Welcome back to Room 12 - it is now Term 3!

Welcome to Ardrion and Ariana who have joined our classroom this term:

Ardrion

Ariana

Introducing Christine:

We are very fortunate to have Christine join Room 12 this term as our Teacher Aide. 

Christine is a very warm and friendly lady and the children have responded well to her.

Do come can say hello to Christine when you are next in!

Did someone mention gingerbread men?  During the last week of term 2 we were looking at The Gingerbread Man big book.  We decided to decorate our own gingerbread man as a last day of term treat!  yum yum!

     

The students never cease to amaze me with their Lego creations.  We have great conversations of what they have made, how various bits work, with some students collaborating ideas and building a whole 'township' of characters and buildings.

WRITING:

This term we are focusing on our butterfly cards to help with our writing and to become independent writers!  We have also been thinking about hearing sounds in a word in order to write it.

Here are some examples of how well our writing and hearing alphabet sounds is going!

READING:
We are currently focusing on 'eagle eye', 'fishy lips', and 'stretchy snake' to help with our reading:

INQUIRY - Exploration:

We are looking at exploration this term for our Inquiry.  We have discussed how we explore, what we need to explore, who can help us explore, and why do we explore. Each day we have explored a different part of the world, in conjunction with what our letter of the day has been.  Here is our artwork about "how" we can explore:

 

horse

 

motorbike

train, plane and super fast train!

FINANCIAL CAPABILITY:

Last week we were looking at money, identifying coins and notes, playing shop and building our own piggy banks!  It was a full-on week, and we discovered that the explorer Captain Cook's ship, The Endeavour, was on our 50 cent coin! AND that explorer Sir Ed Hilliary was on our $5 note. A very exciting discovery to link our maths with our inquiry!

We are currently making our own piggy banks to save up for something special!

We have completed phase one (above) of our piggy banks, watch this space for our progress!

Ka kite ano

(bye for now)

See you next time!

Mrs Taylor  

P.S. Mrs Wishy-Washy is back next time!

Welcome back to Term 2 in Room 12!

We have grown from 7 students in week 1, to 21 students in week 7!  Here are our newest members of the class.  Welcome to Draco, Bayleigh, Jordan (front row), Izzy and Nichola (back row), and to Eva (absent).

  

Did someone mention Lego?  we have a new lego tub in our classroom! 

And what creative people we have in Room 12 - see our fine motor skills and creativity in action below:

As Room 12 grew so quickly, we needed more furniture.  We now have a dedicated iPad table that is working well with our tasks.

In maths we have been working on the hundred's boards,

and writing our numbers 1 to 10, geometry, dominoes, snakes and ladders and bottle top maths:

  

And making patterns by threading beads - Alfred made a bead chain taller than him!

Our confidence in writing is growing, and we are copying on yellow highlighter, and also writing without highlighter.  We have been working on planning our picture for our story.

The last two weeks Mrs Taylor had a "make it" table.  There were scissors, glue, a stapler, and different types of paper, foam paper and sparkly paper.  It was amazing what people were making!

Our friend Greedy Cat was back and he did not like what Aunty was giving him (broccoli and cat biscuits), so he went to school where the children gave him some of their food.  We made our own greedy cats, with greedy tummies!  We cut out food that we thought greedy cat would like, and put it on his tummy!  We showed our learning at assembly recently:

This term we have been learning about Earth's Systems:  living things, water, air and land.  Here are our buckets displaying the systems:

We have looked at the water cycle, the life cycle of a caterpillar, the oxygen cycle and the rock cycle!

Our inquiry is:  "What would happen if one of these systems was missing?"  Stay tuned until next term to find out!

With our new students, came new ideas - we now have a cafe in our classroom: Cafe 12 !
Our students bring me cups of tea and dinosaur sandwiches - although recently we made our own food, and decided on appropriate prices.  You can phone in your order, pick it up, or have it delivered to the cafe table!

We have taken it a step further this week and made products to 'sell' so we can practice our maths, language skills and reading, all at once!

And it's very versatile - recently it became an internet cafe!

With so many new students, we needed to work together and think about how we help others in our class.  We made a thinking tree, signed by our pastel hands.  Each week we focus on three things that will help everyone in our class.

Here are some recent play dough designs:

    A skiing snowman by Jordan and a heart within a heart by Acacia.

Designer Draco's Dino-Dragon!

Happy Matariki everyone!

Matariki is the celebration of the Maori New Year.  Room 12 celebrated Matariki by making our thinking tree to help others in our class community, and we are making a thankful cloak later in the week.

Happy holidays from Suzy!

Ka kite ano

(bye for now)

Thank you for visiting Room 12's blog.

See you next time!

Mrs Taylor