Flower Art

The B4 students worked with Mrs. W to create these flower art works using dye, black vivid and bleach. 

This weekend the art works are on display at the Visitors Centre on the main street, as part of the Reefton Garden Club's spring show.

(Click on the art work to enlarge.)

What flowers do you have growing in your garden?

Weather Skype with 1D in Texas

We skyped with a class from a suburb of Dallas, Texas, USA to talk about the weather.
In New Zealand, it was 8.30am on Tuesday - our day usually begins at 8.50am so we had an early start. 
In Texas, it was 2.30 pm on Monday! 

What did we find out?

In New Zealand it is spring.

In Texas it is fall (autumn).

We measure temperature using degrees Centigrade (˚C).

They use degrees Fahrenheit (˚F).

In summer, an extremely hot day in Reefton might be 35˚C (about 95˚F).

A really hot day in Dallas, TX might be 100˚F.

This morning in Reefton the day was quite cool, and the temperature was about 10˚C (50˚F).

The temperature in Dallas, TX was about 80˚F (27˚C).

We had some time to compare notes about our classes.

We have 20 students. We are Year 1, 2 and 3s, and we are mostly aged 6 and 7, with one 8 year-old.

1D has 22 Grade 1 students, all aged six.

Both classes love doing Daily 5 at reading time!

Winter is the favourite season of Brooks, from 1D

Braedyn from B4 said his favourite season is summer.

We live in a community of just over 900.

1D live in a community of 35,000.

We live one hour away from a beach, but we have a school pool, a town pool and the river.

The children in 1D would need to drive for nine hours to get to a beach! However, they have a rec centre, and lakes, and backyard pools.

Which place is generally hotter - Reefton or Dallas?

What is your favourite season and why?

What's the Temperature Where You Live?

In maths this week, we are looking at temperature.

Here in New Zealand, it is spring.

The days are getting warmer. 

But would a person living somewhere else call our weather warm, or would it seem cold in comparison to where they live?

We are hoping that visitors to our blog this week (and next) will comment on what the temperature is where they live. 

Let us know:

Where you are

What time of day it is

What the temperature is (please show C or F)
Do you think your day seems hot, warm, cool or cold?

Hint: To write the degrees symbol ˚ using your computer, hold the Option and K buttons together.

If you are using an ipad, hold down on the zero key to make the symbol.

Here is a handy tool for converting ˚F to ˚Celsuis

Liv's Little Lamb

(This is a guest post by Liv.)

Recently I got a lamb. It was a girl. 

I named her Ruby because I've already had a lamb called Max and now I have a lamb called Ruby. (There is a TV show called Max and Ruby!).

I got her for an early birthday present for when I turn 7.

She is so loud that I could hear her from the bathroom and she was in the living room.

Because Ruby is so noisy when I put her into her cage, she keeps me up all night until she falls fast asleep.

I got Ruby from my nana.
Ruby is only a few days old and lives inside at the moment, because she might wander away. 
When she is bigger she will live up at the calf pen with the calves.
Sometimes Ruby wears a nappy to keep the house clean.

We have to feed Ruby every four hours. She drinks a lot.

Today Ruby came in for a visit to school. I thought she would be nervous but she was fine.

Lambs are good pets to have and they are cuddly.

Ruby is so loveable and she is the best pet in the world!

Do you have a lamb or another pet?

How do you take care of it?

What do you like about your pet?

by Liv

Our World, Our Numbers: Topic 7 Seasons and Temperature

We've reached the seventh and final topic 

on Our World, Our Numbers. 

It's been a lot of fun sharing our mathematical lives with the other classes.

This week we’re talking seasons and temperatures.

In our inland town on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand we get quite distinctive seasonal changes.

 Summers are usually hot and dry; spring is often wet; and winter brings frost, fog and sometimes (if the children are really lucky) some snow.

Right now in the southern hemisphere it is autumn. 

The weather is getting cooler and the colours of the trees are changing.

One of the oak trees at our school.

This year many areas of New Zealand suffered drought over the summer and for the first time ever drought was declared on the South Island’s west coast!

Here is some temperature and rainfall information for our town over the past few months:

Can you see which months we were in drought?

We searched out some information about 

weather extremes for our town.

Can you share some weather data about the place where you live?

All of the classes are keeping track of this week’s midday temperatures on this   Voicethread.

Are there seasonal changes where you live? 

Which season is your favourite? Why?

Why don't you head on over to Our World, Our Numbers to check out the other posts and the comments.

Using Action Words to Bring Our Writing to Life

We're learning that strong action words can bring 

our writing to life. 

Action words are verbs. 

They tell what someone or something is doing.

We've written about our favourite seasons and tried to think about our action words.

How do you think we did?

Which words did you enjoy the most?

The Great Bean Race

Back in April, when it was autumn for us but spring for some of our northern hemisphere friends, 

we took part in a bean-growing experiment. 

Read about it here in our Full of Beans post and here in our Observational Drawings post.

Sadly, it proved too cold for our beans to do much more than sprout a little.

Now it is spring here and our three junior classes (years 1-4) have begun 'The Great Bean Race'.
We've collected and prepared our containers, and 
planted our beans.

What advice do you have for us to help us quickly grow our bean plants tall and strong?

Water It!

This term our science topic is about living things, 

specifically plants. 

We are looking at how plants need and use water; 
how living things (plants) are suited to their habitat;
and how to group plants by their features.

We visited three ponds to look at the plants that are living there.

A reed pond

An open water pond. (Can you see the rain?)

A swampy pond.

Here are some of the plants we saw:

Now some classes have their own miniature ponds in our shaded bush area.

Do you recognise some of our pond plants?
Do you have a pond? What is in your pond?