Merry Christmas Everybody

Starship Foundation - Stars for Starship

Mercury Energy's Stars for Starship Competition

Congratulations Duraiz

Click here to see Duraiz's article in the Eastern Courier

On Thursday 16th December Room 3 went to Chipmunks! Why? Because Duraiz's Christmas star won the supreme award in Mercury Energy's Stars for Starship competition in the Year 0-3 category. His star has been hung in a special spot on Starship children's hospital's Christmas tree. The stars are a huge morale boost for patients and staff. It has become a Christmas tradition at Starship. More than 250 schools entered the competition. Duraiz also won $1000 of Scholastic books and a digital camera for the school. Congratulations Duraiz! We had an exciting and energetic day. What a fun way to end the year!

Merry Christmas Lauryn

Lauryn left us a message on our guestbook page so I thought it would be fun to copy it here and the Room 3 children could leave her some comments and messages. I hope she gets them and leaves us some more messages.

Hi Room 3. 

I had an awesome day in the snow today. It was a long plane ride but have had so much fun already. Lots of Christmas lights on the houses at night. I will send photos tomorrow. Miss you all. Hope you are doing lots of Christmas stuff. 

From Lauryn

Happy 7th Birthday to Malin and Piper.


A very big thank you to Malin's very clever mum who made us all a balloon sword, a flower or a caterpillar. They were awesome! What a wonderful surprise!

2nd Annual Potato Festival

On Thursday 2nd December our whole school participated in potato day. As part of our Enviro Schools participation every class started growing their own potatoes during term 3. We watered them and cared for them. On Thursday it was competition time. First we had to decorate our potato container. We added Mr and Mrs Potato Head to ours and we sprinkled magic green glitter onto the soil to give our potatoes a last minute boost! We couldn't wait to find out what was hiding in all that soil. It must have worked because our class won the prize for the overall weight of potatoes!!

There were lots of categories and prizes like the largest potato, smallest potato, funniest potato, best decorated potato and lots more. At lunchtime there were potato sack races, potato throwing contest, potato bake off, find the potatoes, a colouring in competition and you could even buy potatoes. It was a funny and enjoyable day.

Making Masks

The Penguins reading group read a book called 'Make Masks for a Play' and decided it would be fun to make the masks at home. The masks were a rooster, shark, owl, bull and a cat. Then every day during reading time  they rehearsed the play. On Friday they presented the play to the class. Wow! Look at their fantastic masks. Fabulous play Penguins, what an awesome effort! 

In Memory of the 29 Pike River Coal Miners.

Orca Mufti Day

Links to orca facts

Killer whale facts

National Geographical

Enchanted Learning - Orca

How to draw a killer whale

Orca pictures made on kidpix

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Kaitlyn and Hayley

Enjoy sharing your day together!

From everyone in Room 3

Happy Thanksgiving from Room 3

Happy Thanksgiving
 Miss Hemingway

New Zealand doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving 

BUT.....   we did!

Here's a taste of our Thanksgiving week. 
(a little early we know but we wanted to 
celebrate it with Miss Hemingway before she went home)

 Miss Hemingway wanted to know how much we already knew about Thanksgiving.


Here's our KWL

The First ThanksgivingRead our stories and view our photos of our Thanksgiving Feast

View more presentations from Lynne Laburn.

Click on the image above to watch a movie about 

Squanto the Native American from the Wampanoag tribe.

Felix and Jason used Kidspiration to show all the things that they thought were relevant to Thanksgiving

Albuquerque Turkey

Our Poem of the week

Albuquerque is a turkey

And he's feathered and he's fine

And he wobbles and he gobbles

and he's absolutely mine.

He's the best pet that you can get.....

Better than a dog or a cat.

He's my Albuquerque turkey

And I'm awfully proud of that.

He once told me, very frankly

he preferred to be my pet,

not the main course at my dinner,

and I told him not to fret.

