Geometry with Miss Gray

This term Room 12 are learning about movement in geometry.  This means learning left, right, over, under, rotate quarter turn, rotate half turn etc.

Room 12 have been creating mazes.  Have a look at their fabulous work!

Here's Mio using her maze.

Here is Oliver using his maze.

Here are Joel and Kaci using their maze.

Here is Adela using her maze.

Using electrical energy

This afternoon Room 12 made pikelets using electrical energy - yum yum!

We discovered that electrical energy makes the beaters turn around!

We also discovered that electrical energy is needed to make heat.

On Thursday we are making pikelets again, but without any electrical energy!

How are we going to do that?

Here are some ideas already:

Oliver said we would use a spoon to mix, or one of Mrs Pringles olden day egg beaters.

Maddox thinks we should use the sunlight to cook the pikelets, or a hair dryer (though not anymore as we talked about what makes the hair dryer work).

Do you have any more ideas Room 12?

Amazing writers!

Did you know that Room 12 are amazing writers?

Sophia's Mum and Dad are getting married too!  Congratulations!

Kian likes playing Hide and Seek with his big brother, Qwayan.

Naai knows a thing or two about getting married.  He knows I'll be wearing a white dress, and a ring!

Eita's car is strong and it has a light in front (like fire).

Kaci wrote about me marrying Malcolm.

Makylah likes her watch that goes 'tick tock'.  It's beautiful and it snaps onto her wrist.

Mio shared a beautiful fan from Japan for her news.

Nitika likes her toy.

Oliver likes his book about Space, given to him by his Aunty Katie. 

Xavier just loves sharks, especially the ones in New Zealand far away!

Adela is pretty excited I am getting married.

Later in the week I am going to be away for a few days while I am getting married, and enjoying a short honeymoon (notice going home about this on Tuesday).  

I will be back on Friday 13th - so let's celebrate by dressing up as pirates!  

What a fabulous idea!

Chalk drawing and music

Today we wrote messages around the school.  Did you see them?


Chalk drawing around the school on PhotoPeach

Room 12 had a great time learning about Hoe Down music with Mrs Frost.  Did you know the term Hoe Down comes from when the workers finished their work and put down their hoes - time to celebrate!

Can you spot the lager phones?

Can you spot the stamping pipes?

Team Time and Similes!

As most of you know, on Monday afternoons Otakaro have Team Time.  All of the Otakaro children have been put into 4 mixed groups and they rotate around the 4 different teachers twice a term.  Each teacher takes a different focus:

Mrs Pringle - Visual Art

Mrs Nancekivell - Dance/Drama

Miss Harris - Te Reo and Tikanga Maori

Miss O'Neill - Sporty Fun

As it was VERY cold yesterday afternoon I decided to run some inside games from 100 years ago (which fits in with our Life Without Electric Energy theme this term).  My team rotated around the following games:

• Hopscotch
• Naughts and Crosses (or in our case, it was bananas and apples!)
• Marbles
• Spinning tops
• Tiddlywinks

Team Time 26.5.14 on PhotoPeach

Today at writing time we talked about 'similes' (comparing something using the word 'as') so we wrote similes this morning about how COLD it was.

Sophia's nose was as cold as strawberry ice cream!

Adela's fingers were as cold as ice cream.

Oliver's fingers were as cold as a fridge.

Kaci's car was as cold as a frozen lake.

Xavier woke up this morning and found his hands were as cold as ice cream.

One of the maths groups used the iPads this morning to recognise patterns to 10, then 20.  The children had to compete with their partner to find the pattern first!

Snow!

Today just before writing time we noticed it was snowing outside!

Looking out the window at the snow!

Room 12 are very excited!

 Here are some super duper stories about what Room 12 might do if the snow settles.

Adela will do a snow angel.

Oliver made a pretty accurate observation!

Sophia is going to make a snow bunny!

Nitika did this all by herself!

Xavier knows that snow mouse car will melt in the sun.

Kian is becoming a brilliant wee writer!

Kaci took Mr Bojangles home for the weekend.  Look at his fabulous writing in Mr Bojangles diary!

Maddox is practicing to do 5+ problems.

Discovery Time

Kids love Discovery Time!

Today we had train sets, lego, barbie dolls, water play, city building, construction, painting, tracing/drawing/chalk drawing and puppet theatre.  What a choice!  We do Discovery Time at 2pm EVERY Friday now....if any parent/aunt/uncle/grandparent/friend of the family wants to come along and help out - just let us know!  All help is greatly appreciated.

Discovery Time 23.5.14 on PhotoPeach

After each writing time we always share our fabulous writing.  Usually we read it out to the class, but today we got into little groups and read our stories to them instead.  Room 12 are amazing writers.  All of them are using their word cards to help them find words to write, and for finding the sounds that they can hear in tricky words.  I felt a bit redundant at writing time today and not many of them wanted my help!

Every now and again we complete an activity on paper about one of our basic sight words we are learning to read.  Yesterday's word was 'going'.  I thought Eita and Kaci did a fabulous job with their activity!