Monday 19th June

Inquiry

Our inquiry topic this term is ‘What makes a Kiwi Inventor?’. This week we have been doing some Finding Out and Sorting Out activities. We watched an episode of Let’s Get Inventin’ where Josh made an invention to help him feed out on the farm more easily.

We then spent some time making our own inventions on the Let’s Get Inventin’ App on the iPads. It was really fun and awesome to see all the great ideas everyone came up with. The Middle Room students are very creative! Our next step will be choosing a topic for our individual Going Further projects.

 

The Hay Bale Launcher

Flynn having a go on the Let's Get Inventin' app

Caitlyn having fun on the app

Thursday 25th May

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.

Rob the nest.

Rob the nest.

Bree attempting to take Taylor's tag!

Esther trying to sidestep Taylor

Rippa Rush!

Will Bree catch Courtney?

Flynn making a break!

Thursday 9th March

Morning Programme

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

Friday 3rd March

Self Portraits

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.

Don't they look great!

Thursday 23rd February

Small School Athletics

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.

Courtney with a great throw

Esther giving it her all!

Great throw Taylor!

Caitlyn is as fast as lightning!

Great running Flynn!

Go Kordelia!

Esther and Bree sprinting as fast as they can

Courtney doing a super jump. 

Tuesday 31st January

Welcome back!

Welcome back everyone! It is going to be a very busy term one with lots of activities and events happening along the way. We will be posting updates on here about what is happening in the Middle Room.

We can’t wait for another exciting and fun year at Waiwera South School!

The Middle Room 2017! (minus Courtney!)

Wednesday 23rd November

Technology

Over the past couple of weeks, the Middle Room have been very busy with our technology. We were given a brief that related to our inquiry topic of “Watch us Grow”. The brief was to design and make something that helps things grow. To be successful we had to design something that:

• Can be used in the garden
• Helps things to grow
• Is our own design
• Doesn’t cost a lot to make
• Works properly
• Is interesting
• Can work independently on this
• Doesn’t take a lot of time to complete

We have been really engaged in our work and have been working very hard to get these completed. Have a look at some photos of us busy creating our designs. We can’t wait to show everyone our finished projects!

Girls painting their designs. 

Courtney decorating her worm farm. 

George drilling holes for his worm farm. 

Cooper filling up his bird feeder. 

Boys helping to saw the wood needed fro a planter box. 

Cooper helping Maddie with her bird house. 

Flynn helping out on a planter box. 

George is layering his worm farm. 

Nic is making a container to grow wheat.

James is filling up his worm farm.

Friday 14th October

Cricket

Yesterday afternoon we had a visit from Shaun from Otago Cricket who came to teach us some cricket skills. We learned lots of new skills involving throwing and catching. Some of us were learning the technique of how to bowl correctly. You need to have a straight arm, your fingers are in bunny ears when you hold the ball and you have to "pull the chain" with your non-bowling hand to get the motion. At the end we played a game of 3-bat cricket which was very fast and exciting. We have another cricket session next week which we are all looking forward to.

Bree and Georgia racing!

Flynn rolling the ball back to his team.

Taylor making sure she is aiming correctly.

Flynn practicing his catching. 

Great catch Kordelia Rose!

Taylor playing 3 bat cricket.