John Bevan Ford Exhibition

Last week we visited the Suter Gallery to look at the John Bevan Ford Exhibition. As always Esther's workshop was much enjoyed by the children and the adults. We will be finishing off the backgrounds for our manu pictures later this week so watch out for them up on the wall. On Friday we wrote recounts of our visit, here is Will's:

Last Tuesday we went to the Suter. We put patterns on pieces of paper which had birds on them. After that we did a humungous jigsaw puzzle. Everything made me feel happy.

Take a look at us working as a team on the puzzle.

Our digraph for last week was 'ng' and we chose to use an 'ing' poem as this week's digital movie. Can you recognise the tune we are singing to?

This week we will be busy working on our masks from Thailand ready for the mask parade next term. Lots of bits need painting and any help would be much appreciated. In "Fairy Tale Citizens" inquiry topic we will continue to set the scene by thinking about what makes a good citizen. keep checking our display in the reading corner to see how we are progressing through the SAUCE model of inquiry.
In literacy we will be revising the digraph 'qu' and adding the last squares to our class quilt whihc we started last term. We will be learning about capital letters and proper nouns and our tricky words will be 'give' and 'gave'. In maths we will be starting a 2 week unit on measurement by having a look at length.
Reminders
Monday: Library books due back
Wednesday : Walk To School Day
Friday 25th September: Folk Dancing Performance in Trinity Hall 2-3pm, all parents welcome.

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

On Tuesday of last week we had a surprise visit from the poet Greg O'Connell. He shared three of his poems with us: Zoom Tube, The Sink and A Spider's on the World Wide Web. The poem Zoom Tube was the inspiration for art this week. We created a water slide mosaic after having looked at pool paintings by David Hockney. If you want to find out more about Greg's work check it out at http://www.gregoconnell.com/

Any visitors to our school on Friday would have had a big shock to see so many wacky hair styles. All the fun was in aid of raising money for Daffodil Day to help cancer sufferers. Can you name the owners of the wacky hair styles in this picture?

Here we are being helped by a school council member to add our gold coins to the daffodil coin trail.

Also on Friday we had our second Fun Food Friday morning, this time learning how to make French Toast...yum!

In the afternoon we started planning the photo books that our Room 5 buddies will be helping us to make. We then shared our digital story about visually impaired poeple and Nelson Central School with our buddies and our mums and dads. If you missed it take a peek below.

Next week we will be revsing the digraph 'ng' and learning about proper nouns. Our tricky words will be 'where' and 'were'. We will be setting the scene for our new inquiry topic on fairy tales and continuing our P.E. program of folk dancing and large ball skills. In maths we will be developing speedy recall of number facts to 10. In Te Reo Maori we will be putting together our display of kidpix and tuxpaint drawings linked to classroom objects. Art this week is top secret!?! Don't forget to come along to the Suter with us on Tuesday and have a look at the John Brevan Ford exhibition: He Aho Tangata: The Human Threads.

Reminders

Monday: Library books due back

Tuesday 1-3pm Suter Gallery visit, helpers needed

Wednesday: Walk To School Day

The Postman

Last week we celebrated our first birrthday in Room 11 when Laura-Joy turned 6. We shared balloons, fairy bread and popcorn and did a special Maori version of the Hoki Toki dance.

We continued to use the information acquired in our inquiry unit along with the green thinking hat to help us come up with ideas to help make Nelson Central School a better place for visually disabled friends. This week we will put these ideas into a digital format and a letter to send to Dr Potaka and Chrisitine.

On the theme of letter writing we now have our very own Room 11 postbox. The collection times are Monday-Friday 2.55pm. If you want to send a letter to a Room 11 friend check out the rules on the top of the postbox. If anyone has old envelopes that we could reuse please pass them onto Tracy. Our poem last week was "The Postman" to celebrate our new postal service. Have a listen on the clip below.

This week our tricky words are 'there' and 'these' and we are sorting out the difference between the 'th' and 'f' sound. We will also be looking at what a noun is and linking this to our Te Reo work on classroom objects. In maths we will continue to work on instant recall of basic facts to 10.

Check out the new links on the right of our blog to Little Animals Activity Centre and Digraph poems. Don't forget that Friday is Wacky Hair Day with a gold coin collection going towards the daffodil cancer fund.

Reminders

Monday: Library books are due back

Wednesday: Walk to school day

Friday 28th August Wacky Hair Day

Tues 1st September Suter visit 1.00 John Bevan Ford, Maori Art , helpers needed.

Library Week

These pictures were from our visit to the Suter Art Gallery to look at the Bing Dawe exhibition about some of our less loved animals. We had great fun making our own clay models of birds and can't wait until Esther has fired them in her kiln and we can paint them.

During the week we continued to acquire information for our inquiry unit by interviewing Jane, who helps us in our classroom and is visually impaired. We asked her about the things around school that help her and ideas she had for improvements.

We then used this knowledge and de Bono's yellow thinking hat to list all the great things at NCS that help visually impaired friends to get around, learn and play just like the rest of us. Finally we photographed all our ideas. This week we will using the green thinking hat to help us come up with some creative ideas for improvements around the school.

On Friday we celebrated Library Week by dressing up as our favourite book characters. We shared our costumes with our other friends at the Kowhai assembly.

This week we will be revisiting the digraph 'th' and looking at the different sounds it can make e.g 'th' as in 'thumb' and 'th' as in 'this'. In maths we will be focusing on instant recall of number bonds to 10 as a whole class as well as continuing our specific focus for each group. This week's social skill is " Doing Our Best", look out for our ideas on this around the classroom later in the week.
Reminders
Monday: Library books are due back
Wednesday: Walk to school day
Friday 28th August Wacky Hair Day
Tues 1st September Suter visit 1.00 John Bevan Ford, Maori Art , helpers needed

Acquiring Knowledge

Last week we were busy acquiring knowledge for our topic on Visual Impairment. On Tuesday Anne and her guide dog, Peddie, came to talk to us. We learnt that you must not touch a guide dog when it is working and that Anne can tell Peddie which way to go by using her voice or pointing her feet in the correct direction. Why do you think her cane is so shiny in the picture below?

