Summer Break

The students and teachers from  B4 are now on their summer break until January 28, 2015.

We wish everyone a safe and happy summer.

How will you be spending your holidays?

'Motion In the Ocean'

Our school's end-of-year Celebration of Learning showcases arts items from the primary classes, 

along with the presentation of academic, cultural and sporting awards to the secondary level students.

B4 are proud to present their item from this year's celebration.



All the items can be seen here.


What was your favourite part of our item?

Taking Part in 'Hour of Code' This Week

The Hour of Code is a world-wide global movement towards teaching coding in schools.

Here is a screenshot of all the schools that have registered to join in.

The students in B4 are excited to be taking part!

You can try out the Hour of Code tutorials here.

We liked the Angry Birds tutorial.

You can play the Frozen coding game here.

Have fun!
Let us know how you get on with the challenges.

Creating Our Costumes

Our science topic this term, 'Under the Sea', 

led into a dance unit. 

The children, with Mrs Wistrand's help, have created a dance which will be presented at our Celebration of Learning.

For homework, the children and their families

have been planning and creating their costumes. 

First they drew the plans according to the success criteria:

- must be easy to put on with little help

- must have some attributes of the sea creature being portrayed

- must be mostly the chosen colour

The next step was to make the costumes.

The cellotape sculptures the children made in art, have been used for parts of some costumes.
These ...

became our octopus!

We look forward to sharing our dance with you later this week!

What undersea creature would you choose to be, and why?

Concentrating on Coding

One of the coding apps we enjoy using is LightBot, which we heard about through our Room 4 blogging buddies.

The robot has to be programmed to light up some tiles.

Our current class champion is Ben!

Now, thanks to Mrs McKenzie's Twitter friends, we have another coding game to try.

If you are a fan of the movie Frozen, 

here is a coding challenge for you!

Remember to ask your parents if you can sign up, or just use the open version.

Do you know of a  coding game that we might enjoy trying? 

A Plethora of Pets

Pet's Day dawned with thunder and rain!

Luckily the weather fined up by 12pm when the 

Grand Parade began.

We were impressed by all the creative entries in each section - crafts, decorated bikes, baking,

plus all of the animals.

For the first time we had two family competitions: harakeke (flax-weaving) and rhubarb!

At the end of the day, the White Ribbon Riders arrived.

Our kapahaka group gave a welcome and we got to take a look at the bikes.

Tell us about your pet!

Can you tell us what 'plethora' means?

Fossicking in Rock Pools

As part of our 'Under the Sea' science topic, 

three classes travelled for over an hour by bus 

to visit the rock pools.

Look what we found!

Starfish - echinoderms

Limpets - gastropods

and 

Mussels - bivalve molluscs

Jellyfish - cnidaria

Crabs- crustaceans

Do you know what these are?

At the Rockpools on PhotoPeach

Do you enjoy fossicking in rock pools?

What did you find?

Fishy Calendar Art

We've made our calendar art, ready for parents to view and order for 2015 calendars, and other items.

We used our science topic of 'Under the Sea' as our inspiration.

We all drew fish, but what is your favourite undersea creature?

Cellotape Sculptures

We are busy getting our costumes ready for our end-of-year item in December. 

Some of the preparations involved making tape sculptures.

First we wrapped objects with plastic wrap.

The next step was to wind several layers of cellulose tape around and over each object.

The tape had to be carefully cut so we could easily remove the object.

What skills did we have to use to do these sculptures?

How did your buddy help you?