Summer Wallwisher

Season's Greetings

☆ ☆

I would like to wish all of our families and friends season's greetings, 

and to thank you all for following us throughout 

our first year of blogging.

☆ ☆

School is out now until February 1, 

although there will be some occasional posts over the summer.

We look forward to catching up with you all again then. 

☆ ☆ 

Grease Lightning

The video of our item at the Celebration of Learning didn't work out!

So here is one of our favourite items instead. 

The Year 5/6 class worked all term with our Arts support staff, Ina and Sandy,

to bring their item together.

Summer Reading Challenge

Custom Glitter Text
The Summer Reading Challenge is on again!

Read over the summer and WIN!

Come in to school on these dates and change the books in your book pack.

Visit a library and take out books over the summer.

Bring back your signed forms when school starts in February.

What kind of books do you enjoy?

Where do you like to read?

Our Christmas Tree is Beautiful.

Our Christmas tree is ready to go up to the hall foyer

for the Celebration of Learning 

tomorrow night.

We wrapped tinsel string around geometric wire shapes that

Mr McKenzie made for us.

We used squares, circles and triangles.

Here are all of the trees made by the homerooms:

Skyping with Mrs Yollis and the Grade 3s

We had a great Skype session with Mrs Yollis and her class, in Los Angeles, California.

We got to share facts about our towns, 

and to find out some similarities (S) and differences (D).

What did we learn?

School: 

They have 23 children in their class and we have 22. (S)

There are 611 children in their school and we have just over 200. (D)

They don't often have composite classes, but we often have a mix of year groups because we have fewer children at each year level. (D)

They call it elementary school and we say primary school. After elementary school they go to middle school and then high school. We can stay at  our school until we are 18, because we are an Area school. (D)

They change to a new grade level at the start of their school year each September. 

We change to a new year level when the new school year starts in February. (D)

Community: 

They have a community of 24,000 people and we have less than 1000. (D)

The elevation of their community is 850 ft (259m). Reefton is 198m above sea level (649ft). (S)

They have a 30 minute drive to get to a beach. We drive for an hour. (D)

Disneyland is a 1 and 1/2 hour drive away and most of their class have been there. 

In our class Liam and Mrs McK have been to the Los Angeles Disneyland. (D)

Climate: 

They live on the West Coast of America and their annual rainfall is about 14 inches (about 355mm). 

We live on the West Coast of New Zealand and our average annual rainfall is 2200mm (about 86 inches)! (D)

Their summer temperatures range from 60-90˚F (16-32˚C).

Our average summer temperature is 25˚C (77˚F). (S)

Their winter temperatures range from  40-60˚F (4-16˚C).

Our average winter temperature is 15˚C (59˚F). (D)

They almost never get snow. Mrs Yollis can remember getting snow once. We might get snow in town once a year, although it snows on the hills around us. (D)

Mrs Yollis' class had skyped with 2KM in Australia and had learnt that they have magpies that swoop on people. They asked us if we have magpies that swoop and the answer is YES!

Iliana noticed about our school uniform. Mrs Yollis thought a uniform would save time in the morning. (D)

She asked about dairy farms, so Adam, Liam, Jonathon and Emily told her that the cows are milked twice a day, and whoever is milking has to get up very early in the morning (3-5 am). (D)

We asked about their pets. Nick has a bulldog, Grace had guinea pigs and Kristen has a cat. (S)

We met Ryan, who had left a great comment on our blog page back in September.

Where there any questions that you didn't get to ask?

We ♥ our skype session and think it was great to talk to everyone. (S)

Thank you so much.

☆ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Watch this Space (or watch this tree)!

Every year in the last week of school each class gets a Christmas tree to decorate. 

All decorations must be hand-made, 

and we can only spend $20 on supplies. 

On Thursday night 

the trees will be on display in the hall foyer at the Celebration of Learning 

and families can bid for a tree. 

Proceeds go to a local good cause.

When do you put your tree up?

Does your family have special decorations and ornaments that

you use year after year?

Temperature Trends

Thank you to all the people who have sent in their local temperatures. 

