Star of the week

Star of the week this week is Hailey.

Hailey has a great attitude to learning, she listens well, asks questions, loves to answer questions and always tries her utmost to do well. She is a delight to have in our class although she has not been at school very long. Keep it up, Hailey, you are awesome!

Week 4 in our classroom.

Well done Caitlin!

Caitlin was chosen by the pupils of Room One to be our Class representative for the Student council. Each child who wanted to stand for election gave a little speech about themselves and everyone was allowed to cast one vote with Caitlin being the winner. She will represent our class at each Student council meeting and is a great choice.

 Booster Rooster!

We had a visit from Booster Rooster this week and he talked to each class in the Junior Syndicate about the importance of staying safe in a car and having a Booster seat if you are below 148cms in height. The reason for this is seat belts in cars are for adults and do not cross a childs body correctly to keep them safe whilst they are little. Every child was measured and given a certificate to take home recording their height. Here you can see Ella- Rose being measured.

Chinese...

We are learning to be confident whilst speaking Chinese and this is Mikaela with our teacher, telling us her name and her age in Chinese.

Welcome to Jordan!

Jordan came to us from Thursday Island. She is staying with her grand-parents in Stoke and this is her first taste of school now that she is five. Everything here is very different for Jordan but she has settled into the class beautifully, made friends and is happy with us.

 Visiting...

This is Paytn, on her second school visit.She has another week to wait until she can join us full time in Room One and she is very excited about that and finds the waiting hard. She is very proud to have a Birchwood Uniform to wear to school.

 Valanga Khoza.

What an amazing treat we had when Valanga Khoza came to play for us this week at school. He is a most incredible musician and played a wide varity of instruments for us, sang songs, made music from everyday items (ask your children about the 'pooper-scooper') and thoroughly entertained the whole Junior scyndicate for an hour. He comes from South Africa but lives in Australia most of the time. He chose children to join him in making music and is convinced Barney will be a pop star!

Science week.

Mr Butterworth astounded us all in Junior Assembly on Tuesday. He brought in two sacks, each containing six balloons, placed an upturned table on top of these and commenced to add children and adults to the table in order to see if we could pop the balloons. We had sixteen children and three adults all squeezed up together on the table and still the balloons stayed full of air! Incredible! I think we could have added more people if there had been space!

Science is AMAZING.

 Cross country training.

We are in serious training for the cross country which is coming up. When these photos were taken the children (and staff!) had managed to run two complete loops of the Kindy/school circuit building up the running the actual course later in the week.

Go, Izzy!

Go Alice!

Go Hannah!

Keeping ourselves safe with Constable Garland.

We continued learning about ourselves and this week learned about touch which makes us happy (shaking hands, cuddles) touch which makes us sad (kicking, pushing) and touch which is confusing (too much of something we used to like - for example a hug which becomes too long or too squeezy).

 We have been learning to ask, tell, yell and using our voices and body language to be strong. We have continued this with role-play and the children love it!

 Sharing time.

Sharing time has only been once this week due to all the special things which have been happening! here you can see the children enjoying talking with each other.

Story time.

Reading after lunch with our drinks is a welcome time to rest before the afternoon session and the special helper always gets to select the book to be read. Leni chose 'How Maui slowed the sun'.

Mrs Eades is team teaching with Mrs Savill now in Room One. Some of the children go into Room Two at times with Mrs Eades to work and this arrangement is a beautiful one. The new classrooms make team teaching smooth as with the adjoining doors open we can stay in touch and the children are adapting very well.

NEXT WEEK IN ROOM ONE...

Monday - Chinese. (Homework sheet from Keeping Ourselves Safe - our bodies which I forgot to send home last week, sorry!!)

Tuesday - Junior Cross Country at 11.30 a.m weather permitting. Parents are invited to sit on the steps to the hall facing the field in order to get the best view. There will be no Bible in schools today due to cross country.

Wednesday - Firewise in the afternoon.

Thursday - Library day.

Friday - Whole school assembly begins at 2.30 pm all welcome to attend.

Thank you for reading our Blog.

Star of the week, Week 4.

Keita is our star of the week. 

Keita received this certificate for her enthusiasm and progress in reading. Every day Keita comes into class and chooses a book to read with her Mum. She is often to be found sitting quietly reading to herself and loves all books. Her progress and enthusiasm is a delight. Well done, Keita, a love of reading is a joy.

Week 3 Term 2

Welcome to Daniella, who was five on Wednesday and joined us in Room One this week. Unfortunately I have been off sick for three days so have not been able to spend quality time with Daniella apart from on her visits so I look forward to getting to know her as her teacher.

Getting fit...

We have continued our training for the school cross country event, running slightly further every day around the school field. Running, coupled with Jump jam and fitness sessions with Lee Corlett are a regular occurrence now in Room One and all the children are joining in happily.

 Chinese lessons....

Monday afternoons are lots of fun and you can see the children joining in with the 'tiger song' they love where we are learning the names of parts of our bodies in Chinese as well as getting to know new puppets, here you can see the Monkey God and his twirling baton. In Chinese legend, the Monkey God can clone himself by pulling out one of his hairs and blowing on it to make another monkey. He can also shrink or enlarge himself at will and he stores his baton (or fighting stick) behind his ear.

Elephant masks!

Who can you spot? We are all in disguises.

My thanks to Mrs Eades and Mrs Thriart who stepped in during my absence to teach this wonderful class whilst I was sick. I was able to plan the lessons but missed my children!

