Just keep swimming

Our swimming lessons this year couldn't have come at a better time! With 6 new children, it was the perfect opportunity to have some fun together is a different environment other than the classroom. Within our hour block we had a 30 min lesson and 30 mins to play and develop our confidence.

Swimming is an important skill to master and a difficult one. The children showed excellent resilience and perseverance with some of the challenges they faced during our lessons. By the end of the four sessions all children were able to put their face in the water and blow bubbles and some were even confident diving to collect weights from the bottom of the pool. They were all excellent listeners and had a good understanding of how to be safe around water.

A big thumbs up!

We're ready to roll

Practicing moving in the water to collect toys and bring back to bucket

Some confident children going under water

A team effort 

One Day a Taniwha

As part of our Maori Inquiry this term, we have been looking at Maori Myths and Legends.  Through these stories, we explain the history, culture and values of Maori people.
Maori didn’t have a written language, so information was passed on through spoken narratives. A Myth or Legend is a story that explains a natural phenomena. The legends we have been reading have all had one thing in common...The Taniwha.

Taniwha can be protectors of people or land or they can be terrifying creatures. After looking at artists different interpretations of the taniwha, we had a go at designing our own. This then led on to sculpting taniwha from clay. We were patting, pounding and shaping all the while developing hand, eye co-ordination and finger and hand muscles. We have some very creative children who have an eye for detail. We then wrote descriptions of our taniwha, deciding which type of personality they might have and their physical features.

Shaping our clay

Adding little details

Moulding different features

'My Taniwha has scales on his back'

A scary face for a scary taniwha

                  

Reading in Room 6

We have our reading sessions 4 x per week for an hour. We start with a 'hotspot' on the mat where we practice our sounds, decode words and comprehend stories and pictures; teaching the strategies we use in reading. There are fun activities set up around the room that develop literacy skills as well as fine motor skills, oral language and social interactions. Each child is called up in their group to read with the teacher. Together we look at the front cover and make predictions about what the story is about. We point to each word as it is read. At the end of the book we discuss the main story line and comprehend what we have read.

Making letters and spelling words with Play Dough

Practice letter formations in shaving foam

Initial sounds Bingo. We make letters to the initial sounds of a picture

Story telling through pictures

Developing fine motor skills and letter formation

Retelling stories we know

Gruffalo Crumble

The past 2 weeks have been spent immersing ourselves in the Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. We have written descriptions of characters, practiced using 'said' in our writing and made Gruffalo Crumble. From this experience we were able to write a set of instructions and become food critics for the day explaining what we did and didn't like about the dessert. Our team work was wonderful, taking turns and sharing out the responsibilities. We have some real expert chefs in our class!

Naia peels the apples whilst Shelby carefully cuts them

Mixing the fruit with the cinnamon

Sprinkle the Crumble on top!

Jackson enjoying the fruits of his labour

Naia gave it a go but wasn't too keen.

Cross Country

On Friday 18th of August we all hopped on a bus and headed out to Five Forks school to compete in the Combined Country Schools  Cross Country. We had been practicing most days after lunch so we were all in peak condition for the race. After some initial nerves, we overcome those butterflied tummies and ran exceptionally well. Check out some of our action shots!

The girls warming up!

Jack and the beanstalk

Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum!

I smell the blood of an Englishman!

Be he alive or be he dead,

I'll grind his bones to make my bread!

Our English genre this term in Narratives so we have been exploring the well known Jack and the Beanstalk. We have read different versions of the story and commented on our preferences explaining why. Some of us have been working on expanding our use of punctuation and noticed that the story had lots of exclamation marks. We came up with our own threats for the Giant.








At this age, visual literacy, drama and speaking and listening are really important parts of the learning process. It improves one's creativity and critical thinking as well as developing language skills. We made puppets and put on puppet shows to our peers orally rehearsing some of our ideas later used in our writing.

Creating our Jack and the Beanstalk puppets

Presenting our puppet shows to the class

Our new pupils were keen to show their skills