Our Friday Letter - Thinking about athletics

Friday 18 November 2011

Dear Parents,

On Thursday Tony came to our school for PE. We did athletics and it was a lot of fun.
One activity got us thinking.
In high jump, Tony had three different jumps, a high jump, a medium jump and a low jump. We were allowed to choose whichever jump we wanted to work on.
Then Tony made a rule. He said, "If you knock the bar off when you jump, you are DISQUALIFIED and you are out. You have to go and sit down and not jump anymore. You have ten seconds to choose which jump you want to try."
That made us think. Most people went to the low jump or the medium jump. Only one person went to the high jump.
Why? ...because everyone wanted to be able to keep jumping. They didn't want to be DISQUALIFIED and have to sit down.
Next Tony said, "I'm changing the rule. Now the rule is, if you knock the pole off, you don't have to sit down. You just go down one level AND if you get over the pole, you go up a level. You have ten seconds to choose where you will jump."
We liked that rule so much better.
No one got DISQUALIFIED and no one had to sit down AND we had to work harder because we moved up the levels to the highest jump.
That was a much better rule and it meant we could follow Tony's other rule, "Have fun and try your hardest."
Next week, when the Year 4, 5 and 6 children are at athletics day, we are going to plan an athletics afternoon and think how we can use Tony's rule in other activities. We will invite Year 1 and Year 3 children too. Parents can come along to watch and help out to make sure all the activities are safe.
We will send out a notice on Monday to let everyone know about the day.
from Ms Donnell and the early finishers in Room 2

Our Food Riddles

After Harold's visit last week, we were thinking about what our favourite healthy foods are.

We visited this class blog and loved the riddles the children had made. We decided to try to make our own.  Here are our riddles made with Kid Pix Slide Show.

O le pepe - singalong

Show Day Ribbons

Ribbons at Show Day on PhotoPeach

Our Show Day Classroom

Getting ready for Show Day on PhotoPeach


The classroom is ready on PhotoPeach

A song from the Cook Islands

Mrs Haurua has been with our class for the last seven weeks, since the beginning of the term, and for the last three weeks, she has been the main teacher in the class.
While she has been with us, she has taught us a song from the Cook Islands. It is called Kua iti te marama. We have all been practising it and it has been quite a challenge to learn the words and the melody. Today we will be singing it at a special music assembly.
Sadly, Mrs Haurua is not able to be with us today, but she did make a video of the class singing the song, to share with her Cook Island family.

Winter Tree Paintings

Winter Tree Paintings on PhotoPeach

Winter Trees

Winter Trees on PhotoPeach
We have some beautiful oak trees in our school grounds and we have been looking at them as we think about the changes that happen each season.
Here are our pencil sketches of one of these oak trees.

Post Boxes

Post box

View more presentations from Tina Donnell.

We did a post box activity to get us thinking about what we know and what we don't know.
We had six questions.
What makes the seasons happen?
What do you know about the moon?
What do you know about the sun?
What causes daytime and night time?
What do you know about the tides?
What do you know about the seasons?
We had to read the question, write an answer and post it in the right box.
We had two goes at writing our ideas.
Today we sorted the answers and chose the 3 best ones from each box to share with the class.

Tashi and the Ghosts - our pastel resist pictures

We have been enjoying THE BIG BIG BIG BOOK OF TASHI by Anna & Barbara Fienberg & Kim Gamble each day over the last week or so.
These are some pictures we made about "Tashi and the Ghosts" and "Tashi and the White Tigers".
We made them using pastel and dye.
We have put instructions for making this kind of picture at the end of this post. We hope some people will try to follow our instructions.

Tashi, ghosts and white tiger stories on PhotoPeach



If you click on the comic strip, it will be big enough to read.

Measuring Teddies

We have been having some fun with our teddies in the last few weeks.
We measured them using beads in balance scales and also using bead strings.
Each teddy had a card with its measurements on, but we didn't know which teddy went with each card. So then we had to guess and check our measurements to find the mystery teddy.
Here is some of the work we did.
The app we used was Comic Strip. http://yourcomicstrip.com/

A VIsit From Fire Fighter Max

Firewise Visit on PhotoPeach

Tamati and Sam Get Firewise

Tamati and Sam Are Firewise
The Leopards worked together in reading time today to create this story to show how Tamati and Sam are Firewise.
Some of the children recorded the story using the iPod touch app "Storyrobe".
Here is the story on PhotoPeach.

Washing Machines - Then and Now

We have been doing some really tricky thinking this week.
We looked at the pictures of old washing machines we took on our museum trip.
First we put on our yellow hats to help us to think about what was good about the old kind of washing machine.
Next we put on our black hats to think about what was not so good about that old washing machine.
After that we used our yellow and black hats to think about new automatic washing machines.
Our teachers worked together to help us with this work. Ms Knight helped us with the thinking and helped us record our ideas on two Venn diagrams. Then Ms Donnell put all our ideas into one Venn diagram, so we could show things that were different and things that were the same about the two types of washing machine.