Now I am back up to speed and looking forward to next week.

Next week (Week 4)

Monday. 
 We have a 'Rooster Booster' visit early  in the morning, learning about the importance of car seats and safety whilst on the road. Mrs Eades will be with us in class from now on in the mornings in addition to Mrs Savill. We will continue our Keeping Ourselves Safe topic (many thanks to those of you who have been helping your children to complete the homework sheets, much appreciated). A new worksheet will be coming home tonight about Feelings.
We are looking forward to meeting Jordan who starts in our class today.
Tuesday.
Special musical performance for the whole school this morning (see school newsletter for info - please ensure you have paid $4 to cover this). Bible In Schools as usual.
Wednesday.
 Mrs Malthus will be teaching today as I have a CRT day. Art this afternoon and i-pads in class :)
Thursday.
Remember to bring library books back today in order to choose a new one. Constable Garland will be talking with us and helping with our Keeping Ourselves Safe today. Jump jam this afternoon in the hall.
Friday
Again, no alphabet homework this weekend as a KOS worksheet is due to come home this weekend about naming parts of our bodies correctly. Please return this to school on Monday if possible.

Thank you for reading our Blog! Have a great week.
Mrs S.

Star of the week, week 2 term 2.

Barney is our star of the week!

Barney has a great attitude, he always tries his best, is a really happy and cheerful boy and has impressed me this week with his 'can do' approach to everything we have been doing in Room One. Keep it up Barney!

Week 2, term 2.

Our new students...

Welcome Ella-Rose, Izzy and Conrad, it's great to have you all in our class.

Butterfly invasion! 

This past week has been NZSL (New Zealand Sign Language) deaf awareness week and in association with Deaf Aoteora we took part as a whole school in a butterfly invasion whereby every child in the school had the opportunity to draw a butterfly in chalk on the  concrete somewhere in the school grounds. (The butterfly is the logo of Deaf Aoteora).Here you can see members of Room One making their butterflies on the back court.

By the end of the day the colour was amazing and it is well worth a visit to school to view these before the rain washes them away.

Assembly item.

It was Room One's turn for the whole school assembly item on Friday and sadly our powerpoint did not run - here are a couple of the photos which were on the powerpoint (as promised). Every child had a turn speaking with the microphone to introduce themselves in Chinese and we all counted aloud up to five. I was so proud of the class - well done, children!

 A visit from Eddie...

Our new teacher aide, Nicole, has a young Flemish Giant rabbit called Eddie and she brought him in to say "hello" on Monday this week. He was very well behaved and when he is fully grown he will be as big as a small dog!! We look forward to watching him grow. Thank you to Nicole for sharing Eddie with us :)

New playground exploration...

We now have a little book in class written at a level most of the children will be able to read alone. It has a photograph of each member of our class on the apparatus and I hope parents and children will enjoy looking at it together before or after school. We are working to improve our fitness levels as we have school cross country this term. Every day we are either running on the field (each day we run a little bit further) or doing JumpJam in the hall!

It's Autumn!

Our focus for writing this week was Autumn leaves. We looked at their colour, smelt them, felt them and talked about texture then wrote about our own leaf and drew pictures in our books. Published work is up in the classroom with our leaf collages from our walk outside the classroom for you to see. We tried leaf rubbing too.

Visiting Kindy.

We love to visit our friends in the Kindergarten next door and this week they had a massive leaf pile for us to share too - Kadence, Leni, and Ella-Rose thoroughly enjoyed throwing the leaves in the air.

Conrad had a good time on the swing and Mani was so pleased to don the tool belt and safety goggles ready to do some hammering.

 Keita, Caitlin, Amelia and Evie enjoyed painting together.

 Ella's frogs.

Ella in Room 3 brought her frogs to school to show the classes and had the opportunity to be the teacher and share her knowledge with us. Thank you Ella!

 Buddy Reading.

On Thursday afternoon, Room 7 always come and 'buddy read' with us. This week it was such beautiful weather some children chose to read whilst sitting on the edge of the sandpit. We really enjoy hearing the older children read their books and the opportunity to share our books with them too is a great one.

Next week in Room One.

On Monday we have a visit from a 'School Champion' to support our learning of sign and understanding of the deaf community. Cathy will be using NZSL to communicate with each syndicate and it will be a very interesting half hour with her. She is spending time with each of the syndicates in school.
On Tuesday we begin our new topic 'Keeping Ourselves Safe' as outlined in the newsletter last week. Constable Garland from the Police will be assisting us at school with this topic and he will visit our class on Thursday. Your children will be bringing home a worksheet from time to time which supports our class input and it would be great if you could talk through this with your children and return the completed sheet to school for discussion.
There will be no Alphabet Book homework this weekend coming as a result of this extra workload.
On Wednesday we have been invited to join with the Kindy and will be working with them and Lee Corlett to improve our fitness and co-ordination.
Thursday is library day as usual and we will be doing Jumpjam before we go home.

Please send the payment for the Valma Khiza performance ($4) to school this week and return the permission slips from the Home and School for chocolate sales if you are happy to give permission for your child to sell fund-raising chocolate bars.


Thanks so much.

Star of the week, week one term two.

Caitlin, star of the week!

Congratulations to Caitlin who received this certificate to recognise her natural ability in Chinese. Caitlin has a very good ear for the language and has shown promise from the very first lesson . Caitlin listens well, has excellent behaviour at all times in class, is great at helping new pupils settle into our room and is always happy and cheerful.
Well done, Caitlin!