Concert Video

Take a look at the videos of our end of year concert.  We had a great time so we hope you enjoy watching them.

The year ones

The year twos

The year threes

A roaring good time!

Today the junior school had our Christmas concert.  All of the year ones had their face painted as lions and we sung 'In the Jungle'.

It was a lot of fun and the children did a great job performing their songs!  Take a look at our photos and stay posted for a video of our performance.  

Christmas Concert on PhotoPeach

Exit, stage right

We have been practicing hard for our end of year Christmas concert.  Yesterday we had our first practice on the stage and some of the children have written stories about what we did.  

Alex has written a story about someone that couldn't stop practicing.  Listen to his story to hear what happened.  

Goodbye Nanas

It's time for Nanas to go back to his class in Christchurch so we decided to give him a farewell party.  We had a treasure hunt and played some games then we made banana splits! Yum!  We will miss Nanas, but we are looking forward to seeing Wally again.

Nanas Big day at the museum!

Yesterday A3 and A4 took Nanas on his first adventure into the big city.  He went with us to the museum and he got to see lots of interesting things, like dinosaur bones. 

Nanas on looking at the motorway on the way to the museum

Nanas looking at some cockroaches in the weird and wonderful exhibition 

Take a look at this slideshow to see what else Nanas and A3 got up to:

Here are some stories that the children wrote about their trip to the museum.  It is Tevita's first video since starting in our class, well done Tevita! 

The Kittens have arrived!

The kittens have arrived.  They are staying in Mrs Compston's office until they feel safe and happy at our school.  A3 and A4 got to go and meet them and they are very cute! 

Here are some kitten inspired stories.

The kittens don't have names yet.  Please let us know your suggestions. 

First Contact

Yesterday we had our first ever skype call with the Springston Explorers in Christchurch.  We got to see Wally and ask them questions about what he was doing down there.  They asked us some questions too!  It was very exciting.

Nanas is waving hello to his class.

Asking questions about Wally

Wally Wonderings

The children are still thinking and writing about Wally.  Here are a couple of children reading their stories about what they think Wally might be getting up to in Christchurch.

Happy Diwali

On Friday it was Diwali, the Indian festival of light.  We decided to celebrate it by making Barfi and Rangoli patterns.  Take a look at our video to see the what we did.

Gardening

On Wednesday we started to get our garden bed ready for the plants.  First we took out the weeds, then we put newspaper down and wet it.  This was to stop more weeds from growing.  Once the newspaper was really wet we started to fill up our garden with dirt.  It was a very messy job but lots of fun.  We were all very tired at the end but we can't wait to start growing strawberries so we can eat them all up! Alex wrote a story about what we did to make our garden, have a look:

Take a look at this slide show to see what we did.

Insects

Some of the children have been learning to write descriptions this week. Since we have been talking about insects we decided to write descriptions of insects.  The children used a writing checklist  to make sure that their description had the name of the insect, its colour and a word describing the size of the insect.  They used the books that we had been reading to find the words they needed.  Take a look at the photos of these amazing writers at work.

Here is the video of the children reading their descriptions.  They each drew a picture of their insect on kidpix which you can see at the start of each clip.

The Praying Mantis


 Today the lions read 'The Praying Mantis' by Pauline Cartwright.  The book was really interesting, here are the children telling you what they learned and what happened in the story.





Do you have any interesting facts about the praying mantis? Please let us know!



Praying mantis, by Avnish



Our puffer Fish

We have been working hard for about five weeks to make these wonderful puffer fish.  First we had to cover our balloons in layers and layers of newspaper and glue. After that we had to cover the balloon in white paper and wait for it to dry before we could begin painting it.  It's taken a long time but the results are great and all of the children are very proud of their fish.

Year one barbeque

On the last day of term we had a barbeque with all of the year one classes.  We got to play with the sports equipment and the parachute.  It was heaps of fun.  Take a look at our photos. 


 

Keen readers!

Bill is a new member of A3 and he is really keen to learn to read.  He was so excited that he couldn't wait until he got home to read his book, so he asked Alex to help him read it.  Alex was a great teacher, helping Bill to read the words he wasn't sure of.  

The Cat. By Alex

Play time!

After we had been through Kelly Tarltons, we went to the park to have lunch and then play!  It was a great park and everyone really loved the merry go round!  Take a look at the photos. 

Kelly Tarltons

We had a great time at Kelly tarltons.  We saw sharks, octopuses, penguins and best of all - a real live puffer fish!  Here is a photo of Yvon and the puffer fish looking at each other:

We got to see a lady feeding the stingrays.  They came up very close to her and she gave them fish.  Take a look at this picture, if you look closely you can see the shadows of the stingrays:

We went on a snowcat to look at the penguins. We saw King Penguins(they are the ones with yellow chins) and Gentoo penguins.

We saw a diver in the penguin tank.

On board the snowcat

The penguins are being fed

We saw the tooth of a megaladon shark, it was HUGE.  It's mouth was bigger then most of us!

Jaida with the megaladon tooth.

In front of the megaladons mouth

Have a look at more of our photos:

Porcupine fish

Today we got to look at a real porcupine fish.  We were pretty excited and some of us were a little scared!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

We talked about why it has spines and Solomon was keen to tell us that they are to protect it from other fish and sharks(have a look at the video on the left of our blog).  Here is a video of Solomon telling us what he knows about puffer fish.  

After all that the children thought it would be fun to pretend to be puffer fish. Bill was the shark and when he came near us we had to puff up to scare him away!  Lucky for us it worked!

Alice drew this picture of the puffer fish on kid pix.

We'd love to hear what you know about porcupine fish, please leave us a comment.  

Cats

A3 heard that our school cats would be arriving soon. We decided to draw some pictures of what we think they might look like.  Have a look:

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