Harry Potter day

Maths weekly challenge

Usually during our weekly maths rotation Room 24 children do a weekly challenge of basic facts and word problems. This term Mrs Fulford is trying something a little different. She has set a few different challenges and asked us to solve them using class equipment or construction material.

Here is one that children loved...

HELP!

The herbivores need to escape to the next island to get away from the TRex. What can you create to help them?

At the start of the week we talked about what we knew about dinosaurs. Joseph was our expert and explained the difference between herbivores (plant eaters)and carnivores (meat eaters like a TRex) We also talked about ideas we had around how to transport/help the herbivores. We had ideas like a bridges, boats, a car which turns into a boat and planes. Here are some photos of what the children created.

We also had great looking bridges with guards, control doors and one which worked on weight so the TRex would fall because he was so much heavier than the smaller herbivores. 

Our Cultural Festival

Last night was our cultural festival – a celebration of our Pasifika cultures. It was amazing!

Normally only the senior children perform in the festival, although our lovely tutors can choose children from the two other syndicates to participate. These are normally family members of our tutors. This year our Niue tutor choose Dayton to participate in her group. Dayton had to learn four new dances and songs, as well as perform in front of an audience of over 400 people. Dayton was a little bit nervous but did a great job. 

Here is a short glimpse of his performance.

Well done Dayton! We are so proud of you!

Silver eye

Room 24 did some investigating into the bird which hit our window.

It was a Silver Eye which is also known as a Wax Eye or Tauhou. 

The Silver Eye were self introduced in the 1800s and now live throughout New Zealand. They have made the forest their home but are now among the most common bird in the city too. 

Facts

Slightly smaller than a sparrow, the silvereye is olive-green with a ring of white feathers around the eye.

Males have slightly brighter plumage than females. Plumage is it's feathers.

Silvereyes mainly eat insects, fruit and nectar.

It is classified as a native species even through it first arrived her in early 1800's.

It's Māori name, tauhou, means 'stranger' or more literally 'new arrival'.

Our investigation

This morning Room 24 were a little sad. A poor little innocent bird hit our ranch slider and sadly pass away. Here is the little guy.

This got us thinking about our new class, which has a lot of windows. We learnt from talking and researching this morning that birds can not see glass, which is a problem in Room 24. So we decided that next term we are going to investigate how to solve this problem.

The other question that came out of this poor bird’s death was what type of bird it is… Do you know? We are also going to investigate the birds we see around our school.

Here is a good link that you can use to find out what is around your house.

https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/birds/birds-a-z/

http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/

Let's go fly a kite!

Today during exploring time was the perfect kite flying weather! After the last few weeks working with Wayne’s kite, it was time to create our own. Thanks to Miss Qin, the children had a great time designing and making kites today. Miss Qin is our student teacher in Room 24. We are her first proper class she is working with. Miss Qin researched kites, tested some at home and then let us loose! There were some great designs. As the children worked through the kites (making and testing), they realised that some were not strong enough, some had holes for the string in the wrong place and finally that rain and paper kites are not a good match! (We had a sudden Auckland down pour in the middle of our exploring time) However, that did not stop the smiles, laughter or fun! Mrs Fulford was impressed with the testing and thinking that went on during the course of the kite making, as well as the creative ways of improving the kites.

Here are some photos and videos of the process…

Simote's kite was very cool - it could do loop - d - loops!

Room 24 and Room 25 have been learning about space. Today during exploring time Phayton and Logan created their very own planet. It was an interesting planet with every type of storm you could imagine. Mrs Fulford was slightly disappointed that there was not a chocolate storm though. The boys problem solved how to created the rings around the planet. By working cooperatively and using the construction material,  they managed to make an amazing looking planet with a very cool ring. The next step is to paint it. Here is the almost finished product...

Well done boys!

Room 12 - we love having our newest children join us to explore. Today Mrs Fulford noticed two very focused boys from Room 12.  Both were playing by themselves but were so absorbed in what they were they didn't notice anyone else. The first boy was Meki who was fascinated by the lego and wooden people today. Mrs F watched him for a while as he set out the blocks and created furniture for the people then built them a house using the lego. WOW! Here is a video of his play...

While he worked some of the older children stood back and observed him, commenting on how cute he was but also how focused he was in his play. Well done Meki -maybe next time we could get some big boxes for you to see what you can make for the people. 

Pita was the other child who was interesting in the water play today. He was pouring and measuring using the different water play equipment. 

Here are some more photos from our day...

Several of the girls started a singing group and were practising on the playground. They would like to entertain us at our next exploring day. Mrs F and Mrs Martin sadly didn't make the cut to join the group.

 

The boys were busy making panikeke - yum!

Freyda found the scales from our friday maths session and began measuring different objects around the room.

Seiaemoe and Mercy - these two girls worked together today with Seiaemoe been the expert and Mercy the learner as Seiaemoe taught Mercy to make an origami hat which turned into a boat. Seiaemoe was also teaching some of the other children to make  an origami game called a chatter box. 

Mrs Fulford is going to find some more origami for the girls to do.

Olivia was also busy creating games. She made her own version of tic/tac/toe with counters and game board. Mrs Fulford is going to laminate it so we can use it in our class. 

Tūhura - Explore!

Kia ora and welcome to Te wiki o te reo Maori. This Tūhura/exploring day we had so much fun. Mrs Fulford thought it was beautiful to see the Tuakana - Teina relationships happening with the children. Here are photos and videos of it.

Today we had our usual exploring activities like playdough, painting, blocks, sports equipment, water play, construction and art. Look at the smiles...

Mrs Martin and Mrs Fulford also added a few new things in honour of te wiki o te reo maori. Today we also got out the rakau, poi, weaving and string games. 

Here are some photos and videos...

Tekau - a few weeks ago Tekau was watching Wayne using the tools to fix the bench outside the library. He ended up helping Wayne. Since then Tekau has been helping Wayne with lots of other jobs around our school. Today Wayne came over at exploring time to get Tekau to help fix some broken skateboards. Tekau had to use the screwdriver to take off the trucks so that they could put them on a new board. Tekau was so proud of himself when he completed the job. 

Tino pai Tekau!

Thanks Wayne for playing dinosaurs with R12 kids while you were waiting.

Michel Mulipola - this week we were lucky enough to have the illustrator, Tekken player and wrestling champ, Michel Mulipola come to our Duffy role model assessmbly. He was an amazing speaker and great role model. Michel shared his story of his path to becoming a comic book illustrator. Here is a taste of his work. This is an illustration in the book Samoan heroes. It is about Ti'iti'i, god of fire who brought fire to thepeople of Samoa after a battle with the earthquake god, Mafui'e. 

Mrs Fulford and Mrs Martin used his talk to inspire the children to create their own comics. They collected different school journals that Michel illustrated and printed out different comic paper. Micheal, Simote and Rose were really keen to try comics. Micheal was very inspired and created a cool comic about Batman. We will publish their finished product.