Year 6/7 Ukelele Players

At assembly on the last day of term the Year 6/7 ukelele and guitar players gave an item.
'Fish and Chips and Vinegar' is one of our favourite assembly songs.
We all usually sing it as a 3-way round. We think the group did a good job.

What instrument do you play?
What would you like to learn to play?

Custom Glitter Text
Remember to put your clocks forward 1 hour on Sunday morning (26th) for daylight savings time.


See you on October 11.
What will you be doing for your holiday?

Tokomaru School's Conservation Week voicethread

Our friends in Room 1 at Tokomaru School made a voicethread for Conservation Week. This week the B4 students who belong to the Reefton Area School Enviro rangers group made some voice comments on the voicethread.

Patterning: charts and tables

We made patterning charts about legs on bees and spiders and kiwi, wheels on bikes and cars, people in classrooms and fingers on hands. After we drew our pictures we made tables to show the patterns of numbers.

  Jia Jia and Tessa

  Spike and Tristan

                         Ben

                     Mattie

 Dylan and Hamish

                                     Emily and Krystal

Fresh Spring Snow

After the storms of the past few days this is the view we woke up to this morning.

More Capacity

Today we moved around stations and completed some more volume and capacity activities.

At Station 1 we predicted which container held more water, then counted the jugfuls needed to fill each one.

At Station 2 we worked independently completing a graphing worksheet.

At Station 3 we predicted which of 3 boxes had the greatest capacity and which had the least.





We checked our predictions by filling the boxes with cubes, then counted the cubes by putting them into tens and ones.                                              

Our Inquiry

This term each child set their own inquiry question to answer in their topic work with Mrs Wistrand on 'Children of Asia and the Pacific'.

Quite a few children wanted to find out about outback Australia, and we were lucky that
Mrs W @ Harston in Australia, was able to help them.

Mrs W sent over some awesome Powerpoints for the children to use in answering their questions and we are very grateful to her.

Adam's cousin Gabriel also sent him a letter and photos about her life in the outback. She told us that she learns through 'School on the Air'. Her nearest neighbour is 100 kms away. Her best friend lives 5 hours away.

These are some of the posters the children are working on as they answer their questions.

Popcorn and Pyjamas

We used popcorn this week to help us learn about volume.
We could only put 1/2 cup of popcorn kernels into the popcorn maker at a time, so the first measuring task was use different units to measure out half a cup of kernels.

To fill half a cup this is what we needed:

We also found out that a yoghurt pottle equals a half cup.

We cooked two batches of popcorn. The first batch filled the glass bowl.
The second batch filled the plastic bowl and some left-over went into the aluminium bowl.

Did we get the same amount of popcorn in each batch? Did the two bowls together equal the glass bowl? 
Some people thought there was more in the two bowls on the left.
Some people thought there was more in the glass bowl because it was bigger.
A couple of people thought it would be the same, because we put a 1/2 cup of kernels into the popcorn maker each time.

So we measured each batch using litre containers and guess what?
Both batches of popcorn were the same! They each had just under 3 litres of popcorn from just 1/2 cup of kernels.


Now, what to do with the popcorn?
Luckily, the class had earned enough class points for a class reward.
So we had a pyjama party with a movie and popcorn! Yummy!

A Message on our Voicethread

Last term we made a voicethread about Our Town.
Yesterday Miss B the teacher of a Grade 5 class in Thailand left a voice comment on it for us.
It was exciting to find out that Miss B visited New Zealand last Christmas and travelled on the West Coast.
We are looking forward to getting more comments from around the world.

Emily's 'Who am I?'

Can you name which well-known cartoon character Emily made on the pegboard?

A litre is a litre is a litre!

Today we were intrigued to find that all the containers in this picture hold a litre!
How can that be?

These next two containers have the same volume as each other. Together, they fill a litre container.
How much do each of these containers hold?

The Nutcracker

We have been lucky to have lots of traveling performers lately.
Today we had Kim Whitta presenting 'The Nutcracker'. The story was set in Russia at Christmas time.
We always enjoy having Kim because he involves us in the production.
Today, the Year 4 and 5s were the teddy bears doing a dance.
The Year 2s and 3s were the snowflakes.
Some Year 8s were the stationmasters for the Year 1's train.
Then the Year 7 and 8s were the cossack dancers riding their horses.
Finally the Year 6s were the spring flowers.

Duffy's Black Fern Role-model Assembly

We love Duffy Books assemblies.
Today Kendra Cocksedge and Olivia Coady of the Black Ferns New Zealand Women's rugby team came to our role-model assembly.
They challenged us to think of any job that wouldn't require reading of some sort, and although we tried hard, we couldn't think of even one.
After we sang the Duffy song the boxes of books were handed out and we went back to class to enjoy our new books.
Olivia and Kendra came around the classes and showed us some rugby jerseys and Kendra's medal from the Women's Rugby World cup that NZ won recently.

