E Papa - Maori Stick Songs (tī rākau)

As part of our cultural learning we have been looking at Maori stick songs.
Here we are trialing E Papa.

 What co-ordination we showed.

How Tall are We?

Continuing our learning around measurement and length, today we measured our classmates with a piece of string. It was quite a learning experience for some of us, figuring out where to start measuring from and making sure we cut the string in the correct place. Mrs Turner didn't get too many photos as she was trying to be here, there and everywhere!

Afterwards we lined all our pieces of string up on the board. Some of us are taller than others and some of us are shorter. I wonder if you can see who the Tallest is?

In the afternoon, we attached the string to a cut-out of our face. Mrs Turner has hung them up for you to have a look at on Monday. Next week, we will be taking them down and doing some more measuring with them. I wonder how many pens tall we are? or how many hands? or maybe we could try 'how many drink bottles'?!

Watch this space!

The Lions go Contraction Hunting

On Thursday the Lions went on a contraction hunt while they read to the teacher. They found lots! One isn't actually a contraction, but it did have an apostrophe in it!  

Well done guys!

Super Similes

Last week some of Team 8 were learning to describe things using Smilies. - A simile is a figure of speech that compares one thing with another thing of a different kind. 

SOME of us were working with with the teacher, and SOME of us had their listening (eavesdropping) ears switched on, and decided to create smilies all on their own without any of my help!!!

I was super impressed with these writers and I promised them fame right here on the blog. 

Please help them to understand the value of their writing and leave them a comment telling them what a great job they have done.

Sensory Handwriting

Here in Team 8 we don't mind getting our hands dirty! 

Here we are learning how to form our letters correctly in shaving foam. 

Here's a challenge Team 8..... Can you show someone in your family how to form a c, a, d, g or 9? Remember that they all start in the same place and go in the same direction. Don't forget to not take you pencil/pen off the paper until you have finished the whole letter!

Want to Design an Aeroplane?

With our second round of Genius Hour fast approaching, it was great timing last Thursday when Mrs Crowhurst invited an aviation engineer to talk to us.

The engineer worked for Boeing. She showed us heaps of pictures of all the aeroplanes that she had helped to design - Now we all want to go to university to study 'mechanical engineering'!

Afterwards we had a go at designing our very own paper aeroplanes. We learned that for the paper version, bigger wings were better. Some of us even added 'flaps' which we insist helped them to stay in the air longer.

Maybe some of us will take this 'passion' and develop it further in our next genius time?

Where is Mrs Grant?

Just in case you were wondering where Mrs Grant was this week, Team 8 have written some fabulous stories to enlighten you.

We tried really hard to sound out all our own letters and use our imagination as to where she might be.

Check out our cool stories…

Mrs Grant is like an alien but she is skiing very fast on the snow mountain. By William

Mrs Grant is skiing on the hill. There are people behind her. By Tom

Mrs Grant is on the chairlift and she has some goggles and a jacket and a helmet. I hope she feels happy. She is going down the mountain. By Lachie.


Feel free to leave us some feedback about our stories in the comments section :-)

Crazy for KidsCan

We were pretty wacky to start with anyway - but here we are dressed to impress!

Thanks for your support xo

Indian Culture

Did you know that Nayla's ancestors come from India and that her mum was born in Fiji? Well, on Friday we were lucky enough to have her (Nayla's mum Sanjana), come in to tell us all about it. 

She was born in Fiji and came to New Zealand as a young girl.  She told us that to say hello in Fijian we say "Bula" and to say thank you we say "Vinaka"

She shared with us the traditional Indian costumes that Nayla and her brother wear for special occasions. We were even allowed to try them on if we wanted to. They were very colourful and had lots of jewel-like details on them.  I liked Sanjana's pink sari the best, it was very soft and sparkly.

She also brought in some henna and drew patterns on our skin. It took a little while to dry, and some of them got smudged but we still enjoyed getting our "tattoos". Traditionally henna is used for weddings and special occasions. My pattern is still on my hand, is your's still there?

Thank you sooooo much Sanjana for coming in. I hope you didn't get too far behind with your work?

We learned SO much and really appreciate you taking the time out. We are continuing our learning about Indian culture this week so hopefully we will have some cool art to show you at the end of it.

x

Sri Lanka

On Thursday Sayuni's Daddy came in for a visit. 

He showed us a powerpoint and answered all our questions about Sri Lanka. 

We are very lucky to have two people in our class who come from Sri Lanka; Sayuni and Anoji.

This is them in their traditional dress

Did you know that there are 3 different languages in Sri Lanka (Sinhala, Tamil and English)? Sayuni and her family speak Sinhala and Anoji and his family speak Tamil.

Here is Sayuni's Dad holding the Sinhala alphabet

He told us, that to greet other people in Sinhala, we need place our hands together, bow and say "Ayubowan"

Sayuni's mummy came for a visit too, she made us kokis to try. She had made them in the shape of Sri Lanka. They were sweet and crunchy.

Anoji's mummy also joined the party and brought us some Kesari to taste. It was yellow and was also nice and sweet. 

Here we are eating all our traditional Sri Lankan sweets (lot's of us went back for seconds ;-)

Thank you so much mummy's they would have taken AGES to cook and they were soooo delicious!

To finish it all, On Friday we talked about all the things we had learned. Here is our wall display that we made together. Can you remember what the Sri Lankan native bird in the picture is called?

Thank you so much to Sayuni and Anoji's families for coming in and sharing your culture with us. I say it all the time, but Team 8 is so very lucky to have such a supportive whanau like you.

x