Week 9

Hi all,

We hope you had a good Easter with some time to relax.

We have a short week ahead with our usual schedule planned. The children will be bringing home their spelling words, reader and our class story tomorrow. While together this is a lot to get through, we completely understand if your child attempts only one piece of homework each day. Going over any of these things is cementing knowledge that your child has learned during the day, and is also a chance for your child to show you how clever they are. If it becomes stressful or your child is too tired, please don't feel you need to push it.

This week in Maths: Place Value; number formation; some children are focusing on odd and even numbers and addition to 20, and some children are focusing on before and after numbers to 20.

PE: Our current focus is on sending and receiving small and large balls.

Have a great (short!) week, see you tomorrow.

Claire and Amy.

Reminder - Wheels day

Just a reminder that it is 'Wheels Day' tomorrow. (Thursday 23rd March) If your child wants to participate please remember to bring not only your wheels but a helmet too :) 

Hutt Library Trip

What a perfect day for a walk to the Hutt Library! We enjoyed having stories read to us by the lovely librarians and exploring the library for our own books to take back to class. We ended our session by making our own dinosaurs out of bones!

Food Bank

What a great trip to the foodbank today. We each carried a can on our walk down and dropped them into a special box at the foodbank. Thanks again to all our awesome parents and families for donating cans and also our parent help for joining us on our walk :)

Week 8

Fancy Feet Parade

Wow, Our Kowhanga completely cleaned up with our super creative and fancy feet on Friday!  Many thanks for the effort you put in - always a mission for parents (sorry!) but the children had loads of fun and it was well worth it.  Thanks also for supporting the fundraising committee on  Ice-cream Day  - it certainly topped off Fun Filled Friday.  

  

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Hot Cross Buns

Last week Gina and Liz joined us and made Hot Cross Buns with the kids using process cooking.  This involves each child measuring and mixing their own hot cross bun.  Messy work but excellent results.  Big thanks to Gina and Liz for giving up their time.  

  

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Walk to the Foodbank

This Monday 21st March we are walking to the Lower Hutt Foodbank to deliver our fabulous collection of cans to families in need.  Are you available to walk with us?  We would love your company. 

Chicken Pox

We have two confirmed cases of Chicken Pox in our Kowhanga!  If your child isn't immunised and hasn't had Chicken Pox you may want to check out symptoms on the Ministry Of Education website: 

http://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/conditions-and-treatments/diseases-and-illnesses/chickenpox

Wheels Day

Next Thursday 24th March the full school will be holding a Wheels Day, and our syndicate will be involved in this during the first part of the day (9-10.30am).  Your child can bring any wheels they choose to school: a bike, scooter, skates or a skateboard. If possible please park wheels outside Room 6.   Children will need to bring a helmet to school with any wheels. Thanks. 

Sentences

Big thanks for spending time reading our class sentence with your child. We will be using these sentences in class in a variety of ways, with a focus on word families, punctuation and fluency.  

Room 4 to the Hutt Library

Room 4 will be walking to the Hutt Library on Tuesday 22nd March.  Are there any parents available to join us? We will be leaving at 10.45am and returning at 12.30pm. 

Raspberry Smoothies

Sylvia is joining us on Wednesday afternoon and we are going to make raspberry smoothies. Thanks Sylvia! 

School will break up for Easter this Thursday at 3pm.  We start back on Wednesday 30th March.  

Wishing you a restful weekend! 

Claire and Amy

Ice Cream Day

What a treat having an icecream at lunch today :) Plenty of happy faces!

 

 

 

 

Reading

Hi all, 

You may have noticed that your child brought home a short paragraph today instead of a reader (the paragraph is at the bottom of this post).  This was a shared writing activity and includes a number of high frequency words that we use regularly in our reading and writing. 

We are hoping that you will ask your child to read this to you many times over the next few days.  The aim of this activity is to serve two purposes: 

For our Penguins, Turtles and Frogs we are wanting to cement a number of these regularly used words in their word banks and frequent repetition is a great way to do this.  These children will need to point to each word as they read.  After reading this sentence they could point to random words and read them. 

For our Ants, Starfish and Caterpillars we are wanting to increase the speed at which the children read (fluency) and to read with smoothness and expression.  We tell the children that we want to read like we are talking.  This involves the children taking in more than one word at a time ), and a great way to develop this skill is to practise a familiar text many times over.  We are also hoping that these children take note of punctuation and read the text accordingly. 

Perhaps you could put this sheet somewhere that is easily visible (e.g. on the fridge).  We are also hoping that the speed at which they read increase each day - when they are succeeding with the text you could time them, or record their reading.  This can be a great motivator. 

Each week we will send home a new paragraph.  This may be shared writing, a passage from a story or a poem.  Many thanks in advance for your time on this.

"Today we are in green. We are in green because we like to dress up! We have no sun but we can still have fun. I bet it will still be wet on Monday"

Junior Syndicate Foodbank Collection

Thank you for the wonderful support for this project. We have well exceeded our challenge of collecting 100 cans for the Foodbank!

Now we are up to delivering our collection for the Foodbank. This is going to happen on:

Monday March 21st - Rooms 9, 6, 7, 5 and 4.
Room 9 & 6 will leave together around 9am and then Rooms 7, 5 and 4 will leave soon after with 5-10 minute intervals between each class so that we can stagger our arrivals at the Foodbank. We estimate that the walk and delivery will take about an hour.

As with all our walks we welcome parent help with safety and supervision. Please advise your child's teacher if you can help. Each class will need a minimum of 2 extra adults.

This Friday...

Fancy Feet Day:
Come to school with decorated feet/shoes to link in with out Movin' March activities.

Also....

Ice Cream Day:
Bring $1 for an ice cream supplied by the fundraising group at lunchtime!

Shapeshifter

On Monday Room 4 and 5 went to the Shapeshifter exhibition. We loved seeing all the interesting sculptures. Here are some photos of our favourites below. 

This sculpture is called 'Strange Fruit'. Each dog tag is hand stamped with military personnel's details from the Vietnam War. 

The sculpture of the bottom left was three different sized bowls that made different sounds when you hit them with. 

The sculpture on the bottom right was a eagle made out of driftwood, this was a favourite of many. 

What a fabulous day exploring all the different sculptures. Thank you again to our amazing parent help on the day, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! 

Food Bank Collection

Do you think the junior syndicate can get to 100 cans before Easter? 

Remember to keep brining in cans, our pyramid in our Kowhanga is getting pretty tall :)