As you can see, 

our map is already showing some clear trends!

If you would like to contribute from somewhere in the world, 

we will keep collecting temperatures

for a few more days.

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia 

is the word we use to describe 

words that resemble the object or action they name.

After we read 

'Mr Brown can Moo! Can You?' by Dr. Seuss,

the class brainstormed some words, then chose one each to illustrate.

Can you think of some more 

onomatopoeia?

Meet Jamie

Jamie came to visit for the first time today and had his bath while he was here.
Jamie loved his bath and didn't cry once!

?

Perhaps you have a funny story to share 

about when you were a baby?

What's the temperature where you live?

For measurement in maths this week B4 are looking at temperature.

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)

It would be even more wonderful if visitors could comment several times over the week.

Hot November

Today in Reefton the temperature was 31 degrees C (87F), 

and although the West Coast is renown for the rain, 

this month we haven't had much 

and everything is getting very dry!

It was HOT, HOT, HOT!

One of our teachers, Tony Fortune, monitors the weather station in Reefton.
It was the hottest November day 
since he started keeping records 
in 1964.

What did you do today?

How did you keep cool?

Show, Don't Tell

Recently the children in Mr Salsich's class and 

the children in Miss McGeady's class have been learning to show how a character feels by using descriptive words. 

We enjoyed reading the descriptions so 

this week we had a go too.

Did you spot some descriptive similies?

Can you visualise how each person 

was feeling?

Mmmm, Pudding!

There was excess milk in the staffroom fridge this week so we just HAD to make instant pudding.
We poured, sprinkled and whizzed, set it in the fridge and then enjoyed.


Mmmm, Pudding! on PhotoPeach

In Memorium

We are mourning the loss, at Pike River mine, 

of three past pupils of  Reefton Primary and/or Inangahua College, 

the two schools that became 

Reefton Area School.

Our thoughts are with the families of all of the 29 miners.

Medal Winner

Look who travelled to Motueka over the weekend and competed with other juniors in her first karate tournament.

She gained 2nd place and a medal in her shiai!










Great work Karate Girl!

Have you ever won a medal or a cup? What was it for?

Friday Lunchtime Learning

This is what was happening on Friday lunchtime in B4.

Independent learning

Sisters learning together

Co-operative learning

and Mrs McKenzie was listening to a presentation at the GlobalEd Conference.




Mrs Yollis (California, USA), Miss McGeady (Australia) and Mr Salsich (Connetticut, USA) gave a presentation about the Ugandan Global Project.
It was a great example of global collaboration.

A Visiting Author

Mark Laurent is a New Zealand author. He wrote this picture book called 'Rufus and the Rain'.
Brenda read us the story.

Rufus told Wind not to bring Cloud, but it wasn't long before he realised that clouds are necessary to give shade and to bring the rain.
Rufus had to say something to Wind that is sometimes hard for people to say.

Do you know what that hard word was?


What happened when Cloud wasn't there?


Mark also writes poetry and songs. He sang three songs and we got to join in. This one was about the trees.

Can you imagine living in a world with no trees? 
How would that affect us?


Here is a Youtube link to 'Rufus and the Rain' 
And another to Mark's song about Rufus 

Just One Puff

Here's a fun science challenge that we did today.
We used lengths of light tubing (ours is from the baby shop). Tie a knot in one end.

The challenge is to fill the bag with just one puff of air.

How did the last bag get so full with just one puff?

Mr Salsich's Red Roosters

Mr Salsich and his Grade 3 class in Conneticut have made an ☆excellent video☆ about how to write good reading comprehension answers. Make sure you watch it!

Red Roosters Don't Drink Rootbeer

Journeys into Music

Today we welcomed back members of the brass section of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, on the Outreach program.

                                                                                                                                                                Did you know you can make your own instrument with a length of garden hose?

            You would also need a mouthpiece and a funnel.

How many brass instruments can you name?

 What are the other sections of the orchestra?

The Navy Bus comes to Visit

We got to go into the Navy bus this morning. We watched a video about the navy ships and then we got to use the touch screen computers. There was even a little life raft, with a ship's wheel that we could play with.

