This term we are exploring our school value of HAUORA as well as the following:

• INQUIRY The Workplace - The workplace is an community where people share responsibility towards a common purpose
• LITERACY: READING Self monitoring, predicting, making connections, summarising
• LITERACY: LISTENING Following directions and instructions given in group settings, listening to other class members
• LITERACY: VIEWING Casey the Caterpillar Handwriting Shapes
• LITERACY: WRITING Recounts
• LITERACY: SPEAKING Using eye contact and a clear voice when sharing thoughts & ideas
• LITERACY: PRESENTING Holding our pencil correctly, identifying and using the 'Casey the Caterpillar' shapes when forming letters in handwritingP.E
• MATHS: Number Knowledge, Statistics & Probability, Place Value
• P.E: Swimming, Golf, Co-operative games
• HEALTH: Safe Walking, Life Education - What is a friend?
• VISUAL ARTS: Observational drawings & self portraits
• MAORI: Basic greetings, following simple instructions, counting to 10 with independence

Working on our co-operative problem solving for Mathematics this week. Our problem on Friday:

The Easter bunny has a basket of Easter eggs with 1 egg for each child.

There are 10 children.

In his basket are:

• 5 green eggs
• 3 blue eggs
• Some red eggs

How many red eggs are in the Easter bunny’s basket?

Children worked in mixed ability trios to solve the problem together, then shared their findings and how they solved the problem with the class. Lots of discussion, manipulating equipment and reworking of original thoughts and ideas...

Date for your diary: Everyone welcome at our 'sharing assembly' next Tuesday 9th April 2:15pm in the school hall.

In our writing this week we tried our hand at 'describing' ...describing one of the things the new cat ate in our big book of the week "The New Cat" by Joy Cowley. Can you guess what he ate from our clues?

(NB Everyone shared their description, I only videoed those that wanted to be recorded)

A few 'Fabulous Friday' favourites...

Our next self portrait work of art...watch this space!

We are learning to compare & contrast - the jobs of a teacher and a student. We tried to sort the jobs into a 'teacher's' circle and a 'student's' circle, but discovered many jobs were the responsibility of both! Here is our compare & contrast venn diagram showing you how we sorted the jobs.

We have a shared big book for the week.

Each day we look at different aspects of the story - predictions, prior knowledge, print features (.,!?CAPS etc) comprehension, vocabulary and retelling to name a few.

Here are 2 children having a go at sequencing pictures from the story, then retelling in their own words...

Drawing 10s frames is not as easy as it sounds...but we've mastered it! Ask your clever little counter to draw a tens frame, then use it to show numbers 0-10.

LAST DAY FOR CLASS SWIMMING IS TOMORROW - Thursday 21st March.

Please send your child's togs & towel tomorrow for the last time!

Here we are working on our co-operative, memory and numeracy skills learning to play a matching memory game with a partner or group. We are matching numerals to dot patterns, aiming to recognise the dot patterns instantly, without needing to count each dot. We are also building our memory, trying hard to remember where the numerals or dot patterns are.

Fabulous Friday was fabulous today!

So lovely today to see children demonstrating perseverance and co-operation in their self chosen activities this afternoon. Here are just 2 examples of our learners displaying key competencies as identified in our NZ Curriculum.

The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies:

• Thinking
• Relating to others
• Using language, symbols, and texts
• Managing self
• Participating and contributing

Another art session working on our self portrait pieces.

This week we worked on our backgrounds - learning how to collage! Ripping, overlapping & pasting is great fun...and fabulous for fine motor development.

We also framed our work ourselves with bright, colourful paper mosaic pieces.

The finished pieces are up in our hallway, but here's a sneaky preview...

(There are a couple of children who haven't quite finished yet, so theirs aren't up yet)

Teaching our cuddly puppet friends to count backwards from 20...

Practising our handwriting - can you hear us 'saying' the formation shape as we write it? This helps us to remember the shape, and to be able to use it when forming letters. We are writing the 'hanging stick' shape that we use to write p & q. Notice how we've got it starting half way above the branch...and hanging down half way below the branch. We are so clever at going 'down the hanging stick'.

SNAG Golf...what a fun way to start the week!

Ask your mini golfer what they learned, and how much fun they had!

Art - continuing our self portraits. Learning to use the watercolour paints and fine brushes to bring our black vivid portraits to life bursting with colour!

What do you think!

As motivation for our writing on Thursday morning, we 'story workshopped' with a small group...we played with the loose parts and small world toys to create a group story. Then we drew our stories, and Mrs Hawkins wrote down our creative words!

Come in to see our pictures and enjoy our stories in the classroom!

Here we are, enjoying our music lesson with Mr Ramsay...

A warm welcome to Sophia and her family... joining Room 1 this week...and also to Ruby & her family. We are very glad to have you join us!

Didn't our Room 1 children do an amazing job at the Swimming Sports on Friday! I was really proud of them all...for giving it a go! Well done Room 1.

BIG CONGRATULATIONS to these two super workers this week, we are all proud of you!

Steve’s mum bought dumplings for us to share on Tuesday, as it was international dumpling day! She made a big bowl full of them and they smelt so yummy! Thank you so much!!!!

'Recycled Robot' making proved very popular at

Fabulous Friday this afternoon!

Sharing our writing is an important part of the writing process. After re-reading our big book of the week "I can write" we wrote our names in many ways...with doh, chalk outside, using magnetic letters, on mini whiteboards. Then we wrote about our shared experience in our writing books. At the end of the session children shared their work with a buddy or 2 - reflecting on their success with our goals, and giving their writing an audience & purpose.

PMP...a great way to start the day!

From the 'Moving Smart' website https://www.movingsmart.co.nz/Education/Perceptual-Motor-Programme/

"PMP gives children experiences by seeing, hearing, touching, making perceptual judgments and reacting through carefully sequenced activities including: running, hopping, skipping, jumping, balancing, crawling, climbing, throwing, catching, bowling, spinning, sliding, and more.

PMP is different because it aims to develop the child rather than the skill. It is not purely a motor programme. It is a perceptual motor programme where language is the key factor in providing the perceptual knowledge about the motor experience."

So here we are, having a great time & doing lots of learning...

Snapshots from a busy week - Handwriting practice, working on our Casey the Caterpillar shapes...

Using the play doh to make numbers...

And more number work, jumping on given numbers...or the number just before/after...

Practising a little mindfulness to calm and refocus after lunch... "Melting"

And singing our poem of the week...

We also celebrated success with these super workers at assembly... WELL DONE guys!

And continuing to think about faces - we made these self portraits using loose parts. Check out our facial features, our hair, our smiles...

Transient Art is cool fun!

A busy day on Friday! We were off to meet Harold the giraffe, in the Life Education caravan at 9am...

He helped us to think about being a good friend, recognising how our friends are feeling by looking at their faces, and trying to include others in our games. Lots to think about! Ask your little friend about the messages Harold shared with them....

Here we are at school!

Madeleine and I would like to extend our warmest welcome to you all, and look forward to all the adventures we are going to have together this term!

Everyone has settled in so well, and we've all had a wonderful first few days.

We are looking forward to seeing you all at our 'Meet the Teacher' evening this Thursday, starting 7:30pm in the school hall.