Thursday 28 August 2014

Our dress up day

Today we had a dress up day for the book fair and to raise money for Paraparaumu school which had a bad fire.
Robin and Samdi looked so funny as the Bananas in Pyjamas,
We looked amazing in our costumes.

Cruze can write an awesome story

Cruze has been working for some time on a VERY long story in his Reading Recovery lessons. Every day he has come back to class to report how many words it had...and was very proud of his achievement...as he should be. Finally the story is ready to be published and here it is. It has 203 words!!!

Tuesday 26 August 2014

Sentences have one idea, fullstops, and capital letters

We have been focusing on what a sentence is. It is very hard to know where to put fullstops and capital letters if you don't really know what a sentence is!! A sentence has one idea in it. So we have been rereading our writing and checking we are enclosing one idea with a capital letter at the start and a fullstop at the end.
Riley made a really good job of his writing the other day and not only wrote proper sentences but also showed his writer's voice as well. Here is his writing about Joe's trip to England...
"Joe is so lucky. He went to England and Paris. Joe went up a castle. The castle was very tall."

Friday 22 August 2014

Columbian treasures

Daniela's motherc ame to tell us about Columbia on Thursday. How they venerate their craftsman, have over 700 festivals a year - one per day at least, and love music and dancing. Here she is showing the children a beautiful gold and emerald necklace and bracelet that has been passed down through their family for four generations.
She began to teach the children to dance...and wants to come back to give them a proper lesson. We can't wait.


Tuesday 19 August 2014

Music with Jenny

Today the class had their music lesson and Jenny brought the xylophones and glockenspiels. They played a game where they took turns to play in a group of four. They were just tapping away at random notes and it sounded lovely. Here is a sample.

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Pick a colour

We have been practising writing a proper sentence. A sentence needs to have
- a capital letter at the start
- one idea 
- a full stop at the end - it tells our reader that is the end of that idea and time to stop and take a breath

Today we made these cool fortune tellers like Rona showed us at Sharing time. We had to write eight ideas all together. But we had to write one at a time one each triangle.

Thursday 7 August 2014

Lion dance puppets

(Gg) The lions are from China. (Aaliah) People dressed up as them in china to look like lions. (JUliette) They dress up to celebrate the new year. Eric said on our blog there is a lion dance video to watch.
brooke. We coloured them in and then we cut them out and then we put the sticks on them. (Faolan) we folded pieces of paper on each other. Maia - the folded paper turned out bouncy like a spring. 
We are very pleased with them. josharn - they look awesome. 
We got to show them to room 7,6 and 4.

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Ping came to tell us about China


We found out they used to have single houses where she comes from but now they have big blocks. They eat dumplings. We tried the dumplings and as usual some of us liked them, and some of us didn't and some of us aren't sure! We found out they use chopsticks and that using them makes your brain work better! No more spoons for us!  They don't have sweets like us, they like to have cooked sweet things more like a pudding.

The NED show

Today we had a visit from the NED show. The main message was never give up, keep on trying. Be brave. Gary did some amazing tricks with his yoyo.  He asked us to think about making good choices so we can be champions.
NED stands for
N- never give up
E - encourage others
D - do your best

Never giving up means you have to listen, do your homework, and keep on trying because everything you learnnis yours forever.
He reminded us that you can help (or hurt) people with the words you say. When you give someone a compliment it makes you feel good too.
A pencil helps us remember to do your best. The rubber on the top reminds us we make mistakes but you can rub it out, have another go and learn from your mistake and move on. 

He made Arisha a balloon hat that he called brain fireworks cos that is what happens when you learn something new.
When the show finished we came back and made NED posters to take home.

Sunday 3 August 2014

All about India from Eric's mum - Preeti

Preete - Eric's mum came to talk to us about life in India. They have a national language called Hindi but there are 29 states each with their own languages. Eric speaks, his own state language, Hindi AND english!  Eric's family comes from Caralah in the south of the continent.  She bought in lots of examples of the spices they use for different meats. Some of them are HOT.  Curries have lots of spices and if one is missing from the mix the curry won't taste right. In NZ although we might come from different places in NZ we all have the same culture (mostly) but in india every state has a different culture, different food, different clothes.  It is part of indian culture to have the whole family - mum and dad, their parents, all the children all living to together to look after the old people because it is a disgrace to leave the old people on their own. Lots of respect for the elders. The women are meant to do the housework...some things are slowly changing. In the north of the country the rich are very rich and the poor are very poor. 
The national animal is the tiger. If you see an  elephant ornament with tusks it is s boy. The boy elephants are used for festivals and they get painted and decorated. They take part in the festivals for many years and they enjoy it. Elephants help with work and are like part of the family. The mahout is the person who looks after the elephants. 
The sari is all hand embroidered. The piece of fabric would stretch right across the classroom. Now that Preeti is grown up she can wind it round herself. She had beautiful sparkles on her forehead called bindi. She has a beautiful gold necklace that she got from her husband when she got married like a wedding ring. Some cultures the girl wears a ring on their middle toe. 
Eric's family is christian. There are more christian's in the south than in the north.
Onhm is a hindu new year celebration. The people draw beautiful designs on the ground in front of their house and colour it in with whole flowers! The festival is in August.

Rangoli patterns and geometry

Look at the fabulous patterns we made today.
Last week we learned that people in India make rangoli patterns outside their houses during festivals. At the moment in maths we are learning about geometry and shapes. Today we had a go at making rangoli patterns with maths shapes on our tables. It was really interesting to see all the different ideas and we began to see how shaoes can fit together.