Where the Wild Things are

The children love drawing in Kidpix. After our Wild Things Day the children drew their own Wild Things.

Outdoor Education Presentations

In pairs the children developed some presentations on our Outdoor Education Activities. Most children chose to use Keynote for their presentations. They also included comments that reflected De Bonos thinking hats. The children have added music which makes it very slow for the slides to change. Have patience and you will see their whole slideshow, or move the play slider forward to the next slide.

Hundertwasser Art

This term we studied the artist Hundertwasser. His artwork is unique because he doesn't use straight lines and he doesn't draw what he sees. He uses lots of bright colours and his imagination. He said that "A good picture is full of magic, when you feel the happiness in it, when it makes you laugh or cry, or when it makes something happen."
Enjoy our Hundertwasser inspired art.

Codes

Last Term we studied Systems. Our focus was Communication. We looked at various communication systems such as Braille, Morse Code, Semaphore, Sign language, Hieroglyphics. We invented our own codes and gave them to children from Room 10 to crack. We used ichat to communicate with each other. We then discovered 'special characters' in Pages and reinvented some codes so we could post them on our blog. See if you can crack them.

Outdoor Education 2009

We had our Outdoor Education Activities in Week 7. It was terrific! We went to Adventure Forest ands found that very challenging. We also went caving at Waipu Caves and hiked to the Quarry Gardens on what must have been the hottest day of the year! Enjoy our photos.

Lots os Exciting things have been happening this term. Wih our topic focus being the Arts, we have had marimba lessons with Mark Brimblecomb and dance lessons with Kate Aukett. Here are two videos to share with you.

Imagine

Last week we started our main focus for this term "Imagine." We kicked started the week by having a Wild Rumpus. Our theme was 'Where the wild things are" The teachers were 'Wild Things" and Mr Mckernan was "Max." The children came to school with 'Wild Hair!"

BBC Games

Visit this link to practice your skills in English, Maths and Science. We have been using the English link to practice our knowledge of language and punctuation.

bbc.co.uk

Our topic this term is Imagine. In groups we played a problem solving game called "questionaut" from the bbc.co.uk site. It is really challenging but loads of fun! Click on the link below

"Questionaut"

Diving Deeper

The children in Room 13 who participated in the Diving Deeper programme were involved in The Auckland Zoo Web Quest. They had to suggest an animal that they thought should be in our zoo. They had to research information about the animal and present their findings as a keynote presentation. Here are some examples

Maori Myths

As part of our communication unit we looked at how Maori was a spoken language and all knowledge was passed down orally. In pairs we chose a Maori myth or Legend to rewrite in our own words and make a podcast. Here are a few examples.

School Website

We have a new school website. It is awesome! 

 You can view other class blogs or class pages the teachers have created.

Just click on the links to find out what has been happening 

in the various syndicates, and what learning has taken place during the year.

Please click on the link below.

St Francis Xavier Website

Descriptions of God

We have been learning about God's presence in our world. What we might see, hear, or feel that reminds us that God created this beautiful world of ours. Listen to our podcast of children's descriptions of what makes them think of God.

Dads

We have created pictures of our dad's in kidpix and said what we love most about them.

Taonga Puoro

In Diving Deeper Maori this year we learnt how to make taonga puoro (flutes) out of clay with the help of Mark Dashper from Manu Aute. This is a movie we made to show the process or system of making taonga puoro.

My Wildself

Mrs Pene shared this awesome site with us called Build your Wild Self. The link is on our left hand toolbar (on line activities). We are focusing on writing descriptions in Literacy so we wrote about the weird creations we designed.

Symbols that represent our names

As part of our unit on Communication Systems we read about Egyptian Hieroglyphs. We had to create a symbol that represented our name. We used black PVA and dye.

Change Animations

During our Change unit we made short animation videos to show how things change over time.We will showcase 3 a week over the next few weeks
Here are 3 new animations

Ina and The Moon

Talofa Lava
During Samoan Language Week Room 13 learnt some Samoan words and read the myth Ina and the Moon. We made our own podcast by drawing our pictures in Kidpix and retelling the story in our own words.

Year 4 Webquest

Last term our topic was Change. Mrs Wendt made a change webquest. Milky Way reading group had to present a change experiment to the class. Children also had to create a presentation using ICT as a too. Here is an example of Olivia's presentation.
To view the other children's work go to our Year 4 webquest. Click the link below.

Our Change Web quest.