Pacific Shells

Our final tapa cloth is finished. The class worked with Mrs Wistrand and used pastels and black vivids to create their art works.
They shared their work at assembly on Friday.

Earthquake Map Link

Our friends at Tokomaru School found this link to the University of Canterbury site where we can see graphics of the quakes Christchurch has had since 4th September.

Christchurch Quake map

You've got the Power

This morning we watched Elgregoe's 'You've got the Power' show and we were amazed by his magic tricks.
He had a really important message for us too, that we have the power to make sure that no-one in our school gets bullied.
Treat everyone the way that you would like to be treated. Say kind things and include others in your games.



Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Can you remember the 6 special words that Elgregoe put up on his mop? 
Can you explain what they mean?

Five Connections at Once

There was great excitement at Reading time when our blog globe showed that 2 visitors from America, one from New Zealand and one from Australia, plus us, were looking at our blog page at the same time!

Were you one of those visitors?

Ryan writes a great comment

Ryan is a student in Mrs Yollis' 3rd grade class in California. They have only been learning about writing blog comments since school started there again a couple of week ago, and already he can write a good blog comment.
He replied to a comment that we left on their class blog.
What did Ryan do well?
Ryan referred to the content of our comment.
He told us something about the learning that his class are doing.
He told us which class he belonged to, and only used his first name.
And he asked us some questions to keep the conversation going.
Ryan also wrote in sentences and used correct spelling and punctuation.
                                                
Well done Ryan. We hope to hear from you again.
                                                      
B4 children, you could comment and let Ryan know what your favourite subjects are at school.

Earth Egg

This morning we used boiled eggs to help us understand why earthquakes happen.

If the Earth was an egg, the shell would be the crust of the Earth.

The white of the egg would be the Earth's mantle.

The yolk of the egg would be the Earth's core.

We lightly cracked the egg and imagined that the cracked pieces were the tectonic plates of the Earth. We moved them a little, and pushed some bits under other bits. It helped us to visualise how earthquakes happen.

Can you name any of the tectonic plates?

Enviro Rangers

Last Thursday 'Connie' came to talk to B4 about becoming a Reefton Area School Enviro Ranger.
The Enviro Rangers are having their first meeting on Monday at lunch time. Ranger Hawes and Ranger Jackson will have some fun activities for the group to do.

What do you think being an enviro ranger is all about?

'Connie' looks great in her school uniform. Do you know who 'Connie' really is?

Earthquake!

Did you feel the earthquake this morning at 4.35am?
It was a 7.1 quake centred near Christchurch.
What did you do? I hopped out of bed and stood in the doorway until it stopped!
I wonder if Mr McKenzie felt it underground in the coalmine. I will find out when he gets home soon.
Click on these links to find out more:
NZ Herald photos

TVNZ videos

The Press photos

Earthquakes for Kids

Awesome Forces from Te Papa

What should we have in our disaster kits?
Here is the link to the Civil Defence website.

Skype with Tokomaru

This  morning we skyped with Mrs B's Year 1/2/3 class at Tokomaru School near Palmerston North in the North Island.

What did we find out?
They have 5 girls and 8 boys in their class. We have 12 boys and 8 girls.
We both have libraries in our school.
Tokomaru School goes up to Year 8 and there are 48 children in the school.
We go to Year 13 and there are about 220 children in the school.
We have been reading legends and they have been reading fairy tales.
They don't have an interactive whiteboard but they do use a projector.
At Tokomaru they have an assembly every second Friday. We have one every Friday.
At Tokomaru they can order fish and chips for lunch every second Friday. We can order them every Friday, but only on Fridays.
Both classes have children who want to be policemen or soldiers when they grow up, and both classes have children who want to be vets.
Other children wanted to be teachers, principals, a carpet layer, in the army, or to be a nurse. We have children who want to be a zookeeper, fireman and rugby players.

It was fun to find out about other New Zealand children.
What other questions would you have liked to ask them?

Pacific Patterns

Our pacific patterns are all finished and Mrs Wistrand has glued them onto a backing to make a class tapa cloth. Today we will share our patterns at assembly.

What sort of art media did we use?
What will we say at assembly?

Fathers' Day

Spike's story 

 Manaia's story  

Dylan's story  






What will you do with dad on Fathers' Day?

This morning before school ...

Children in B4 are always busy, even before school.
The girls made a hammock for Emily's teddy .....

and Liam, Joberth and Jack were on the blog page and using links.

What did you do before school today?