The Picasso Cats

On Thursday, we made Picasso Cats using pastels. We found out about Picasso and learned that he liked to put shapes in his paintings. He also liked to change the features of his subjects and put these in different and unusual places.
Picasso was born in Spain in 1881.He is a very famous artist and his paintings are now worth millions of dollars.

Korowai with Janet de Wagt

Last week was an exciting week in Room 13 with Janet de Wagt (Our artist in residence) leading us in making cloaks (Korowai).
It was our making day with Janet on Thursday. We learned to be arty not greedy and thanks to the assistance of Susan, Jacinta, Kate, Jo, Karen, Tracy and Debbie created some awesome cloaks. We had to work very hard and we couldn't believe we finished our cloaks about 2 minutes to 3pm. We felt so proud wearing them in the Grand Parade on Friday. They are on display in class and we will be wearing them again soon....

We wrote fantastic recounts of our personal experiences of making cloaks with Janet. We published them and you can come and read them in Room 13.

Keep up the great work with poetry, next week we will be sharing them in class- so keep practising at home this week.

Maori Language Quiz

Next week is Maori Language week. Maori along with English and Sign Langauage are the official langaues of New Zealand.
The focus this year is on Kai (Food)
See if you can answer these 10 questions about Maori:
1. What is the Maori word for food?
2. What is the Maori word for banana?
3. What does waka mean?
4. What is the Maori word for stomach/tummy?
5. How many is tekau?
6.What is the Maori word for eyes?
7.What part of of the body would you find a moko?
8. What do the Maori people call an earth oven?
9. What is food from the sea called in Maori?
10. Name 5 native birds?

Term 3

Welcome back everyone!!! It is great to be back in Room 13. I had an awesome time travelling in Europe for a month with my Mum. Here are a few pics from my tour.

Puppets

We made puppets today, it was fun and tricky at the same time. We got the idea from a book on instructions and procedures.

Don't they look cool, we are going to try them out in Tuesday and check if we need to remake them. We used paper, pencils , PVA glue and of course socks!

Raining Raining Raining

We think it may never stop raining......

This week Room 13 is on assembly. Parents we would love it if you could be with us on Friday at 2pm. We have been learning about Keeping Ourselves Safe with Constable Ross Greer.
We are learning to be confident kids and know our full name, address and phone number off by heart incase we ever get lost.


Check out this link for some fun activities to keep children safe when they are online.
www.hectorsworld.com

Today we have been learning about writing instructions.

We wrote instructions about what we do before we come to school.

Look at Isabel and Oscar's cool instructions. Can you spot the verbs (doing words) at the start of each instruction.

Welcome back to school

Last week was busy!!! Room 13 have been learning more about what products we get from other countries. Emma bought some Couscous that was made in Italy. We investigated couscous further and discovered that:

• Couscous is made from Durum wheat semolina grains.


• The North African people were believed to be the first people to make and cook it


• It takes a long time to make by hand


• People enjoy couscous all over the world


• There is a special couscous festival in Sicily (ITALY)

Next Miss Brown whipped up a tasty recipe for us to try with our Room 4 buddy class. Mrs Horgan and Mrs McRae served it up for us.

We thought it was:

• delicious


• kind of like rice


• soft


• spongy


• spicy


• better with vegetables


• yummy


• great


• nice

Foods we want to try!!!

We have been hard at work in Room 13 finding out about different countries from around the world and yesterday we had to work with a buddy to organise things that New Zealand produce to give to the world and products the world give us in New Zealand.

It was hard work. Then we decided that we wanted to try some of the food products we were organising. Miss Brown brought a coconut along for us to try. Some children thought it was yum and others thought it tasted yuck!!

Here are some other foods from different countries we want to try:

• snails



• soy milk



• coffee beans



• cocoa

You might like to bring some foods from home that we could sample.

We went to Equador today!

We found out that:

Bananas are grown in 130 countries around the world. Bananas are grown in tropical places.

New Zealand buy their bananas mainly from Equador. We found out that Equador is in the southern and northern hemispheres. The equator passes through Equador. Equador is in South America. There are rainforests in Equador. The people of Equador speak spanish. The highest mountain/volcano is Chimborazo.

You can watch some movies on you tube about how bananas are grown and produced. http://www.youtube.com/ (banana equador) and (banana tour equador)

Ollie, Riley and Emma T were reporters and went to Room 11 to share these facts on bananas and Equador.

Today is Tuesday. We had a nice long weekend!

"The Monarch butterflies are going to come out of their chrysalis's very soon," said Miss Brown.

(9 am)

Look what happened after play!!

It took most of the day for the Monarch butterfly to dry its wings. Will it fly away tonight?