The Navy is one part of New Zealand's defence force. 
Do you know what the other parts are?

Guy Fawkes

Last night was Guy Fawkes night. This is a celebration that comes from Britain.

Did you have some fireworks? 
Did you have them at home or at a public display?


What other events do people around the world use fireworks to celebrate with?

Talking with old friends

Today we had our second Skype session with Mrs Watson and her 2/3 class in Canada. We first Skyped with them in June, so it was so good to catch up with our old friends.

It was 9.30 on Wednesday morning for us, and 1.30 on Tuesday afternoon in Canada!

Today's session was mainly about pets. We didn't have our pets at school today, but in Canada Anna brought her chicken, Jordan brought her lizard and Silkence brought her Maltese dog called Biscuit.

Oceana told us about her 3 dogs called Ruger, Precious and Duke.
Mrs Watson told us that it is an amazing sight when Oceana takes all the dogs for a walk together!

Sophie also told us about her dog Lady. Lady is a cockapoo. Do you know what that is?

Fay doesn't have a pet, so he had drawn a picture of spiders.

Niall showed us a picture of his pet cat. Is it called Gallah, Niall?

From B4, Jack told the grade 2/3s about his guinea pig called Manny. No one there had a guinea pig although someone had a hamster.
Paige, Emily and Jonathon talked about their cats and Liam talked about his calf called Sushi.
JiaJIa said that if she had a pet she would like to have a monkey, because it's cheeky!
                                        ☆         ☆        ☆        ☆
Then the Grade 2/3s told us about Halloween. They did lots of activities at school last Friday to celebrate, and lots of them went trick or treating over the weekend.
We asked what tricks they might do if there were no treats, but no one knew because they always get lots of treats!

We told them that we will have fireworks for Guy Fawkes on Friday night. Everyone said that they like Sparklers!

We had a great Skype session.
Thank you Mrs Watson and the 2/3s.

Do you have any more questions?
If you didn't get a turn, what was it that you wanted to say?

More Pet Day pictures

Well done to everyone who took part and helped to make the day so much fun.

Pets Day was awesome

Once again we had so many amazing entries in all of the categories.
Check out the decorated cakes, made by students from Year 1 - 12.

(Which cake was your favourite?)

and here are the creative fruit platters.

Sneak Peek

I took a sneak peek at the Science projects on display for Pets Day.
These investigations were done by the Year 7 and 8 students.

What do you enjoy most about science?

The Lucky Dip

Last week when the Orange group read 'The Lucky Dip' they had their own lucky dip!
They were excited to find out what was in the parcels.
Now they have their own story, made with youblisher.com



Have you ever had a lucky dip?
Were you excited?
What did you get?

Pet's Day is coming up soon!

B4 children, what are you bringing or making for Pet's Day?

Do other schools have a day like pet's day?

Starting School

Mrs W@Harston in Victoria, Australia and I were having a conversation last week about the education systems in different schools and countries.

I was particularly interested in how and when schools start the children who are just beginning school.

This is what we found out:

Harston:                                                          

Prep students all start in January if they turn 5 by 30 April. Or they can wait until the intake the next January, if they prefer, when they are 5 and a half.

New Zealand:

Children start school on the day that they turn 5.

At our school if their birthday is before May 1 they will be a Year 1, and the following year will be a Year 2.

If their birthday is between May 1 and December 31 they will be a Year 0, and will be Year 1 from the following January.

I wonder what happens in other schools around the world?

It's A Boy

Congratulations to Mrs Wistrand on the arrival of Jamie. 
We hope we see you both for a visit at school soon, we can't wait to meet him.

Labour Day

On Monday we have a public holiday for Labour Day.
Labour Day was first celebrated in New Zealand on 28 October 1890. It commemorates the struggle for an 8-hour working day.

Some people like to get their garden planted.
Some families like to go away for a short holiday.


What will you be doing for your long weekend?

Learning to Use html

This w☆☆k I have had fun learning to use html code to add shapes to my p♦sts and comments.
I have used the helpful advice from Mrs Yollis in California and from Miss McGeady at 2KM  in Australia.

