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.

Maui and the Fish

Last week we shared a turn to lead the posts 

on Our World, Our Stories with the class in Belize.

The theme was Traditional Stories.

The story we share here is the Maori legend of 

'Maui and the Fish'.

There are many stories about Maui.

One of our other favourites is 'Maui and the Sun.'

You can read more about him here.

We hope you enjoy our retelling.

Legends are stories that have been told and retold and handed down over many generations.

People listened to legends long before the stories were ever written in books.

Do you think this legend is real?

How were legends useful to cultures in the past?

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.

Elementary VoiceThreads

Last term we posted the VoiceThread that we had made about our school on to the
Elementary VoiceThreads wiki, which is based in America. Some other schools added their voices to it, and that was very exciting, and we enjoyed finding out about other schools.

Then right at the end of last term we finished this VoiceThread that we made about our community and also posted it on the wiki.

Now the summer break in America is over and schools are back in session. The creator of the wiki, Mark Carls, emailed me this week. He thought that our community VoiceThread was a great idea and he has highlighted it on their front page.

We hope that children from around the world will answer the questions that we asked, and add comments about their communities.

If your school would like to add a photo about their community please email me at judymckenzie@ras.school.nz

Our Town, Your Town

The children have made this VoiceThread about our town.

We hope children from other places in the world will add comments to it and answer the questions that B4 children have asked.

Click here to see our voicethread

Our School, Reefton Area School

We made this VoiceThread to tell our Canadian blog friends about our school.
Check out this wiki also: http://elementaryvoicethreads.wikispaces.com/
to see our VoiceThread and some made by other schools around the world..

Autumn

Choral reading and artworks about autumn. We tried hard to read together and speak clearly.
We made our artworks with Mrs Wistrand. We are happy for anyone to add a comment to the VoiceThread on the last page. You could record your voice or type a message.