Grandparents Day

There was a buzz of excitement around the school as grandparents and whānau were coming into our classes. We were welcoming them into our class and sharing our learning.  We were doing our question of the day.

Question of the Day:

If you had to measure your height in Oreos,

how many Oreos tall do you think you would be?

How could you work it out?

We found out that an Oreo cookie was 1cm thick.We used blocks and rulers to work out how tall we all were.

There was lots of thinking and discussions happening.

It was so lovely to have so many of our whānau coming in to our

akomanga. We asked them patai about all sorts of things that

they remembered when they were our age, like school, what did

they do for fun, where did they play, what did they watch on tv and

even if there was colour in the olden days. That got a few laughs.

Tuakana - Teina

Between akomanga 17 and akomanga 18 there is a hub space which we are using before school.  It is an area where we can read, draw, play, talk and work with our friends. We are learning to introduce ourselves to others, ask patai (questions) and make new friends. We are working on our tukana-teina relationships. Here are some of us exploring and building with the new magnets.

Portraits

This year we have a mixed media approach to producing self portraits. We took head shot photos and then slipped them into clear file pockets. Then we used a sharpie to outline our head and shoulders. Next we chose three colours to paint parts of our face. The final step was to lay our painting on top of one of five different coloured backgrounds and select the one that made our work stand out the best. Come into our class to have a look at the finished work on or wall.

What are these?

Do you know what these are? 

What do you notice?

What do you think they might be?

What do you wonder about when you look at this photo?

They are knucklebones. 

A very old game that has made a come back in our class. I wonder if you could find out more information about them.

I was wondering if anyone knows of some other old games that we could learn, especially ones for rainy days.

If you have any ideas please let us know in the comments.

 

Swimming

Everyone at Kirikiriroa ki te rāwhiti te kura (Hamilton East School) gets a chance to swim in our newly painted swimming pool. We sometimes get to have a free swim at lunchtime.

We are learning to float on our fronts and our backs. We are also learning how to blow out bubbles and breathe when we are doing freestyle.

Things we like to do are dolphin dives, floating on our backs, using the boards, splashing lots when we are kicking, gliding across the pool and free time at the end of our lesson.

The Redwood Tree

 We have a beautiful Redwood tree that watches over our kura (school). Our class is lucky enough to have it just out our back door. This is the way we go to join the rest of Kauri team for lunch, go to the whare pukapuka (library), to head to the courts, and the waiting area. As well as the stairs and the slide being a part of korokori tinana (daily fitness).

I wonder how quickly they can run up the stairs and go down the slide?

Welcome to Akomanga 17

Welcome to Akomanga tekau ma whitu. You can find our room on Tōtara whenua, the last classroom in the new block by the bamboo, near the big slide and under our beautiful Redwood tree. While we are found next to all the Tōtara classrooms we are in fact part of Kauri team. They are found at the top of the stairs which makes it easy for us to join the other year five and six tamariki.  

We are lucky enough to have a big deck to work on, which makes our space feel so much bigger. Here are some photos of us learning about some activities that can be found in our room.