Arts Celebration 2021

 This week we celebrated our annual celebration of The Arts at Worser Bay School. In Autahi we had been working towards a self portrait and seeing ourselves as artists. One of the important first steps in any artistic endeavour is understanding yourself as an artist and that your work will look different from other artists. Instead of thinking 'My work isn't as good as someone else' we were learning to say 'That was the best picture of a face that I can do'. 

Changing the language we use as artists really helped us to work on our own pieces without having to worry about what everyone else was doing.

The other key aspect of our art was thinking about the shapes we can see in our art. We always started by adding the biggest shapes first then adding detail on top. Some of the faces have a line through the middle that we used as a mid line. This helped us notice which of our features go above or below the line.

We hope you enjoyed viewing the Art as much as we enjoyed making it.  

Our netball taster session

This week, we welcomed some top coaches from Netball New Zealand to give us a taster netball coaching session. Most of us had never played netball before - but found it a lot of fun. Ask your child about it: there are opportunities from year one onwards to get involved in netball at our school. Talk to Beth or Carl if you'd like to know more.

Chopping our way back into maths

 

This week we have been using lots of different games to get us back into maths.

One of the awesome games was to karate chop a snaplock bag to find new ways to make 10. 

By separating the ten pom poms into two groups we can see the different groupings to ten. 

Then we wrote a number sentence to reflect what we could see in the bags.

Eg. 5 + 5 = 10

There are lots of ways to explore maths at home and at school using different materials.

Why savouring the good stuff in life helps us to flourish.

 

Savouring and Celebrating

As we return to 'school in person', we'll all be reflecting on our lockdown experiences - some good, some challenging, perhaps. And we'll all be thinking about what we've missed about school and looking forward to reconnecting with friends, favourite places and activities. This is a great time to consider the power of savouring.

Recently, the teachers have been doing some reading about savouring. As human beings, we tend to carry a negativity bias. That is to say, our brains cling onto the negative experiences we have and, if we're not careful, one negative experience can have the power to override many positives.

This is where Savouring comes in. Savouring is intentionally recalling and revisiting experiences that nourish us in some way, perhaps by bringing us joy, comfort or a sense of achievement. Savouring boosts the number of 'positive hits' that our brain gets during the day, counterbalancing the negatives. It is also an important way to embed good memories so that we can revisit them in the future.

Taking time to Savour our own achievements is vital, especially when we've put a lot of effort.

Revisiting and savouring memories of positive accomplishment can give us a boost when we are working on new learning. 'Look how many stars I have on my Rocket already! If I learnt all those words, I can nail this new set, too.' This kind of positive forecasting helps us to stay with tricky tasks right to the end because we have the confidence that we have what it takes to overcome challenges.

Savouring can be about being fully present in the moment and recognising that we're having a good experience. 

 It can also take the form of remembering and reminiscing, retelling and sharing - especially if the positive experience is a shared one. In retelling the story of a good experience, we relive it and reinforce its power. Capturing our learning on Seesaw is one way of sharing - and revisiting - positive experiences.

Anticipating something positive that we are looking forward to is also a form of Savouring, this time with a future focus.

Try some savouring today and see if it boosts your mood.