Watch the ball

When we worked with Simon this week, we had to watch the ball into our hands.
We needed to get our hands into the right place so we could catch the ball.
It was a challenge to do this while we were moving around and throwing the ball up high.

An Invention

After our trip to the museum last week, Oliver brought a special photo to school. It shows his great great grandfather who was a gumdigger.
Read his story to see what Oliver's great great grandfather did.

Our Fire Safety Voice Thread

Firewise at Rangikura School

Watch this video to see what the children at Rangikura School did when they were learning about fire safety.

Term 2 Big Idea

Sharing our art - cardboard prints

Cardboard print self portraits - following on from "brushing my teeth" portraits on PhotoPeach

Over the last few weeks, we have been working on making the blocks for these cardboard prints and now we have finally printed them all.
A big thank you to Joel's mum for helping us with the printing.
In the slideshow, some of the pictures have both the block and the print, so we can see how the print mirrors the block.
That's why, when people put a letter on the front for their name, they had to do them back to front.

Easter Fun

I'm afraid things have been too busy for keeping up to date on our class blog lately.
But just in case anyone's looking for something to do over the holidays, here's a link to an Easter game.
There are lots of other good games on this website too.
Just click on the picture to go to the game.

Our Tabloid Day

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

What responsibilities do Mums and Dads have?

We made a chart for Mum's responsibilities and Dad's responsibilities.
We had to make a space for both Mum and Dad because Mums and Dads can sometimes have the same responsibilities.
This kind of chart is called a Venn Diagram. The two ovals cross over and that is where we put the things that both Mums and Dads do.
Today we found out that in different families, Mums and Dads do different jobs.
We found this out by asking Joel and Kane some questions about what their Mum and Dad's responsibilities are.
Next Ms Donnell is going to teach us how to make our own Venn Diagram so we can show responsibilities in our families.
This writing is by Kane, Maddison, Nic, Milan, Tuhirangi and Ms Donnell

Postcard Project Update

Now you can see the postcards we have received in the mail.
Three are from New South Wales in Australia.
Two are from Hawaii.
One is from Seattle in the USA.
One is from the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland.
One is from Invercargill in the south of the South Island of New Zealand.

Our Self Portraits

Crayon and Dye Portraits on PhotoPeach
Today we finished our portraits. We have been working on them for a few weeks now.
This was the first time we have needed art shirts and it was quite a job learning how to put them on with a buddy to help and how to fold them and out them away tidily.
Here is a photo of us all ready to go and dye our pictures wearing our art shirts. Ms Donnell thought we were very sensible and responsible.

Another Great Picnic at Martins Bay

Martins Bay Picnic 2011 on PhotoPeach

Ways to be responsible in our school

The children in Room 2 were thinking about ways to be responsible for looking after our school.
This is what they thought...
Ways to Save Water by Reuben, Grady, Kane and Dan

• Turn off the taps
• Do not spill water
• Do not waste water

Ways to make our grounds look good by Grace, Indy, Annabelle and Nic

• Care for trees
• Do not run on new grass
• Care for plants
• Do not step on new seeds growing

Ways to save electricity by Zac, Jade, Zara, Charlotte and Bayden

• Turn off the light when finished in the room
• Turn off the machines when you are not using them
• Turn off computers and iPods

Ways to stop pollution by Maddison, Joel, Milan and Oliver

• Pick up any rubbish lying around

Ways to recycle by Ms Knight

• Collect cans, bottles and scrap paper for the bin

Our Bright Smiles

Today in art we were learning lots of things.
We learned to:

* draw ourselves
* make our pictures colourful all over
* listen for the click when we put the lid on the felt pen
* use felt on the outlines and crayons for the inside
* keep inside the lines when we colour

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The Postcard Project

We have got our postcards ready to send off for the postcard project. Our postcards will go to schools in New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii.
We have already had a postcard in the mail from Reefton School.
Postcard Project

Responsibility

This term we are thinking about responsibility.
Here are some of the ideas we shared about responsibility.
We are all responsible for brushing our teeth. Look below to see our pencil drawings showing us doing this important job.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Goldfish

In our class we have three goldfish. We used Answer Garden so people could give us ideas for their names. These are the names we chose: Goldy, Speedy, Stripy.
Annabelle and Zac are responsible for looking after them at the moment. They have to turn on the light and feed them in the morning and turn off the light and feed them in the afternoon.

Welcome to Room 2 2011

What shall we call our goldfish?... at AnswerGarden.ch.