Noelani's First Chapter Book

Noelani has worked hard to complete her first chapter book.  Read it and leave Noelani and comment to let her know what you think. 

Open publication - Free publishing - More amelia

Birthday Eve

It is Wally's 7th Birthday tomorrow and we have been busy planning a surprise party.  We have made some decorations and a chocolate cake and we can't wait for the party to begin.  Noelani and Rooshan have written stories about what we have been planning.  

What am I?

We have been writing what am I stories this week.  We chose an animal and drew it in our story writing books.  We then wrote down all the ways we could describe it around the animal.  Once we had done this we were ready to write.  Here is the kakariki writing group reading thier stories.  Can you guess the animals correctly?

what am I from East School on Vimeo.

The Fun Bus

In the first week of term three we read The Fun Bus by Jill Eggleton. 

We enjoyed it so much we decided to make our own fun bus. 

Some of the children also wrote stories about thier fun bus.  Shirley has worked hard to make a video of their stories using imovie.  We hope you enjoy them. 

Mr Twit and the Three Twits, By Noelani

We have been reading The Twits, by Roald Dahl.  It is a very funny story about two nasty people who are always playing mean tricks on each other.  We have been having fun writing stories about them and imagining some more tricks they might play on each other.  Here is Noelani reading her story. She has used great expression when she is reading. 

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.

Thanks Grant!

We are very lucky because Miss Mac's Dad has donated his old ipad to our classroom. We've been using two ipads in our classroom for maths and reading and we love it, but two ipads between eight kids means a lot of waiting around for a turn. We are very happy to have another one to share and some of us have written letters to say thank you.  

Playing with the ipads.

The Wave

Noelani has written an imaginative story using lots of great descriptive words.  She has also illustrated her story using paint.  Great work Noelani, I can't wait to read more of your stories. 

Merry Christmas!!!

It was our last day of school for the year today and now we are on holiday until January 31st.  When we get back there will be a new bunch of children in A3.  It has been a great year and we have had a lot of fun together.  Thanks to everyone who has supported our blog this year.   Wally has promised to update the blog with tales of his holiday, so stay posted for his updates.  We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. 

Mr McGee

We have been reading the Mr McGee books by Pamela Allen. 

We think Mr McGee is really funny and some of the children decided to write their own Mr McGee stories.  We used Puppet Pals on the ipad to publish our stories.  The children drew their own backgrounds and used photos to create the characters.  Let us know what you think.

Mr McGee and the Glasses

Mr McGee and the Cup of Tea, by Deziah



All I want for Christmas . . .

Here are three more letters to Santa written by Noelani, Ofa and Ashley.  I hope Santa has been looking at our blog!

Opening Ceremony, by Noelani

Noelani has written a story about the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup.  She has been practicing reading her stories onto the blog fluently and she has done a great job reading this story.

Catch it if you can

We have been reading the poem Catch it if you can.  It's about cooking pancakes so on Friday we decided to make some pancakes of our own. 

 Sandy, Noelani and Ennie have written stories about the pancake experience:

Tui Garden Challenge

A3 and A1 have entered the Tui Gardening challenge and on Monday we started getting our gardens ready.  We pulled out all of the weeds and old plants from our garden beds.  As part of the garden challenge we were given new gardening tools and these were very helpful to pull out the plants.  

Ashley with some of our new tools

One of our gardens before we weeded it.

Take a look at this slide show to see the children hard at work.
   

Four of the children wrote and recorded stories about their gardening experience so far. 

Dinosaur Prints

Last week we were very busy working on  dinosaur prints. It was a lot of work but we love the results. We made two different prints.  For the first one we chose one colour of ink to use, then we used dye and creative glue to add detail to the picture.  For our second print we were allowed to chose two different colours of ink.  Take a look at our slide show and let us know what you think.

Untitled from Kirsty Macfarlane on Vimeo.

Maths Week

Last week was maths week.  Each day we worked in groups to solve a different maths problem.  Some of the problems were quite tricky and we enjoyed the challenge of solving them. 

Here is Aliyaah, Ofa and Noelani telling us how they solved the following problem:

Mother Bear is making her 5 bear cubs new coats.  The coats have 3 buttons each. How many buttons does Mother Bear need?

We also used paint to copy a picture of a robot using shapes.  Take a look at the slide show to see the results. 

Monster Mash

We have been reading 'The Monster's Party' by Joy Cowley and we decided to have our own monster mash. We made monster masks and played charades, musical chairs and pin the hat on the monster.  After we had finished the games we ate lots of jelly!  

 

Here are some photos of the scary monsters at play. 

We also made a sound scape to match what was happening in the story.  We had to think of sounds that matched the story and then we added actions.  We hope you like it. 

The Tent, by Noelani

We got given a surprise in the last week of term.  Listen to Noelani's story to find out what it was. 

What's holding up Wally?

We are waiting for Wally to come back from Australia but we think he might be held up because there is an ash cloud above us stopping planes from flying.   The ash has flown all the way from a volcanic eruption in Chile!  Listen to Noelani's story telling us why Wally might be late back.  

Bye Bye Wattle

Friday was Wattle's last day in A3.  He has been visiting us from Australia for the last 7 weeks and now it is time for him to go back to his class Learning Together.  We have had lots of fun with Wattle and we are going to miss him, but we are looking forward to seeing our giraffe Wally again.  Take a look at the video to see what Wattle got up to while he was with us.  

Untitled from Kirsty Macfarlane on Vimeo.

Here is a video of us singing a goodbye song for Wattle.