Week 7

The way this term is going so quickly is extremely scary - there is really only 2 more full weeks of school left for this 2012 learning year.

We have been very busy trying to construct bridges that are long enough but also tall enough to get the Gingerbread Man over a river safely, the children have been so intent on finding the best way that they and their buddy can achieve this. This is part of our learning about length for Maths.

This is the last formal week for reading. We will continue to do reading but with the Big Books, no readers will come home. If you do happen to find ant readers lying around, we would love them returned.

Library books are also due back by the end of this week.

Enjoy your week
Annette

Week 5

Danika and Anahera handpainting birds on their hands at JET time.

The children have all been working very hard with their learning, everyone is making great gains with their progress, well done everyone.
Last week we looked at the stories of Joy Watson, the children enjoyed looking closely into her books and especially the Grandpa series. They designed a new shirt for grandpa to wear at the beach etc. On Friday we looked at her story - Zita the Zebra- we then pencil sketched an elephant and invented a name for our elephant that could be put into the story.
 This week we will look at the stories and amazing illustrations of Gavin Bishop.
Our maths learning will continue with maths changeovers for number.
Our sound of the week is the three letter blend "scr"
Our word of the week is "yellow"


An umbrella to help a kiwi to fly?

Marshall with his amazing domino track.



Have a great week.
Annette

Week Four

It is getting so scary how fast the weeks are flying past - we are almost half way through the term.

This is also Mr Jones last week with us before he returns to Massey In Palmerston Nth. We wish him all the best with his future teaching career. It has been great to have him working with children at our school.

Last week was such a busy one with the seniors PRep market day being held on Friday. All of Room  4 had an amazing time and a huge amount of money learning took place - no teaching about money can beat having a real life experience with deciding how far the money they had earnt could go.


Tai and Marshall waiting to spend their Bled dollars.



Abby spent some money throwing water bombs at Mr Jones.


 

We completed our pictures for the PTA card/calender fund raiser. These pictures are now being displayed on our wall.

Jorja and Madison had fun spending some money  - they went into the dance tent.

This week we have "every" as our word of the week.
Our sound of the week is "wr"

Have a great week.
Annette

                                           Anahera and Dylan with there wallets and purchases.

Week 2

Sorry about the delay in updating this blog, but we are back on track.

What an amazing day we had yesterday creating fantastic art about flight.The day was cut up into 3 blocks, each block was spent making a piece of art about flight.In Room 3 fantastic kites were made and decorated, in Room 6 hot air balloons with textured baskets, and in room 4 we used the art of Don Binney as motivation to create wonderful backdrops for a kiwi - this will be finished off shortly by inventing a way for our kiwis to fly.A fun day was had by all.



Artists busy creating
 

We are carrying on with our reading, writing and maths along with all our other valuable learning  areas.

 It is great to see the sun again today after the rain and hail yesterday - let's hope it lasts for the rest of the week.

Thanks
Annette

Week 11

Week 10

Marshall helping Anne to identify body parts.

The children all so enjoy going to visit the Life Education Caravan - seeing Anne and Harold, but also learning about why we are such important people. We will visit the caravan again this week on Wednesday.

All together J.E.T last Friday was its usual success - the children enjoyed discovering in a huge variety of ways - one group discovered and had to persist to complete making the climbing dome that will stay up in our library corner for the week, well done to all of you, it was not an easy task.

On Tuesday morning we have the Dog Safety Officer from the Napier City Council coming to visit us in Room 4, this is all part of our learning about keeping ourselves safe - he will be teaching us what to do when we meet new dogs, to keep ourselves safe and to know how to treat the dog with respect.

It is great having Mr Jones in our room on placement from Massey University in Palmerston North, the children are really enjoying having another set of hands in the room to help out, as am I!

This week we will stay in our own classes for Maths, the learning is based around Geometry and shapes, with a learning unit called "Arty Shapes" - it involves lots of exploring and creating with  2 and 3 d shapes.

Our sound of the week is "bl"
Our word of the week is "now"

Have a great week.
Annette

Week 9

This week we welcome Mr Jones into our room, Brendan is a graduate student teacher who is on placement with me in Room 4. The children are excited about having another teacher in the room with me to assist their learning.

I was so very proud of all the children and their efforts during our cross country run on Wednesday - their resilience and persistence was fantastic, let alone the health benefits for them all.