If you want to find out more about Monarch butterflies check out the websites

http://www.monarch-butterfly.com/

www.kidzone.ws/animals/monarch_butterfly.htm

We have started learning about The World came to my Place Today! Do you have anything exciting from another country to bring along to share?

Yesterday we made cookies in Room 11 because we are learning about measuring and how much things weigh. Check out the photo of the writing window- the children are practising writing at home and at school to put up on this.
We can't believe it is March.... Emma J is turning 6 next Saturday.
Our class goal for the week is to not rush our work and to take our time....
Bye for now we have a lot of hard work to do now.

Constable Ross Greer has been talking to us about safe walking. We have made a movie about safe walking and hope to put it on our blog soon... Remember to look left and right and listen for car noises before getting an adult to help you cross the road. We learnt about looking out for driveways too!!

Wacky Wednesday!!

We have had a busy week. Yesterday we wrote narratives with a partner.

We used a photo from the Australian Outback to help us with ideas.

We think a great narrative should have a:

• super starter



• problem



• solution



• juicy words



• great ending



• time words



• be written in the past tense

These are great and Miss B has published them. Check out this one by Riley and Jacob.

One day we were hunting for a rabbit. We hunted it. We had to go through bushes. Finally we shot the gun. We got the rabbit. We took it back to the truck. We got home and had it for tea. It was rabbit stew, it was a big stew. After that we were fat.
Jacob and Riley

Swimming

Today is the first day of walk and wheel week. Many of us walked and wheeled to school today. Check out the cool photos of us swimming at Farfield Pool. We are making such great progress and becoming very confident in the water. Jade decided to call her new puppy, Storm. We think this is a great name and we enjoyed meeting Storm a couple of weeks ago Jade!!!!

This morning all we can smell is smoke. We hope the firemen and helicopters put out the big fires at Mt Allan.
Today we are going to the swimming pool for our 3rd lesson. After lunch we have music with Mrs Tay and then PE with Mr Hoffman. We will have a lot of fun and its great to cool off in the hot weather. Miss Brown thinks our news is going really well. There are some fabulous posters and talks all about ourselves. We really are getting to know each other well. We have a poem all about A to read tonight.

Kia Ora from Room 13
We had our first day of swimming today and it sure was hot!! Remember you will need your togs again tomorrow. Pipi is at Anna's tonight, she loved her swimming style. We had a great writing session today and we worked hard on our spelling, writing down the letter sounds we hear in words. On Friday we found out that the most common eye colour in Room 13 was blue and brown was the least. We think this is interesting and wonder what the most common colour will be in our whole school???

Funky Friday

Today is Friday. We are going to have a fun maths time this morning. We will have to solve problems with our buddies!!!! Today we are going to get our new homework book. We have spelling words to learn and we are very excited about it. Pipi was at Jess's house on an adventure, she made Jess pick up 5 in last card and she won the game. Tricky Pipi!!! We have been thinking about honesty this week- this means we are good at telling the truth.
Room 13 are showing Junior Whanau Hui the story of How Maui found the Secret of Fire.

U is for Ukulele

We have been sharing news about our favourite things..... Riley played his Ukulele today for us. We are going to listen to some ukulele music tomorrow.
Emma T shared a fabulous mind map about what she likes to do... this gave us an idea. Some of us are going to make our own mind maps of what we like to do. Thanks Emma T!!!!

We listened to Toni's, Leighton's, Emma J's and Oscar's narrative stories. We have been learning that a narrative has an interesting beginning (telling us who, where and when) they have a problem and a solution. This is Toni's:

One day a snow dog fell in the water. The girl dog swam to save the snow dog.

Next week we are going to start learning spelling words for our homework. This will be new for all of us but a fun challenge. A great website for brushing up on letters, letter sound and spelling is starfall.

Pipi went swimming with Emma T and Oscar might take her on a bike ride tonight!!!!

Pipi had a fabulous time at Ollie's house in the weekend and she met kiwi!!!
The Otago Highlanders came to ETS today and showed us some of their cool rugby moves.
We each got a poster and some of the Highlanders even signed them!!!! They were very tall and they were super friendly. Good Luck Highlanders, we hope you do well this season.
We got a notice about sharing news today and we found out when our news day is. Pipi is at Emma T's house tonight for kai and a sleepover. I bet she will have awesome time.

Kia Ora

Kia Ora Koutou from Room 13!!
We are following Room 11's great lead and getting into blogging.
We have had a busy start to the year and we have been hard at work creating some gorgeous self portraits. We even recycled our stationary boxes to make frames for them. We will post photos of them here soon.
Pipi Piwakawaka is a very special friend of the class and she is home having an adventure with Ollie and his family this weekend.