Tuesday 31 October 2017

Taking Action!

We have been hard at work on our inquiry into the body, its many parts and systems, how they work and what we can do for our bodies and minds.  We've learned all about bones and skeletons, our muscles, our digestive system, our lungs and breathing, our hearts and circulatory system and our brain--how it works, the many parts and growth mindset.  We have been exploring the power of our bodies as well as what they need.  After many weeks of going through our inquiry stages, we are at the stage of celebrating our learning by taking action and sharing what we have found out.
 As mentioned above we learned a lot about our body and the different parts.  What we realised along the way is that we play a big part in our bodies and our well-being.  We can do heaps to look after ourselves.  Some of the ideas the children came up with were that to stay healthy and happy we should eat healthy food, do plenty of exercise, drink lots of water, get rest and have fun. For our taking action children created their own healthy eating plans, exercise plans or persuasive posters about what they thought was important.  The class was buzzing with excitement and they were all busy creating. 

Creating fitness plans based on exercises we learned in class
The children had to choose which exercises they would do each day and how many reps they would do of each.  They had to write the numbers in.  This was a really good exercise for thinking about how much a number actually is because some people decided they would do 2,000 sit-ups and after trying 5 realised their plan may not be realistic!



Creating healthy eating plans and adding foods we are going to try to eat more of



 Creating persuasive posters about ways to get fit and what to eat
"Get Fit. Run as fast as you can!" "Eat Healthy Food!"

"Do Flips to Stay Fit!"
We used pictures and words from books about eating right, staying active and our muscles to get some of our own ideas.


And then some of us started to put our plans into action and we got on to doing our exercises.  This was really helpful in seeing if we had been realistic about our goals. 


 We also have begun sharing these plans in videos on Seesaw.  Help us stick to our plans at home! Let's do exercise together and eat lots of healthy food!

 

Karakia






 We have been learning our Karakia in class so that we can say it every morning. We have been working on learning key words in the karakia and drawing symbols to represent those ideas so that we can remember what they mean.  

WBS Karakia
E tau nei ki runga i a tatou katoa te wairua aroha
kia ngakaunui tatou ki te hapai i a tatou mahi katoa
i roto i te hari me to koa me te aroha ano o tetahi ki tetahi kia puawai tatou katoa.
Whakakahangia tatou, kia mahi tahi, kia manaaki kia tiaki i to tatou kura, to tatou hapori, a to tatou taiao hoki
Mauri Ora!
aroha



mahi katoa


                       
puawai
Whakakahangia



manaaki
taiao
aroha--love        mahi katoa--working together      puwai--grow and blossom  
whakakahangia--strength    manaaki--nurture, respect    taiao--environment




We worked together to unpack the ideas and draw our pictures.  We also practised saying the karakia. You can help me practise at home!






Tuesday 24 October 2017

Measurement

We have started to explore measurement this term. 
We listened to this story first.  Then we began talking about what we can use to measure.  


We realised you can measure with lots of different objects, but that using different objects makes it hard to compare how big or small something is.  


 
 Some of us used paper clips, some used counting cubes and some used teddies to measure our feet.
We measured different objects from around the room, like pencils, scissors, books and hands and feet. We also measured some of our toys on Toy Tuesday!
We also used different sized containers to measure how much water it took to fill the different containers! We are going to keep going with our measurement, looking at measuring and comparing different sized objects with various units.  We will also be looking at a ruler and exploring centimeters. 
Image result for cm ruler
Have a look at this ruler.  What's bigger a cm or an inch?

Football Friday

 On Fridays this term we have football lessons.  Last Friday was our first one.  We warmed up with different games.  We had to follow the leader and move like a certain animal.  Here we were crawling like tigers.


Then we played a warm up game called "Truck and Trailer" where we had to try to dribble the ball and follow our buddies.












After all of our warming up we had a game.  One team had bibs and one team wore shirts.  We had to use the skills we practised to play a game.  We tried to keep the ball out of our own goal and get it into the other goal.  We couldn't use our hands and we had to try to kick, pass, and roll the ball with our feet.  
Please help me be prepared for Friday Football by reminding me to wear suitable shoes! 

Tuesday 17 October 2017

Library

Tuesday is our library day.  We get to go visit the school library, look through the books, have a browse and a read and check out up to 4 books.  We can have these books for up to 2 weeks.  Sometimes, we have senior buddies and librarians give us suggestions, read to us and help us find books.  Sometimes, we do it as a class.  We like going to the library and finding books that interest us.  Usually these books are a bit tricky to read so you will have to help me at home.  But I can help by finding letters and sounds I know, words I know, or even by reading the pictures and telling what I know about the story!
Our library returns box is blue and is next to our book bag box. On a Tuesday we put our returns in there (if we are ready for new books).
   
The books are ordered alphabetically by the author's last name. The books have a sticker with that letter on it to help us remember where it goes when we are done with it. 


The library is a quiet place where we can find a spot to sit and browse some books.  There are lots of good books to find!


I've got some new books this week! Help me look after them and read them at home please!

Toy Tuesday

On a Tuesday Autahi children are allowed to bring a toy to school.  Our toys serve as good inspiration for our play--we create things for them, make up stories about them and share them with our friends.  
Here is some of what we've been up to with our toys this week:

 I made a race car for my doll.  I also wrote about it at writing time! 
Here are some of the learning links:
  • I had to measure to make sure it would fit.  
  • I had to cut practising fine motor skills.  
  • I had to test things out, think critically and creatively when things weren't working and try something new.      
 We made a bat cave for Batman and our cars turned into the different bat mobiles.  
Here are some of the learning links:

  • We had to work well together, making compromises and decisions
  • We had to think creatively and problem solve
  • We had to listen to other people's ideas and express our own
  • We had to think about measurement and making a cave that would fit our cars and Batman
 We measured how long this toy was.  We used paperclips.  She was 7 paperclips long!

 We played cupcake shop.  We ordered cupcakes and made them for the customer.  We brought our toys to get cupcakes too.  We were thinking about money and payment.  We were connecting to the social sciences by thinking about roles (shopkeeper and customer) in the community.


We also did some writing about our toys.  Some of us wrote descriptions of our toys and others wrote about our toy in the context of a story we read. 




Toy Tuesday is fun and it provides us with meaningful experiences throughout our day!