Our Keeping Ourselves Safe learning has provided a forum for some beneficial discussions about this important topic. The children treated the topic in a responsible and respectful way. Thank you also to Kevin Marshall - our local police education officer who assisted with some of these sessions.

Thank you also to Rachael, who came in and shared with us some of her experiences and knowledge she had from her days as a marine aquarist ( marine education officer.) The children had lots of awesome questions and were all very interested in the knowledge she had to share.

This Wednesday sees Anne and the Life Education Caravan arriving at school - this will follow on fantastically and compliment our Keeping Ourselves Safe learning.

Enjoy your learning week.

Week 8

I know I say it each week – but what a busy week we have just had, and another busy week is coming up.

This past week saw us look at sharks – what amazing creatures- and the children have astounded me with their desire to learn more and more intricate facts. We had a group of visiting maths teachers from the Masterton region visit our school on Thursday. They were very impressed by our children, their maths skills and their amazing behaviour.

“Week 8” is gearing up to be very busy. This week sees us begin our Keeping Ourselves Safe unit – Kevin Marshall, our local police education officer will be in the school taking session.  These sessions look at ways to enable children to keep themselves safe. Tuesday ( weather permitting) we will hold our Bledisloe Cross Country event. We have been practicing for the past few weeks. The juniors run starts at approx. 12.00pm – this time is just an estimate as it depends on how quickly the other events are completed. So if you are free and would like to come and cheer on the children we would love to see you out on the field.

Our sound of the week is “sm”

Our word of the week is “can’t”

Maths in Room 4 continues to look at groups of, in relationship to multiplication.

Have a great week.

Week 7

Another busy week has flown past. We have begun practicing for the school cross country event – everyday (weather permitting) we are going for a run around the field. This event will take place before the end of the term.

Spooner Shield takes place this Friday. Although the competition is for Year 5 & 6 children, we do manage to get around a couple of times throughout the day and support our Bledisloe Teams.

The past week has been really busy, the children have all enjoyed learning about “whales” and we are now moving onto learning about sharks. We have begun to understand what words like, diet, habitat and description mean. We wrote a basic joint report with a friend about a whale.

Wow, we managed to get all our marbles in our class jar this week, and we received our treat on Thursday. The children are already planning the reward for when we next fill the jar.

We are getting so good at the Maori verse for our school song that Hoani has composed for us. The words reflect so beautifully our Bledisloe 3R’s.

Our sound of the week this week is “th”

Our word(s) of the week is “thank you”

My maths class will move onto looking at multiplication, this means understanding that 2 x 3 is actually 2 groups of 3.

Have a great week.

 

Week 6

It has been so nice to see the sun today, and especially to be able to get out on the field at lunchtime. Let's hope for a fine spell of weather for the next while to dry everything out properly.

We have enjoyed learning about whales this past week - there are so many interesting facts about these amazing creatures. We now all understand the difference between toothed whales and Baleen whales and their diet.



Emily and Olivia blowing bubbles for an art activity during J.E.T.

"All together" J.E.T. on Friday was a great learning time - Room 4 children were fantastic Responsible, Respectful and Resilient Bledisloe Citizens helping the younger children.

Marshall and Anahera modelling the clay into sea creatures.

We created whales out of heart shaped pieces of card - the children were amazed that they could make something using only the one shape.

This next week we will begin running on the field ( weather permitting) in preparation for Cross country which will take place before the end of the term.

Our sound of the week is "pr"
Our word of the week is "soon"
Room 4's maths focus is subtracting tens from numbers

Week 5

Wow! The past three days in our whanaungatanga classrooms has been amazing - to say the least. All the children have had great learning experiences along with using the 3 Bledisloe R's in a new environment.
For my whanuangatanga grouping - children were busy exploring the Olympics, along with rowing as our event and Emma Twigg as our NZ athlete. For many of the children , when asked, the highlights were " everything" but when they were asked to be more specific, they enjoyed the Olympics event that was held on Friday with buddy classes. Having to explore "mini" Olympic events - challenging themselves to improve on a personal best. They also commented on the pressure of having other watch them compete - making comparisons to what it would actually be like competing in the Olympics with the world watching you! Designing a rowing boat that included oarlocks, outriggers, sliding seats was an activity many mentioned. This is just the tip of a huge array of comments form the kids.
This week we are back to our usual class groupings. Learning about "under the sea" as our big topic. We will be looking at "whales" as this week's focus.
Our sound of the week is " pl"
Our word of the week is "fast"
The Room Four maths focus continues to be subtraction - looking at different strategies to solve bigger problems.

