Wally's Next Big Adventure

In the last school holidays Wally, our class giraffe, went on a holiday to Australia with Hayzel.  He enjoyed his trip so much he couldn't wait to go on another one so today he left us again to travel to Hong Kong and Vietnam with Nicole.  He is very excited and Nicole has promised that she will teach Wally some Vietnamese in case he meets another giraffe on his travels.

Nicole and Wally

Saying goodbye to Wally

It will take Wally about 11 or 12 hours to fly to Vietnam on the aeroplane.  Here is a map of Vietnam.

We will miss you Wally and Nicole but we know you will have a great time.  We can't wait to hear all about your adventures when you get back. 

Our New Year Dragon

The lions reading group read Our New Year Dragon by Sara Oldfield.   

As a follow up activity the children made their own new year dragon. They then used the easy speak to record something they had learnt about the new year dragon.

Here is a video of a dancing dragon.

New Years Celebrations

Last week we learnt the waiata Nga Tamariki O Matariki.  It is a song about Matariki and while we were learning it we also discussed other ways people in A3 celebrated New Years.  Here is Rohit, Tanzeela, Vicky and Nicole telling us about their New Years celebrations.

The Hideous Dragon

Nicole has been working hard to use descriptive language in her stories and last week she wrote a fabulous story about a hideous, slobbery dragon.  Will she get away or will she be a dragon's dinner? Listen to her story to find out.

Our Botanic Garden reflection

After our trip to the Auckland Botanic Gardens I gave the children the option of using the ipad to record themselves sharing what they learned and/or a question they would like the answer to.  They were able to do this when they had some spare time and had completed their set work. This is the first time they have used the ipad to record themselves and here is a video of the results. 

Now our challenge is to answer some of these questions.  Share your ideas about how we could find the answers by leaving a comment.

Last week we read the story Guji-Guji by Chih-Yuan Chen.  We talked about the descriptive words that made the story more interesting.  Nicole really enjoyed the story and she has written her own version. 

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

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.

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

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.

Trick or Treat

It was Halloween last week.  We decided to make some scary halloween food.  We got together with A4 and made marshmellow ghosts and fingers covered in blood!  It was fun making them but even better when we got to eat them.

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.

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. 


 

Duffy Theatre

On Friday the Duffy theatre came to our school.  Duffy was showing us why it is so important to read and all the jobs reading will help us to get.  The show was really funny and we didn't stop laughing the whole way through.  After the show some of the children wanted to share what they loved best about it, take a look at the video to hear their thoughts. 

Fish and Chips

On Monday A3 and A4 made healthy fish and chips.  It was lots of fun and the fish and chips were delicious.  Here are some of the children from A3 sharing how we made our fish and chips and what they thought of it. 

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.