Tangaroa's Gift by Mere Whaanga-Schollum. The artist uses koru and black and white designs. Our art was made with dyes (paua colours) and black vivid.

Another activity we have in our challenge rotation is using an online game called Questionaut. It is from BBCKids and is a challenging activity where you go on a quest to retrieve a hat. You have to solve a problem at each level then answer 5 questions correctly to move on to the next level. These questions range from literacy and numeracy to science.

Questionaut

ipad apps

We have made a folder of Challenging ipad apps to use in one of our Challenge Rotations. These vary from quiz challenges to puzzles and maizes. These activities challenge the children to think, problem solve, take risks and modify/ change if they are unsuccessful. They support the skills we are encouraging children to develop to overcome challenges such as perseverance and persistence.

Challenge

I apologise for not posting regularly on our blog this term. We have been busy creating, learning about the Olympics and what it is like to be an Olympian and immersing ourselves in challenging activities.
Here is a brief overview of things we have done.

Fonterra Farm Visit

We had the most wonderful experience of visiting Fonterra Dairy Farm. A big thank you to Kim Robinson who organised the trip as well as Steve and Jeff the farmers who hosted us. We learnt so much and completed a challenging worksheet which taught us that you need to be a good mathematician to be a farmer. We also had a couple of challenge activities to complete while we were there. We set up electric fences to separate a paddock into 3 even areas for the cows to graze in and we moved some new born baby calves from their mothers into the sheds. Once again a huge thank you to Kim.

Our Pattern Work

As a cumulative task, we used the ipad app pic collage to take photos of our pattern artwork and inquiry. We wrote about how pattern helps us make sense of the world, how animals use pattern and what the world would be like without pattern.

Our Myths

As part of our concept pattern, we have been writing myths about the animal we studied for our inquiry. We then made the myth into a podcast or used photo babble on the ipad to retell our myth.
Unfortunately we are having trouble uploading our photo babble stories. Here are a few of our podcasts.

Turbo touch

Today we did turbo touch. One of the players from the starting team stood behind the touchdown zone with the ball. They tapped it with their foot then passed it out to a player. Almost everything was counted in twos. Each team could have two touches. The opposition team had to be two metres back from the person who had been touched. And how long did the opposition have to wait before they could touch them (the person who got touched). That's right! Two seconds. You're not allowed to drop the ball if you do the opposition team gets the ball. If you score a try and you're standing in the touchdown zone it will not count. We all had loads of fun.





By Ben.M and Callum.

The Rope Swing at Health Camp

The rope swing is 27 feet tall. The super swing goes super fast. We hang on as tight as we can. It was awesome!

Tyson Cook
29/5/12

Dj and joecarl

Dj and joecarl demonstrated kata for us today.

Dj and joecarl

Kata demonstration

The Gymnastics Competition

At school we showed our news which were our gymnastics ribbons and medals(awards). For our gymnastics competition we had six routines. The routines were pommel,high bar,vault,floor,rings and Parallel bars. The colours of the ribbons are green,blue,red and gold.The red and gold ribbons are the ones we are aiming for. After lunch we showed the class our routines, well most of them anyway. We showed them the parallel bar routine, then the high bar routine.After that we showed them our floor routine. And last, but not least, our pommel routine. Last of all the teacher took a photo of us together holding up our medals,ribbons and certificates.
By Thomas Robinson and Ben Murray.

Thomas and Ben

Thomas and ben will be reporting on their gymnastics. Here is a slideshow of their demonstration that they put on for the class.

Room 13 news

Each week in pairs children from our class are going to be reporters and write a news story about something that is happening in our class, school, or home life. We will be using the app blog press to send it straight to our blog so watch this space.
We will also be writing stories on our sfx authors blog.

Fun Brain

In Maths we have been using this new interactive Maths website called Fun Brain to explore number. It is fun!. Click on the picture and it will take you to the website.

http://www.funbrain.com/brain/MathBrain/MathBrain.html