Enjoy the week ahead.
Annette



An Olympic ( competitors) medal brought in from the Los Angeles Olympics

Week 4

What an great week we have had - even if the weather wasn't so great.

Rhys, Blake and Sakura making submarines from recycled material.

The giant weta Ollie brought in to show us enjoyed climbing on our new place mats

So many great learning situations have happened this past week - the children are so enjoying learning about our under the sea topic and the fasts that go along with different categories of sea life. sea mammals was the focus this past week and will continue to be for the next week.

The children are all doing a fabulous job of their home learning in their books - thank you so much for getting the books back for checking on Fridays. The children love coming and sharing what they have done with me.

This next week the children will spend Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday in their "whanau rooms." All the children have visited this room more than once and know that they will go to this room on Wednesday morning to start the day. The focus for this time is " Olympics 2012 - Follow the Journey." Each room has a member of the NZ Olympic team that they will be following and learning about. Looking at their event - how success is measured, and how they perform at this special event.

On Friday we will be holding our own Bledisloe Olympics ( weather permitting) this will be followed by a sausage sizzle - if you wish to buy a sausage, orders need to be in by Wednesday for ordering purpose.

Readers will come home on Monday and Tuesday only this week  ( due to whanau days.)



Scarlett, Olivia, Emily and Madison busy making sea scenes at J.E,.T time

Have a great week.

Week 2

Wow, what an awesome time we had on Monday and Wednesday in the Real Art Show Truck. The children were amazed and in awe of the art. Art is subjective and the children all had varying ideas of why they liked or dislike certain pieces. Their comments and reasoning was mind blowing. " I like the shark made from the blanket because the man who made it was remembering a happy time."

Children in the Art Truck

Thank you to everyone for your support with the home learning. This is a fun way for the children to reinforce the learning that is happening in the classroom, all the children were so excited to be doing this.
 This week we will continue our learning about "Under the Sea."
Our sound of the week is "th" Our word of the week is "were"
We will go back into our Number changeovers for maths - Room 4 will be looking at adding and subtracting.

Marshall appreciating the Art

Have a great learning week.
Annette

Week 1 Term 3

Another busy learning term is set to begin. We have an exciting new topic to explore along with our other learning. We will also be having a few visitors this term.
A newsletter will be coming home in the first couple of days to update you with what will be happening with regards to home learning books. I am so looking forward to the term ahead.

Enjoy the learning term
Annette

Wow our last day of Term 2. Thank you everyone for your continued support throughout the term.

Below are some photos of our recycled containers we finished painting today.

It was so quiet as we painted that Mrs G was so impressed.

Have a great break and I will see you all next term.


Some of table three painting their containers.

Quality work was the goal.

We have so enjoyed learning about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,the children are wondering what our topic for next term may be. It will be a wait and see.  Annette

Week 10

This term has just flown past - we have had so many amazing learning experiences with both our everyday learning and added extras.

* Rita Palmer visit
* Dinah Harvey visit.
* Rei Hendry visit
* Liz Fitzsimons visit
* Parent /teacher conferences
* Strike visit
* Aquarium trip

Blake playing the recycling game

Busy, busy, busy with our recycling picture frames.



 and that is just to name a few highlights.

Our word of the week is "can't"
This week we will be looking at opposite words in place of a sound of the week.

The maths focus is algebra looking at patterns and relationships - being able to identify a pattern and then continue it .

Have a great week.
Annette

Week 9

What a great learning week we had last week. Dinah Harvey ( maths advisor) was in last Monday assisting with maths groups. Tuesday Liz Fitzsimons was in our room with a new ICT activity for us to do - we are well on the way to having this completed. When it is we will post it onto our blog for you all to see. We also had fun on Friday making musical shakers out of recycled drink bottles, along with reusing old newspapers to make frames for our ICT learning.
Friday was amazing - such great goodie and baddie characters from books that we came dressed up us - Anahera even tried to give us poison apples in her Witch from Snow White costume - she didn't fool us!!!

A selection of our costumes

It was also fun to go to our whanau classes after whole school singing - we met the new members of our class and we read a story to finish off readathon - our story was Michael Recycle - who I just happened to have dressed up as for my goodie from a book.