And my Albuquerque turkey

is so happy in his bed, 
'Cause for our Thanksgiving dinner.....
We had egg foo yong instead!
Author unknown  

Our hand and feet turkeys that we made.
Click on the turkeys to go straight to the Enchanted Learning website to learn how to make them.

These are our apple turkeys that we made after our Thanksgiving feast. We used and apple, raisins, popcorn, a large marshmallow, mini marshmallows and thanks to Kelly for the real American candy!    Miss Hemingway made this one! 

Here's Duraiz, Meah, Lauryn, Amanda, Nicholas, Denny and Christine preparing their coloured cardboard so they can then start to weave their place mats for the   Thanksgiving table. 








                                                                     

Undercover Cody's Summer Message

Slip, Slop, Slap and Wrap

SLIP on a t-shirt, SLOP on some sunscreen, SLAP on a hat, and WRAP on some sunglasses.

ipads have arrived!

ipads have arrived!

Look at what we got to use in our classroom.

We took turns and used the ipads as a group activity 

on some very cool maths and spelling applications!

We took to them like ducks out of water.

And look it's so much easier to sit around on the floor and share than

standing around the computer.

We can't wait to use them again!

Our Favourite American Teacher

Hi! My name is Rebecca Hemingway, and I'm a student teacher in Room 3. I came here from the United States of America (Georgia to be specific) to finish my university work. My university has a partnership with the University of Auckland which allows me do my teaching practicum in another country. I've been in NZ since late August and recently moved to Room 3. I've really loved teaching the Room 3 kids and hope you enjoy the work we've done. Friday is my last day at Point View. I fly back to the US on Sunday and will graduate in December! Thanks for your hospitality and support.  

Coming soon......

Our Thanksgiving Week

Taught to us by Miss Hemingway

The Stardome Observatory Trip

On Friday 5th November Room 3 and Room 9 visited the Auckland Stardome Observatory. We saw an amazing show called 'Secret of the Cardboard Rocket'. We discovered that the secret was using your imagination. It was so weird lying down in chairs staring up at the ceiling. We also learnt a lot about our solar system. We then went into a classroom and learnt about the Earth, Moon and Sun's movements. Lauryn was the Moon, Lucia-Belle was Earth and George was the Sun. They showed us how the Moon moves around the Earth and that the Earth moves around the Sun.

Junior School Cross Country

Click on the arrows to hear Henry and Sophie talk about their photos.

Shadow Pictures made on KidPix

Happy Birthday Joe!

We know you're going to have a fabulous day.

Enjoy!

Grandparents Day

The 29th of October was a very exciting day! It was Grandparents Day! The day when our grandparents came along to school to see us in action. Of course we couldn't resist showing off our class blog....  they loved it and were blown away with our awesome learning. After they spent some time exploring our classroom we took them outside to demonstrate our folk-dancing. It was a lot of fun especially when they joined in! For lunch it was tea and scones and an exhausting play with the grandchildren. During the afternoon we had a whole school assembly to show off some amazing talents. Thanks Grandma, Gran, Gar, Grandad, Nana, Nan, Poppa, Granny, Grandpa, Oma, and Opa, for joining us on a very special day. We love you heaps!

What is a Shadow?

What is a Shadow?

 A shadow is made when light shines on us. The light can't go through us and makes a shadow on the ground and when the sun is on your back and it is lunchtime your shadow will be short. By Henry

A shadow is made because of the sun's light. The sunlight can not get through us because we are opaque but it can go through things that are transparent like glass.

By Kimberly

A shadow is made when the sun comes up. When the light shines on you the light can not go through you so it leaves an outline called a shadow. By Lauryn

A shadow is made when the light shines down and it makes this type of black thing called a shadow and if you see your shadow it touches your feet. And it can't go through us and this is called opaque. By Meah

A shadow is made when it is from the light. It comes from the sun. The sun's light can't go through an object. An object like me is called opaque because the light can't go through me so it makes a shadow on the ground. By Felix

A shadow is made when the sun is pointing at us because the sunlight can't go through us because we are covering the sun. Then it is a shadow. By Steven

A shadow is made when the sunlight is pointing at us. But the sun can't go through us so it makes a shadow on the ground. By Flynn

Happy Birthday to Nicholas, Felix and Kavin.