On Thursday Mike came to talk to us about all the sports he still takes part in even though he can only see out of a 1/4 of one eye. He rows, plays cricket with a special ball that makes a sound as it moves and has even taken part in a Marathon in New York!

We used the knowledge we have gathered so far to think about the best way to send a thank you to our visitors. Our ideas included sending soap and flowers as they could smell them, sending one of our fish sculptures for them to feel and making a voice recording for them to listen to our thank you. We will be working on these items this week and sending them off on Friday. The picture below shows us working on the paper fish sculptures, adding tissue paper scales. Come and see the finished fish in Room 11.

On Friday we acquired more knowledge when we went to visit the Science Fair in Rooms 1,2,7 and 8. Thank you to our older friends who explained their experiments very clearly. Here we are learning about seeds.

Also on Friday we learnt how to make toast and very much enjoyed eating the results. We had such a great time that we have decided to include a special Friday toast spot on a weekly basis. If you have interesting, nut free, toast toppings to share please send them in to add to our collection. We all wrote our own instructions explaining how to make toast and used these to make a class digital story.

This week we will be writing questions to ask an expert about the things around Nelson Central School that make it easier for visually impaired people and any ideas they have for improvements.

Our sound for this week is 'ch' and we will be starting to look at alphabetical order and capital letters. We will be looking at the poem Caterpillar Crunch and making 3D hanging caterpillar sculptures. On Tuesday we are off to the Suter to look at an exhibition about animals and have a go at modelling with clay. In maths we will be practicing instant recall of doubles to 10 and in P.E. we are starting our unit on large ball skills. On Friday we will be celebrating Library Week by all dressing up as a book character, remember to bring in the book that your character is from if you can.

Reminders
Monday: Library books are due back
Wednesday: Walk to school day
Tues 11th August Suter visit 1.00 Bing Dawe, Animals and Sculptures, helpers needed

Friday 14th August Book Character Dress Up Day
Tues 1st September Suter visit 1.00 John Bevan Ford, Maori Art , helpers needed

Maori Language Week

On Wednesday of last week we had the chance to try out our miniball skills with Dallas from the Jack Robins Stadium. If you are interested in taking part in more sessions please contact Sheryl in the office. Have a look at how we got on and what a great 'can do' attitude we all had. Well done Room 11!

In the afternoon we looked at different types of sculpture and made our own paper shape sculptures. Check out our individual blogs to see the results.

We continued the 'Acquiring Knowledge" part of our inquiry topic by having a go at eating our morning tea blindfolded. We soon realised how taste and touch helped us to work out what we were eating. We also wrote effective questions to ask our visually impaired expert when they visit us next Tuesday.

As this has been Maori Language week we have shared a number of different Te Reo activities. Elmas read us a story about finding friends called Hohepa te Puru (Joseph the Bul.l). He also taught us a counting game and we made a digital story of the counting song 'Tahi is One'

To finish off the week watched an episode of Sponge Bob in Maori.

Next week we will be revisiting the sound 'sh' and ordering words in sentences to make sense. Check out the Making Sense' game on the Roy The Zebra website accessible through 'links for kids' on our Nelson Central homepage. Our tricky words will be 'away' and 'when' and we will be writing instructions to make toast. In numeracy we will continue skip counting in 2's and learn about odd numbers. Our work on sculpture will continue using paper, this week we will be making fish.

Reminders

Monday: Library books are due back

Wednesday: Walk to school day
Tues 11th August Suter visit 1.30 Bing Dawe, Animals and Sculptures, helpers needed

Tues 1st Septemnber Suter visit 1.30 John Bevan Ford, Maori Art , helpers needed

Parent helper slot available Tuesdays 9-10.30

100 Days of School

This week we began "setting the scene" for our inquiry topic on "Rights for the Disabled". We discussed what being disabled means and experienced what it would be like in various situations. We had a go at painting with our feet.............

...... and walking around blindfolded with the help of our Room 5 buddies.

On Wednesday afternoon we met some new friends from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They are at NMIT for 7 weeks studying English and looking at sustainability in New Zealand. We showed them our digital story of "10 Ways to Save The Planet" and they showed us a Vietnamese duck dance!

Thursday was the much anticipated 100th Day of School. A fabulous time was had by all despite the wet weather outside. We made 100 Day crowns with 100 pictures on them.

Jenny brought in 100 soft toys........

...which we counted by sorting into groups of 10.

As a special treat at the end of the day Will's dad and Nico's mum led a sing-a-long on their ukeleles accompanied by plenty of enthusiastic parents. What a fabulous experience for us all, we are already planning another one for the end of the year! Thank you to everyone for all the amazing 100 Days projects you have produced with the children at home.

This week we will be starting the "acquiring knowledge" phase of our inquiry by writing effective questions to ask visually disabled experts. In literacy we will be revisiting the digraphs ou oi ue and er. Our tricky words will be 'you' and 'away'. We will be learning to write simple instructions about our before school jobs and writing some more thank you letters. In maths we will be practicing our number bonds to 10 and skip counting in 2's. Folk dancing starts this week so start practicing those side steps and skips.

Finally thank you to everyone for booking their parent interview times using the new online system and I look forward to sharing your child's successes with you in the coming week.

Reminders

Parent interviews Mon, Tues, Wed

Monday: Library books due back

Wednesday: Walk to school day