Netball Tournament Today some of us participated in the inaugural Balclutha New World Year 5 & 6 netball tournament at the Cross Recreation Centre. Maddie, Cooper, Bree, Esther, Taylor, Courtney and Kordelia represented Waiwera South at this tournament. They played very well and showed some great skills. Unfortunately, we just missed out on getting into the finals. Thanks to Warepa School for organising this event and to Stacey and Tania for helping with transport. It was a fantastic day which we all really enjoyed.
Headphones! This week we were lucky enough to get four new sets of headphones to use in the Middle Room. We can use these when we are on Sunshine Classics. This is where we can read stories and have them read back to us. We then answer questions about what we have read. We can also use them when working on Reading Eggs. These headphones are very helpful for our reading programme and have already been very popular!
Sports Activator We have been making the most of the good weather and have been getting outside to practice some Rippa Rugby. Yesterday we had another visit from our sports activator Greer. We went through some skills and games to help us prepare for the Rippa Rugby Tournament in Balclutha next week. We started with a game of rob the nest. This was where we had to get the balls from the middle or other teams hoops to bring back to our own hoop. The winner was the first team to get 5 balls in their hoop. We then played a game where we had to try rip the tags off everyone and put them on our own belt. The winner was the person with the most tags. We also played a game of rippa rush and ended the session playing rippa numbers. This was where Greer called out a number and that many people from the team had to run around a cone and start playing a game of rippa. They had 3 rips to try score a try before it was the other team's turn. It was a very fast paced game and we were all out of breath in no time. These games were great to get us prepared for the Rippa Tournament which will be taking place next Tuesday the 30th at the Balclutha Showgrounds.
One of our topics for Morning Programme over the past couple of weeks has been animals. We have seen different presentations including slides about favourite animals, endangered animals and plenty of photos from home of favourite pets. We have even been lucky enough to get a few dogs visiting us here at school. Esther brought in her 11 year old dog Boris who is a Springer Spaniel. Emily brought her new Jack Russell pup Molly in, and Bree also had a Jack Russell to show us- her 5 year old dog Pip! Thanks to the parents for bringing in our visitors, everyone was very excited!
Today we had our Whanau afternoon. This included having a picnic lunch with our families, sharing our inquiry projects that we had been working on last term, and playing some games. Everyone had done a terrific job with their presentations and it was great that we were able to share all our hard work. It was awesome to see all the parents at our Whanau afternoon. The children especially loved the adults joining in on the games. Thanks for coming!
James showing his slideshow to his Mum.
Taylor showing her parents her presentation board.
Snake vs Lizard writing Today we watched a video called Iguana vs Snakes - Planet Earth II. We then had to write about how we felt and what we would be thinking if we were the iguana or the snake. It was a lot of fun writing about the suspense of the chase and for most of us, the relief! Check out the video and our writing below to see what you think!
Snake- Taylor
I'm hungry sneaking around looking. I smell something. I turn, I twist. What am I?
I am a snake looking for a smell. I sneak around. Something moves, I start chasing it. It's a iguana! My gang come along to help. We are all hungry and we want to eat today. We try our hardest but so does the iguana. We finally caught it! We try strangle it but it slips away. After it we go trying to chase it. The iguana takes a jump for its life and makes it! He climbs up and reaches the top while we are still stuck here. We slither away sadly and starving trying to look for another prey.
Unlucky Iguana- Courtney
One sandy morning I, the snake, have just spotted a very FAT Iguana. I feel like I should catch him because he would be able to feed the entire colony of snakes. I am a Sea Snake and I am very fast, fit and determined to catch that Iguana. So I slither over and I see the Iguana has frozen with fear because he saw me coming towards him. As soon as I twitched his tail he was on the run and I was after him like a cheetah chasing a water buffalo. Then suddenly…. My colony wrapped around his legs, body and neck….. But just then he managed to squeeze out and started to run again up the cliffs. Now I was Angry and really wanted him for lunch so I chased him up the cliff. He started jumping over gaps. One of my friends fell down the crack but I swerved and almost got him when…… I slipped down a giant gap in the mountain and fell down. But luckily I wasn’t dead and even though the Iguana got away, in the gap was full of dead meat piled on top of each other so I called my colony and we lived in the cave for the rest of our lives and never ran out of meat.
