Cross Country

Cross Country 2014 Week 4

 Great 8 attended the St James Cross Country. The children enjoyed racing, here is a video of our day.

Mt Bruce Reflection

All of the Junior School went to Mt Bruce to learn about the Kiwi and other native birds.

We learnt...

The Kaka is a native NZ bird and it is endangered.

A long time ago there was a bird called a Moa but now it is extinct.

Manukura was born at Pukaha Mt Bruce.

The kaka birds make a mess in their cages.

The Kokako is another N.Z bird.

Wild cats, dogs, rats and stoats kill the birds.

People must look after the kiwis so the stoats, cats and rats don't eat them.

Shapes

In Great 8 we have been learning about shapes and their properties. 

We used squares, triangles, rectangles, circles and hexagons to create our own shape pictures.

I made a roof with a chimney and the circles are the smoke coming out. 

By Kayden

I made a rocket ship and stars.

by Riley

I made a rocket ship flying through space.

by Bryon

I made an icecream and a house.

By Antonia

I made a princess house.

By Latai

I made a kiwi in the bush.

By Mrs Te Amo

Sight word of the week: Can

Kiwi Art

This term we are focusing on using the technique of mixed media to create our beautiful pieces of artwork in Great 8.

Our kiwis and their habitats were inspired by our inquiry, and the stories of kiwis we have been reading in class.

We are very proud of our kiwis. We hope you are too. Leave us a comment of what you think.

The Kiwi lives in the forest. 
The Kiwi is a nocturnal bird. 
The Kiwi has a long beak and three sharp claws. 
The Kiwi eats slugs and berries. 
Facts written by Great 8

Inquiry - Tuatara

Did you know?

Tuataras are nocturnal. That means they sleep during the day and are wide awake at night.

Tuatara means 'spines on the back'.

Tuataras eat wetas, bugs, spiders and crickets.

Mt Bruce Writing

On Thursday we wrote about our trip. We had to choose which was our favourite experience. This is what we choose.

I liked the kiwis and the eggs at Mt Bruce. 

By Byron

I liked seeing the kiwis.

By Riley

I liked seeing the birds and the eels at Mt Bruce.

By Antonia

I liked looking at the eels.
By Corban

I liked seeing the kiwis at Mt Bruce.

By Latai

I liked seeing the movie about the kiwi at Mt Bruce.

by Kaden

Pukaha Mt Bruce

On Wednesday as part of our finding out in Inquiry, the junior team visit Pukaha Mt Bruce nature reserve. Here is what we saw.

Before we went to Mt Bruce we read a story about Manukura the white kiwi, who was born at Mt Bruce. We got to see Manukura for real and learnt alot of fact about Kiwis. Here are some of those facts.

Here is a video of Mr Guy and Mrs Te Amo feeding the eels. Mr A also fed the eels too!

Sight word of the Week: Said

This is our poem for the week.

Discovery Time - Week 1

This Friday, Rooms 8, 9 and 10 had our first discovery session.  

Discovery is all about us trying to create, explore and work on problem solving activities by ourselves, with just a little guidance from teachers if it gots a bit too tricky for us. 

We are also working on our Key Competency skills. There are 5 of them: thinking, using language, symbols, and texts, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing. This week we focused on Managing self. We had to think about our own actions and if something wasn't going right, what we could do to change it, not other people.

There were a lot of interesting things to do during discovery this week...

Painting

Gardening with Mrs Edwards

PMP

(developing physical and sensory movement)

Book Making

with just 1 piece of paper.

Here are the instructions we followed.

Construction

using different mediums

Making Toast

independently... breakfast is served!

Paper dolls

Caterpillar Maths

This week in Great 8 we have been ordering numbers up to 10 from smallest to largest. We are super at order them when they are all mixed up like this:

5   8   4   1   10   9   3   7   6   2

but we found it a bit trick when some of them were missing and we had to order them when they looked like this:

2    9    4    6

One way we practiced getting better at this maths skill was playing these games as a class as a warm up for maths.

  

Here is some caterpillar art inspired by one of our maths games we created using our ordering number knowledge.