Equipment for our project

We have been working on the nature trail. We have been wanting to cut parts off shrubs to clear the way and have found that we need some equipment to do this. 

We thought about how we could get some equipment and thought about our local shops. We enquired to Mitre10 to see if they sponsor groups like ours, working on the nature trail. First we posted letters to them and they replied with a form to fill in. 

We sent away the form and were the very lucky and grateful recipients of a $100 voucher. We are going to Mitre 10 next month to spend our voucher. We are looking to buy some thick gardening gloves, some secateurs and then will see what money we have left after that. We are wanting to clear the nature trail of weeds and help rejuvenate the bush so we can use it as an outdoor learning space.

Thanks to Mitre10 for supporting our project! We love supporting our local.

Precipitation

Rain in a jar

To make this you will need:
A jar
Water
Shaving cream
Blue dye
5 ml syringe

Method:
First we put water in our jar. Then we put a thin layer of shaving cream. When this was ready and covering the water we carefully dropped 5 drops of blue dye in and watched what happened.

It was like slow motion rain. The blue dye acted like precipitation and slowly went to the bottom of the jar.

This is easy to do if you want to try it at home.

Term 2 update notices

• Please look in your child's bag for a notice re Seesaw. We need to change our individual blogs as Easy Blogger has shut down due to circumstances beyond our control. You will receive information about how to view your child's new blog on Seesaw. Below is a screen shot from our Seesaw main page.

• We have a paid union meeting on Monday, we are asking that you please collect your children at 12.30 in order for us to attend. Thank you
• We will be moving classes during the holidays. Our new build is due to be ready in the first week of the school holidays. We will continue to be known as Room 18, Ruru Hub, Tōtara Team.

Any questions feel free to email me. 

Thanks, Hine

Making a korowai

We have been working together as a team to create a class korowai.

Look at our videos to see our process. 

We asked Miss August's mum some questions about making a korowai. 

Inquiry writing

We have been learning about explanation writing. Our inquiry this term is about 'Human impact on planet earth' so we have been looking at our planet and what happens on earth.

We have written about how earthquakes happen, about volcanoes, the life cycle of a turtle to name a few! We post some of our writing to our easy blogs.

Here is a piece from Tyson. You can view it on his blog too.

Sea Turtles

A sea turtle has four phases of its life cycle. 

Phase one: egg a mother turtle lays about one thousand eggs in a nesting pit high on the beach. 

When the eggs start to hatch it is phase two. This phase they are hatchlings. The little turtles continue their desperate dash for the seas repelling force. 

Then phase three: juvenile. The vulnerable turtles swim frantically forwards then the last stage is adulthood. The adult turtles lay more eggs and the stages repeat over again-egg, hatchling, juvenile and last but not least adult. 

At approximately two decades of age, the turtles change their size from the size of a dinner plate to the size of a dinner table.

Happy Birthday Pippa

Some of our class were on the bus and learnt that it was Sharon's birthday today. They said happy birthday to Sharon and when they came to class and told us someone said "It must be Pippa's birthday today too. She has the same birthday as Sharon!" Happy birthday Pippa we hope you have a lovely day.

Explanation writing

We are learning to write explanation writing. We watched this movie about volcanoes then we made a plan. We thought about what technical words we would need to include and added these to our writing.

Plan by Kodyak

Look at Morris and Hamdi's blogs for their finished writing. Some of us are still finishing our writing so check back soon!

By Hamdi

By Morris

Positive Assembly for Ruru Hub

This morning Ruru Hub gathered together to celebrate Positive Assembly. We sang some beautiful songs, shared our learning and presented students with Toolkit awards.

We had a lovely time together. What do you do with your Hub? 

Chapter Chat

We are reading The Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown. We have been reading this along with many other year 3 and 4 students over New Zealand. We have been thinking about the book, answering questions and completing tasks to develop and share our thinking.

We have been doing tasks in class and we can do some from home if we like. We log in to our Google account to complete some of the tasks. 

This week we can choose any of the following tasks to complete at home.

ART TASKS: Draw the silhouettes of the wolves trotting through the moonlight. Add plenty of detail. You could use my online blackboard to create your picture if you wish; http://myonlineblackboard.com/

ART: Draw the wolf leader, shadow. Include his long, pale scar that streaked across his body like a comet OR draw Roz camouflaged as an ordinary clump of grass.

ART: Draw a plan of the inside of the TECHLAB shop.

WRITE: a poem about summer, using some of the ideas from chapter 25, or seeing as we are coming into winter, you may like to change the season to make it more relevant. Perhaps you will write a poem about summer AND winter!

VOCABULARY: Find the meaning of the following words: pollinate, skulking, carcass, ferocious, emerged, foul, receded, funneling, hobble, musky, lingering, silhouettes, menacing, hollered, brutes, taunting, activated, stampeding.

Ball skills with Jono

Jono from Project Energize came to our school today to teach us some ball skills. We pushed the ball around our waist, bounced the ball and played some games too. We thought it was really fun working with him.

Skipping Master Tag

We played master tag. It was really fun.

How to play:
First, we needed to find a spot on the lines. We are learning about skipping so we played it by skipping on the lines. If we see someone we tag them so that makes everyone a tagger to start the game. If they tag us at the same time, we play paper, scissors, rock. The person who wins keeps skipping if you don't then you sit down. You can rejoin the game when the person who tagged you, sits down. If you tag someone first then they sit down.
If can't make a decision then we put our hand up and ask a teacher for help.