We hope you had a fabulous and exciting day.

Light and Dark


Objectives

Identify and name some different sources of light

Know that some sources of light are natural and some are man-made

Understand that light sources vary in brightness


Today Room 3 learnt that light comes from a variety of sources. We also used words such as brighter/dimmer, lighter/darker, and lightest/darkest. We used the interactive activity to help us understand the objectives.
Click on the link to take you to the BBC Light and Dark activity. 
http://www.bbc.co.uk
Have a go at the quiz to test your knowledge.

Happy Birthday AmandaWe hope you had a wonderful day!

Constable Mike's Safety Seat Message

It is generally accepted that children under the height of 148cm should be seated in an appropriate child restraint. The type of car restraint you should use depends on the age and size of your child.


Land Transport NZ, Factsheet 7, Child Restraints, February 2009.
If you answer 'no' to any of these questions, your child needs to be in a booster (safety) seat.


1.    Does your child sit all the way back against the car seat?
2.    Do your child's knees bend comfortably at the edge of the car seat?
3.    Does the belt cross the shoulder between the neck and the arm?
4.    Can the child stay seated like this for the whole trip?

For more information visit http://safekids.org.nz/

Shadows

Science

Today we were learning to find out why shadows change size throughout the day.

First we made predictions about where we thought the shadow of an object would be with the sun shining at 9.00am in the morning, at 12.00 midday and at 3.00pm in the afternoon. 

Then we used the following interactive activity to help us understand more 

about shadows and the position of the sun.

We learnt that in the morning and in the afternoon an objects shadow is longer that it would be at midday when a shadow is shorter. In the afternoon and morning the sun is lower in the sky.

A shadow is made when an object blocks light.

The Christchurch Earthquake

On Friday three Year 5's from Room 25, Hannah, Isabelle and Jennifer came to Room 3 to share the slideshow that they had made about the Christchurch earthquake. We were very interested because there has been a lot about Christchurch's earthquake in the news! After we watched the slideshow we showed the girls what we had learnt to do if an earthquake strikes in Auckland.

                                                 DROP, COVER, HOLD! 

When  Mrs L shouted 'EARTHQUAKE' we dropped and made our way quickly under our tables and held tight onto the table legs. The girls were very impressed with us!

Earthquake slide show3

During this term the Juniors have been discovering people and places.

We have been learning that people have different roles and responsibilities in their work.

We have learnt about the different kinds of jobs that people do.

It’s amazing how many jobs you can choose from.

This morning the Juniors were all grown up and dressed

ready for their careers!

What a fabulous day we had. Career dress-up day was so much fun.

Lucia-Belle and Duraiz from Room 3 were the presenters of the parade.

What an awesome job they did announcing each class as they came onto the stage.

And not only were the children dressed up but the teachers all came dressed up too!

Mrs Laburn was an Orangutan Rescuer!

Sophie and George reciting their poems for Room 3

Congratulations to Sophie.

  2nd place in the Year 1 Poetry Recital.

AND

Congratulations to George. 

 2nd place in the Year 2 Poetry Recital.

Room 3 children are very proud of the both of you!

Handwriting

Today we had a big practise writing the lowercase k because a lot of children in room 3 where still forming it incorrectly. We agreed that we would know when we had achieved our success criteria when when had put our pencil at the top, went down, down to the bottom, back up half way, formed a backward c and kicked out. Our learning intention was to concentrate on the correct formation. We practised and practised on our whiteboards. Then we self assessed and ticked which k we thought was the best one we had written to achieve our success criteria. 

We hope we don't forget to form k correctly when we write our stories.