The Lucky Iguana- Esther
I was sitting on the sandy land of Africa when suddenly a snake slithers up to me. I stay as still as I possibly can hoping it will go away. It starts to go away. OH NO, I move! The snake slithers back, it comes up to me. I run like lightning for my life. Now all the other snakes are chasing me then suddenly one of the snakes catches me by the neck, then another hops on top of it. But I squeeze my way out and I manage to get to the rocks. I jump and the snake falls down the hole. Yes, I am safe! I am so relieved! I was so worried when I was being chased by the snakes. Now I am here with my mates and I can relax.
Snake and Lizard- Bree
Hi, this is lizard here. I am sitting in the snake area but I can hear a slithering noise coming from behind me. Suddenly I could see a snake coming up at me out of the corner of my eye. Omg! I start running and the snake is chasing me. His friends keep on appearing out of nowhere but I am running my fastest and I am ahead of them. To be honest they are really slow and skinny so I slow down. But what I couldn’t see were the snakes ahead of me and they bury me! So I wiggle and wiggle and wiggle around. Finally, I get away! I jump up and I am safe and sound back with my family. I am really lucky! Since they are skinny they might die because they have not had food in a long time.
Lizard- Emily
I was out sunbathing when a snake was slithering toward me! I faked that I couldn't see him then all of a sudden he was right behind me! As soon as he touched me I sprinted away. I was running like the wind and then there were millions of snakes trying to get me. Now I was freaked OUT! Next, I was getting strangled by about 3 snakes but somehow I managed to escape from them! I was running so fast on the rocks and snakes were everywhere. I was scared I would die.
Snakes and Lizards- Tristan
Snakes are predators to lizards. They fight when they get too close to them. The lizards feel fear when they are near. The snakes feel anger towards the lizards. The snakes have to slide around because they have no legs.
Lizard- Kordelia-Rose
I was on the bumpy rocks resting until I spotted a snake chasing after me. When I saw the snake I was feeling worried and afraid. The snakes starting chasing after me so I zoomed away from them but they just kept getting closer and closer. I ran faster and faster but then the snakes caught me and wrapped me up. I started to wriggle my way out of the snakes and then I finally made it out! I tripped over but I got back up and zoomed away like a cheetah. Oh no! The snakes have got me one more time but luckily I managed to get out again and finally I got home to my lizard family. I was so relieved.
Over the last two weeks we have started Morning Programme. This is to help us improve our listening and speaking skills through a variety of interesting tasks. Some of the topics so far have included My favourite, Show and Tell and teaching the class How to do something. We have had a range of different topics that have been shared. Flynn showed us how to put together a handpiece one week and brought along his favourite dog Tank the next. Tristan shared his favourite book, Esther made a rain gauge that turned into a marble run, Emily taught us a magic trick and so much more was shared. Bree even made a delicious pavlova for everyone to enjoy! We love doing Morning Programme! Morning Programme on PhotoPeach
At the start of the term we did some writing about our holidays. We chose two main things we wanted to tell each other about. To go with our writing we decided to do some self portraits. We had to make sure we used up all the space on the paper and it was in the middle of our page. We used pastels or coloured pencils to finish our beautiful artworks and made them colourful. Finally we had to stick on some giant sunglasses that had pictures of the two activities we had written about. They are now up on our wall beside our writing so come and check them out.
Yesterday we had another visit from Greer the Sports Activator. This time we were learning some soccer skills. We began by playing a warm-up game of ‘Donkey Tails’. This was where we had bibs tucked into our shorts as a tail. The aim of the game was to steal each others tails. The person with the most tails at the end of the game was the winner. Next up was a game of “Shark Attack’. Everyone had a ball and we had to dribble it around in the marked our area. There were two people in and they had to try kick as many balls out as they could. This was one of our favourite games. Finally, we played a game similar to ten pin bowling, except we had to kick soccers balls and knock the balls off the cones. It was quite tricky but we all had such a fun time racing each other to be first!
On Monday the whole school attended the Small Schools Athletics at South Otago High School in Balclutha. We were lucky with the weather- the sun even made an appearance later in the day! It was great to see all the children giving it their all. Well done to the children who qualified for the South Otago athletics in a couple of weeks. Thanks to all the parents for coming along and supporting your children.
