Wet, Windy Wellington

Our Cross Country got cancelled on Tuesday due to the bad weather but we are running next Wednesday instead between 9 and 10.40am. We have some real athletes in the classroom so make sure you come down and support our class! We also have Science Fair on Thursday so it will be a busy week in MR. 

We have had lots of fun with Mrs Brown this week. She came into our class and showed us three science activities. We got to put a nut in a balloon and spin the balloon around. This made such a cool noise! We also got to make a catapult. We had pom poms flying all around the classroom! Then we got to join to bottles together to make a tornado of water. We shook the bottles together to make the water form a tornado. We added glitter and a spider too!

We were lucky to have Mrs Jennings on Wednesday afternoon too. We painted some trees to hang up in the classroom. We listened to all the instructions so they turned out really well! 

Keep safe and warm over the weekend! 

Matariki Week at Discovery

We have been reading lots of books about Matariki this week and learning lots of new information. We wrote some stories about what we have learnt. Here is a few: 

There is a group of stars called Matariki. Matariki can be seen most of the year. They disappear in April. They can be seen in winter (in May or June). There are other names for Matariki like The Seven Sisters. Some stories say that Matariki is the name of the eldest sister and guides the other six sisters to their places in the sky. We can celebrate Matariki like learning how to weave and carve and enjoying with our family and friends. (William)

Matariki is the biggest star of all her sisters. Red stars are the coldest starts. Stars can be different colours. There are blue, white, yellow, orange and red stars. Matariki is the time for planting trees and for winter crops. It is a good time for sharing stories. It is the time for making and flying kites. (Tegan)

The Seven Sisters (blue stars) are the hottest stars. The red stars are the coldest stars. It’s the Maori New Year. On Matariki day people can celebrate. It’s a time for making and flying kites. I like Matariki. (Zachary)

You can share family stories at Matariki time. You can try to know how to look after the land. It is a time to get together with your family. You could make a kite and after fly it. There are a big group of stars called Matariki. You could also call them the seven sisters. All the blue stars are hot like an oven or even hotter than that. Is that really hot? (Caitlyn)

We had a Kapo Kapo Ceremony today and we presented the Kapo Kapo group with our School Korowai that we all worked hard to make. It turned out so beautiful!

It was another busy week in MR. We have been doing lots of practice for our cross country. It is important that we remember to bring running shoes and warm jackets because it has been very cold lately and we play outside lots during school time!

Our topic for Science this year is SOUND! We had heaps of fun last week learning about sound and we wrote some great stories too!

At School Assembly Ryan received an achievement award for always following instructions. Well done, Ryan! 

Next week we have a busy four day week. We will be continuing to practice our adding and subtracting in maths, practicing for cross country, doing lots of reading and writing and of course getting right into our science. 

See you next week! :-) 

Term Two- Week Three

Wow! What a week! We have been so busy this week doing lots of Science experiments. On Wednesday we went to the Science in a Van show. Check out the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDudj5qugnQ

We also did some cool experiments in class. In one of our experiments we added food colouring and dishwashing liquid to milk. This is what happened:

Last week at School Assembly Ashleigh received a Discovery School Achievement award for being a fantastic role model! Well done, Ashleigh!

At School Assembly Mason also got a prize! His TRUMP card was pulled out! Congrats, Mason! What a cool new toy! 

Just something to remember :-) Discovery School has a rule that we are not allowed any toys at school. This means that if it is not our news day we are not allowed to bring items from home to share. We would be very upset if our toy went missing so it is better to leave them safe at home.

Hope you all have a great weekend!!! 

What Is New?

Last week we started to think about our Science topic. We got to do a few science experiments to get us thinking about what science is. We came up with some great ideas in our class brainstorm! We already have many scientists in our class. The first experiment we did involved mixing water, cornflour and food colouring. We made GLOOP!

We had to think about the science question: Is Gloop a solid or a liquid? It is runny when you pick it up but it is like rock when it is sitting at the bottom of the container... Hmmmm..

We then got into groups and looked at the idea of floating and sinking. We had to think about what objects would float and why? What wouldn't float and why? We got some of our predictions right and some of them wrong but we could explain why some things could float and why other objects couldn't.

Today we went into the courtyard and Mr Burns showed us some more science experiments. We were amazed at what he showed us! We are really looking forward to starting our science topic :-) 

Week One- Term Two!

What a great start back. Term Two is going to be very busy!

We have all had a great start back to school. First of all, a big welcome to our new student Caide!!

We have had a busy week. In reading we have been focusing on compound words and in maths we have just started our adding. For PE we are now training for our cross country. It is going to come along very quickly and we have some very fast runners in our class! It is important that we wear shoes to school that we can run in so we don't miss out on practicing for cross country.

We have been very busy getting ready for Mothers Day this week. We made ice creams, published our stories about Mum and read a poem. Here are a few examples of what we did.

On Friday afternoon we all participated in the Big Crunch. This was a national attempt at setting the world record. There was a HUGE crunch so hopefully we made the world record.

After the Big Crunch we enjoyed an afternoon with our buddy class VH. We love learning with our buddy class! 

Week 10- One more week to go till School Holidays!!

Boy have we been busy this week. On Tuesday we had our Marae visit. We all had such a great time and learnt so many new things. On Wednesday we wrote about the Marae. This is what a few of us said:

"Yesterday we went to a Marae and we had to sit in the Whare Nui. Then we had some kai." (Chamae)

"On Tuesday I went to Takapuwahia Marae. I had kai in the Whare Kai. I played lots of games like singing the haka." (Baxter)

"This is called about a Marae. The place I went to first was called the Whare Nui. I ate in the Whare Kai. It was yummy, really yummy. I sang a lovely song. I played nicely with the Mana College School people. They are nice, really nice. They had lots of cool activities for us to do. My favourite activity was counting to seven in Maori. It was fun." (Caitlyn M)

Then we came back to school and Miss Rowe showed us how to use the Ipads. We played heaps of cool games that can help us with our maths, art, spelling and reading. 

We are continuing to work with place value for maths. Here are another two links that will help us practice at home. Have a go!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/maths/placethepenguin.shtml

http://www.ictgames.com/LIFEGUARDS.html

On Thursday we read a story called "Oh, the thinks you can think!" We then had to think of our own crazy ideas by using our imagination. We are so good at using our imagination in MR class. Here are two examples of what we did.

To finish off our week we did some fabulous artwork. Miss Rowe was so proud of us! Come in and check it out next week. Here is a little sneak peak. 

See you all at the disco tonight in your party gears! Woohooo! :)