Monday we are going on our trip to the Napier Aquarium to visit the recycling officer. Hopefully the weather stays fine for our picnic in the park before we go into the aquarium.

Our word of the week is "three"
Our sound of the week is "St"

Enjoy the week ahead.

Batman x 3

Annette

Week 8

What a great week of learning experiences we had last week. Rita Palmer ( literacy advisor) was visiting, she has provided teachers with more interesting ways to add depth to the children's writing. We started making our recycled container's - by putting paper mache over the outside of the old containers.

Table 3 busy with paper mache.

Paper mache is so much fun.

Friday we had altogether JET with Rooms 1,2,3,5,& 6 Lots of fun and discovering happened. It is also great to hear the children discussing our Bledisloe 3 R's in our pre -JET  discussions., esp how to be resilient during this time.

Olivia, Ruben, Scarlett and Abby sharing their "Munch Monsters" at the after Jet discussion time.

Recycled paper planes.

 Notices went home on Friday for our trip to visit the Napier City Council Education officer ( at the Aquarium) This trip will take place on the 18th of June. We do need parents to assist with transport and supervision for this. It also includes a $2.00 charge, ( the additional cost is being met by the school.)

This week we have Di Harvey ( the maths advisor) visiting on Monday, then Liz Fitzsimons is visiting on Wednesday to provide us with an ICT challenge for the next few weeks.

This will also be my last week for parent / teacher conferences.

Also on Friday, after whole school singing, all children will be revisiting their Whanau classroom for a story. This is to compliment our readathon that has been happening for the past week. In Room Four we have been reading more stories each day, some of these have been read by me, some by the children and some on the Interactive White Board. We have also had Heather Murphy come in to read to the children.

This week our maths focus changes to Algebra - looking at patterns.

Our sound of the week is "sp"

Our word of the week is "ready"

Enjoy the learning week

I hope that you have all had a great relaxing long weekend. Winter has certainly settled in. Thank goodness for our fabulous heat pump.

What a busy week we had last week - Rei Hendry  ( art advisor) visited. The children were so excited and motivated by Rei's enthusiasm and knowledge. We are still working on our recycled paper paintings. We used newspaper to tear and paint the parts of our pictures.

Dylan and Emily so engaged in their painting.

Parent /teacher interviews continue - I know I have said before how valuable these are. To be able to share the children's learning and their future goals is fantastic.

This week our sound of the week will be " sl"
Our word of the week is "this"
Our Room Four maths focus continues to be strategies to use adding and subtracting larger numbers.

Rei hendry working with some children.

Enjoy your short week.
Annette

Hoani was happy for us to video ourselves during our Maori lessons this morning - aren't we fabulous singers. The song   "He Tangata"  is about the most important thing in the world being people.

I am enjoying so much catching up with parents at interviews - filling you in on your children's progress. I will be continuing on with these for the next few weeks.
Last week we completed our recycled paper crayon containers. We also started using all the bread tags you had supplies to make photo frames. The children decided that they wanted these painted - so that is the next step.

Dylan adding the bread tags to his photo frame.

Thankfully the weather was so amazing last week, we got out for our big ball skills on Friday. During this time the children go to different stations where they practice catching, throwing, and kicking the large balls skills. We are seeing a big improvement in lots of the children who are now ready to catch or thro before they start - it sounds weird I know, but holding your hands in the right position can make such a difference.

Something to keep in mind for the future is we are going on a trip to visit the Napier Recycling Education Officier - this trip will take place on the 18th of June, and we will be needing parents to assist with transport - more details will come soon.

Our sound of the week this week "tr"

Our word of the week " one"

The maths focus in Room Four continues to be adding larger numbers - leading into to subtracting larger numbers.

Have a good week
Annette

Cassidy, Iriaka, Abby and Danika making paper windmills at J.E.T.time.

 

Week 5

Parent /teacher conferences begin on Monday  - the school interviews site should send you a reminder of your time. I am so looking forward to sharing your child's learning with you, along with their next steps.

What fun we had on Friday turning our old Lucky book brochures into mulch, which we then moulded into new crayon containers - they are presently drying out before we varnish these before using them.

Ohhhhh the mulch is so slimy.

We also designed Rubbish trucks ( out of coloured paper) remembering we are trying to reduce the amount of rubbish we create.

Abby with her rubbish truck.

