Discovery time today.

Kyran and Jackson at Disovery time today.

Kyran and Jackson love to go on Pic-Collage at Discovery Time.  They write about creatures they are interested in.  Today they chose crocodiles, here is what they made:

William got really interested in the magnets and made this video:

Water Safety

Water Safety

On Wednesday and Thursday this week our focus at the pool was on water safety.  The children were able to learn about life jackets and how important they are to wear around water and in boats.
It was quite a scary challenge for a lot of us to jump into the big pool and trust that the life jacket would make us "bob up" to the surface again.
Well done everyone for being so brave and giving it a go!

Swimming Lessons

We have been having a very exciting week travelling to the pool for swimming lessons.  Here is a slideshow of what we have been doing at the pool.

A visit from the Volunteer Fire Service

We were so excited to have a visit from the Volunteer Fire Service on Friday.  As part of our term's topic on groups in our community, the children came up with a lot of questions about the roles and duties that volunteers take on when they join the Fire Service.
We were lucky to have a lovely day, the children certainly loved taking turns to use the fire hose!
Thank you so much to Tracy, Ian and the crew for giving up their time to come in to answer our questions and show us the equipment they use to fight fires.

We learned all about safety equipment.

Big Andy with Little Lucy

Grandparents afternoon

Thank you to all the grandparents and aunties who came to our grandparents afternoon - it was certainly a fantastic success.  What a beautiful sunny afternoon we got for it!The children absolutely loved showing you their classroom and sharing their learning with you.  The Pic-collages you made together are lovely.  We have printed them out and they are on display in the classroom.

Research Presentations

Some children in Weka have been researching topics and have made Book Creator presentations to share with you. These will be added as they are finished.

Community Walks

We had 3 very interesting walks around our community last week.  We were lucky with the weather!  The children took a lot of photos and noticed how many different places and organisations we have around us.  
Thank you to the parents who joined us on our walks, without your support we would not have been able to get out and learn about our neighbourhood.  Thank you also to the staff at the Redwood Dental Centre who welcomed our group when we popped in.  The children loved their face masks and all the stickers too.  
Over the next week we will be talking about what we noticed about our community.  The children will think about questions they have that they can investigate.

We met Peter the water meter reader as we were out and about.

Do you recognise the masked individuals?!

Kath Bee visits Papanui Primary

We all had a fantastic time on Monday singing along with Kath Bee! She played some old favourites like Individuality as well as introducing us to some new songs.
We loved the balloon animals she taught us to make.  We will be singing a lot of her songs from now on.

Home

We are loving singing this song in class.
Here is a link to the lyric video so you can sing along at home too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EreCgvezCeQ

Book Character Day

We had the best day last Thursday when we all got to come to school dressed as a character from a book.  Here we all are!  Can you see Wally?  We also got photo-bombed by Captain Underpants!

Mr Twit joined us for this photo.  Do you recognise him?

There was a lot of laughter when Captain Underpants joined us!

The children couldn't quite believe their eyes.

Where are we?

We are learning to use the words that describe where we are.  On Friday we all went out onto the adventure playground.  We had a mission!  We had to take 6 photos and put them onto a pic collage, then we needed to use 6 different words to describe where we were.  Have a look and see if we managed to do that.

Science Alive - Space Odyssey

Today we had our visit from Science Alive.  Here is a clip showing the activities they brought along.  The children learned a lot and were so interested in all they found out.  They had lots of questions too!

Space

Space

Weka are so excited to be learning about space this term!  

This week have been working together to explain why we have night and day.  We used the app "Explain Everything" to show our understanding.

Here are some of the slides we have created.....

Launching into Space!

Space

This term, we will be learning all about space.  This week the children have shown how much they love this topic!  We are seeing lots of books and puzzles about space being brought in to the class. 

 Neivah and Lilley came up with an idea for making a flying saucer with an alien inside.

Yalecia showing what she knows about the Solar System

Anthony made an alien mask.

Amelia made a rocket ship.

James brought in his Space puzzle.

Aiden's Dog Halo

Halo Visits Weka Pod

Last week Halo, Aiden's dog, visited Weka Pod.  Thank you to Jenna for bringing her in. Everyone thought Halo was very cute - and excited!  Halo licked some of us on the face, there were lots of giggles .

Working together at Discovery Time

Our discovery time Fridays...

We have been thinking about how we can work together and solve problems at our discovery time sessions. 

There is a lot of great thinking going on, and when we come up against a problem we are working on thinking it through to find a solution.

Have a look at out latest slideshow.  What a lot of amazing ideas the children come up with!

Budgies!

Ringo and Yo-Yo visit the Weka Pod.

Today Josh asked his mum to bring his budgies in to show the class.

He has had them for 10 weeks.  We think Yo-Yo is a boy and Ringo is a girl, Yo-Yo is the yellow one and Ringo is blue, black and grey.

Josh told how they sharpen their beaks by scratching it against a special bell.  He also told us how to look after a pet budgie.

Thank you Josh and Nicola, we were all very interested in you lovely pet budgies.

Discovery Time on Friday 3 March

Discovery Time

We had yet another great Discovery Time on Friday.  

It is fantastic to see the number of children who bring in equipment from home to carry out their projects. This show shows what independent managers of their learning our children are becoming.
This week we had a number of children who chose to design and make "small worlds".  We had a few examples on display to help generate ideas.
We also had an idea for making fish - in fitting with our current topic on the shoreline.
Keep those ideas coming, try talking to your child on a Thursday to see what they have in mind for Discovery Time on Friday.  
If you are free to come down and help out, we would love to have you there.

Folk Dance Evening

Our Folk Dance evening on Wednesday was a huge success.

The children did an amazing job displaying their dance moves.  And everyone went away with a smile on their face!  Thank you to all those who attended and to everyone who joined in our group dances.

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Searching the Shoreline

Our Trip to Sumner

We had an amazing day at Sumner on Tuesday with the Piwakawaka pod.  Thank you to our parents who came along to help out.
Have a look at our slide show to see what we did.  The weather was perfect and we were very lucky to take part in lessons run by the council.  We learned about the different sections of the beach and what we find there.  
We had a thoughtful discussion on why we need to be very careful with our litter, especially plastic as this can be harmful to sea creatures.

Welcome back to school everyone!

We are all settled into our new learning space.  We even have a new name, we're the Weka Pod.  Here is a slide show with some images of our first days at school......