Happy Chinese New Year!!

If you would like to learn a little more about the year of the Monkey and Chinese New Year, here is a great link. Dogo News also has some great information!

Huff and Puff with Project Energize

Project energize - Kizoa Online Movie Maker

Maths and Leonardo Davinci

Today we looked at the concept of measurement while working collaboratively. We tried to test the theory that your height is the same as the distance between your finger tips with your arms stretched out. We learnt to be accurate with our measurements and that we need a clear starting point. We also learnt from our mistakes by problem solving. 

Why does hot air rise and cold air sink?

During the past few weeks we have had lots of fun learning and practicing running, jumping and throwing skills with the help of Renee from Project Energise. We have also been very lucky to have tennis coaching from Andy a professional tennis coach. We all had a lot of fun and were able to put all of these skills into practice at our junior school athletics fun day last Thursday.

We had lots of fun in room 12 with the electronics equipment.

We followed the instructions in the book and made the light bulb glow. Next we made a fan spin around by connecting pieces of wire to a battery. The fan was making a loud noise because it was spinning so fast. We were learning about electronics and how they work. Electronics can be hard to figure out. By Austin.

We had a sound box that made a machine gun noise and other noises. We used bits of wire and other bits to create something that could make a noise or glow. I really making the things with my group.

We learnt how to use technology to create noises. By Hunter.

First we tried to make the noise gun but that didn't work. So then we got some different instructions and tried making a fan. The fan spun around and fell on the ground. We made the fan by joining together bits of wire, batteries and things. We pushed the battery but the fan didn't work. We were learning about electricity. By Ruweyda.

Welcome to another busy term.
Last week the children participated in a technology activity called "The Great Egg Challenge. They had to work in groups and using the materials supplied design an egg container that would keep a raw egg intact when dropped.
The children really enjoyed working in groups to plan their design, make their design and then finally to test their design.
Here are some showing different stages of the process.

For Mathematics at the moment we are focusing on addition and subtraction. The children are being encouraged to practice their basic facts, doubles and skip counting forward and back in 2s,5s and 10s to help them with their problem solving.
Our P.E. focus at the moment is running, jumping and throwing skills. This is in preparation for our athletic sports later in the term. With the warmer weather upon us we encourage the children to wear layers so that they can take some layers off when it gets hot and when we are outside practicing our run, jump, throw skills.
We were very lucky this week to be able to visit the Waikato Museum. This enabled us to participate not only in the Excite activities within the museum but to also experience the Eco Warrior installation. During the next few weeks we will be using our museum visit to help us with our talking, writing and other activities based around our topic work.
We look forward to sharing our learning with you all over the next few weeks about how we look after and help our environment.