♥ ♔ ★ ☆

Thank you ♥  Mrs Yollis for the codes:

Can anyone tell me why my codes for smilies don't work?

What are your favourite shapes?

Not Me!

"Who are the owners of all these socks?" questioned Mrs McKenzie.

"Not me," declared every child in B4.

Hmmm, really?

Family Challenge

The annual family challenge was held at school last night. Many of the fun challenges were based around the theme of 'Shake, Rattle and Roll'.
Among them were: deciding on items for an emergency kit; rank important NZ earthquakes in order of magnitude; and answering 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' type questions about earthquakes.
Watch out for these other challenges in the video: make a bird mask and use it in the birdie dance; get two team members across the floor staying on two small pieces of paper; make a little cart that can carry 3 marshmallows up and over a ramp; and bird mask hockey.
Thanks Mr Wright for organising another great family challenge!

Were you at the family challenge?

What was your favourite game?

Hope to see you there next year!

The Kiwi

This week JiaJia and Tristan have made their very first glog. We hope you will learn something about the Kiwi.
They read and researched about the kiwi at reading time this week. I think they have done a great job, and they co-operated well with each other to get the task done..

Click here to read it

Lunch Boxes

We photographed our lunch boxes today because the P3-4-5 class at Innerwick School in Scotland made a post asking about school dinners around the world.
Most children at our school bring a packed lunch.
Some children go home for lunch, and sometimes children order lunch at the office, which is then supplied by a local shop.

On fine days we eat lunch on the veranda and on wet or cold days we eat in the classrooms.
After 10 minutes we are allowed to go to play if we have finished eating.
Lunch time is from 12.30pm - 1.30pm.

Our school supplies fruit to the classrooms so we have our fruit just before morning playtime.

Our lunch boxes:

Co-incidentally Room 8@Melville Intermediate and Miss Tyler-Smith's class in South Africa have posted about lunches, so we will get a really good idea about lunches in other places.

They might also like to look at the Ugandan Project blog link that schools in America, Australia, China and Uganda are contributing to.

What is your favourite lunch?
Who makes your lunch for you?

Numeracy Time

B4 children were very busy at numeracy time today.
The Squares learned to play a new game counting back from 50.

Before Teacher Time, the Circles were playing a counting on and counting back game on the interactive whiteboard called Test the Toad.

The Triangles were playing Pig in the Middle, with 10 + numbers.

And the Diamonds were choosing maths games from the blog page links.

What are your favourite maths activities?

Do you prefer to learn alone, or with a buddy?

Celebrations and Traditions

Mrs Szalay's Grade 2/3 class in Ontario asked us about our Celebrations and Traditions.
We brainstormed this morning and decided that there are some days that we think are celebrated just in New Zealand, and some that we think are celebrated around the world.

More Changes in B4

We say goodbye to Mrs Wistrand for awhile, as she is on maternity leave, and a big WELCOME to Miss Robinson who will be teaching in B4 at the times that I am taking Reading Recovery.
Miss Robinson is finishing her teacher training this term and I am sure she will enjoy working with the great kids in B4.

Because of a rise of numbers in the Year 0/1 class we also have Paige, Tyla, Nathan and Matthew moving into B4, and we are saying goodbye to Myah, Krystal, Adam and Tessa who will be in B3.
Now we have Year 1, 2 and 3 children in B4 and the ages range from 5-8 years old.

We are looking forward to a fun and busy term!

Fish and Chips and Vinegar song

Mrs Yollis from California enjoyed the year 6/7 ukelele and guitar playing and has asked for the words to the song.

Fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar, vinegar,
Fish and chips and vinegar,
pepper, pepper pepper pot.

Don't chuck your muck in my backyard, my backyard, my backyard.
Don't chuck your muck in my backyard,
my backyard's full.

One bottle of pop, two bottles of pop, three bottles of pop,
four bottles of pop, five bottles of pop, six bottles of pop,
seven bottles of pop, POP!




It's a good song to sing as a 3-way round.
What other songs do people know of to sing as rounds?

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?