Friday's whole school assembly was such fun - with "Mighty Bledisloe Kid" sharing with us the 3 Bledisloe R's - Responsibility - Respect and Resilience. The children have been offered the opportunity to enter a competition , making a poster than reflects these key words.( this is only if they want to.)

This week our word ( s) of the week involve the word play, plays, playing and played
Our sound of the week is pl.

Enjoy the week ahead.

Room 4 ready to plant our seeds in our weeded and composted garden.

Annette

Week Four

Wow! What a busy week we have just had. Tuesday we had Rita Palmer ( Literacy Advisor) visiting. She had a lot of great ideas to add detail to our writing. Wednesday we were so privileged to have "Strike" visiting. The are a group of amazing drummers who wowed us all with their energy and skills. ( Don't be surprised if you are asked for a drum set for birthdays - sorry!) Thursday Craig Findlay from Kelly sports visited with Lisa- they showed us some games to play to enhance our ball skills.



Strike performing in the hall on Wednesday.



Room four drummers in action.Tim from Strike had suggested
practicing using pencils - thank goodness it was a wet morning tea -
 then the drumming ended.



Preparation is well underway for your parent/teacher interviews. I am looking forward to sharing with you your child's great learning and their goals for the rest of the year.

This coming week we will be continuing with our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle unit. Thinking about more ways we can reduce the waste that we create at school each day.

Our sound of the week is " gr"
Our word of the week is "was"



Thank you also to everyone who helped contribute to the "asthma society" coin trail. The kids were all excited to get their wrist bands - but it also generated an interesting discussion about asthma and what it is.

Enjoy your week

Blake and Ollie designing a town plan using recycled paper.

Annette

Week 3

Week 2 seems to have flown past - so much happened during the week. Everyone is focused - trying hard to take "responsibility" for their own learning.

Last week we read an amazing book called  "the garbage barge" which retold the story of Long Island in the USA sending out a barge full of their garbage to other states hoping they would bury this rubbish for them. The children all thoroughly enjoyed this story and it certainly provoked so very interesting discussions.

Thank you so much to all the parents who have used our new booking system and booked their Parent / Teacher interviews for later in the month - if you are still wanting to book, either read my earlier posting or pop in and see me, I am only to happy to help.


Our word of the week is " your"

our sound of the week is "dr"

The room four maths focus is adding together groupings of ten e.g. 30 + 20

This week we are also lucky to have a visiting group performing - this cost had been covered by our generous P.T.A.( thank you so much) The show is called "Strike" and they are a group of drummers who I am sure will wow us with their rhythm and beat.

Thank you also for the fantastic positive comments that are being left on our blog - the children love reading these.



Samuel and Marshall playing with the duplo at J.E.T.

 Below are some photos from the past week, thanks to our photographer was Scarlett.

Indigo and Emily with their recycled treasures. Abby and Emily are looking on.

A group of Room 4 girls creating at the play dough table.

Have an great week.
Annette

Parent Teacher Interviews

A quick note to say you can  book a Parent /Teacher interview at wwwschoolinterviews.co.nz  follow the link and the password that came home on the newsletter on Tuesday.
Thanks
Annette

Week Two

It was so great to be back at school and see everyone again, and it was also great to see everyone so pleased to be back.

We had an awesome learning week, the children all had some interesting facts/ideas to share when we had our pre-topic discussion about " Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." We then discussed how the rubbish we create goes to a landfill, and talked about what might happen when this gets full. What we can do to try and stop this happening. Cody came up with an interesting solution -  "we could send it to outer space."

If anyone has bread tags or old letter box flyers we would be able to have put them to good use.

This week I will begin testing for our upcoming parent-teacher interviews. I will let you know asap when the timetable is ready so you can schedule a time. We will also be beginning our maths number change-overs again.

Our word of the week is " one"
Our sound of the week is "cl "


We has a very productive J.E.T time, with a group of children helping to weed our overgrown vegie garden.  Lots of children also chose to help me at luchtime to carry on with this huge task. It will be ready for planting with our seedlings soon.

Below are some photos of J.E.T. from this week

A group of us tearing waste paper in preparation for making paper. 



Rhys and Emily ready to plant our seedlings but... the weeding had to be done first.

Emily busy making her box man from scraps of old paper

Clare showing Danika and Ruben how to begin their box person.

Have a great week.
Annette