Wednesday 8th November

Inquiry-Garden

Our little gardens have been growing very quickly! We have needed to re-pot many of them into bigger pots so they have room to continue growing. Together with the Senior and Junior Rooms, we have been working in the garden to get it ready to plant our plants. We needed to do a lot of weeding and sorting out all of the soil. It is great to see everyone working together to create a great space for our school garden.

Thursday 2nd November

Inquiry- Garden

This term we are looking at how we can create a successful school garden. We have been given a lot of ‘little gardens’ from SchoolKit and other generous people that we have been planting over the last two days. We started with making the soil. It was cool to watch the soil disk grow when we added the water. We then put some soil into the pottles followed by the seeds or seed disks, before finally adding more soil on top. We look forward to watching our little gardens grow over the next couple of weeks.

Thursday 27th July

Inquiry

Last Term our inquiry topic was ‘What makes a Kiwi Inventor?’ Today we presented our Going Further projects to the rest of the class. Some of the ways we presented these were slides and posters. Some even made a prototype of their inventions to support their presentation. It was great to see the time and effort that went into these projects.

George and Flynn looked at Handpieces. 

Courtney told us about the Gold Coast Theme parks. 

Emily showed us her poster on Bungy Jumping.

Hayden telling us about remote control cars. 

Esther did her presentation on bikes. 

Caitlyn looked into robots. 

Taylor sharing her findings of spaceships. 

James explaining his prototype he made for his invention of a citrus powered clock. 

Rylee told us about headphones.

Bree's presentation was all about cars. 

Nikita telling us all about the invention of T.Vs.

Kordelia made a slide about computers. 

Tristan sharing the slide about computers that he created with Arthur. 

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

Wednesday 7th June

Otago Museum Trip

Yesterday we journeyed to Dunedin to visit the Otago Museum. We were learning about inventions for our inquiry topic. Our class was split in two, with the Year fours going with the Junior Room and the Year fives going with the Senior Room.

One group worked with the Museum educator Emily to learn all about different inventions. We looked at a wooden plough that is 4000 years old, and then one that was built of metal. It was interesting to see the difference between the two inventions and why they were useful at the time.  We also split into smaller groups and went on a scavenger hunt to look for different inventions. It was cool to see all the great ideas that were being shared.

While one group was working with Emily the other group was exploring the Tropical Rain Forest which was so awesome! There were many colourful butterflies and we were even lucky enough to have them land on us! We also saw little birds called quails, goldfish, turtles and a couple of tarantulas. It was really hot in the forest and we learnt that the butterflies couldn’t go outside or they would die.

We also got to spend some time in Discovery World, where we played with the fantastic equipment and thought about inventions that we would like to make. Some of our favourite games were the mind-controlling game, table football, the distorting mirrors and the giant piano you get to stand on.

It was a fantastic day out and we learnt heaps about inventions for our inquiry topic!

Otago Museum Trip on PhotoPeach

Monday 8th May

Whanau afternoon

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.

Esther showing her Dad and Nana her project.

Kordelia had a big crowd to show her poster to!

Emily listening to Arthur's slideshow.

Bree presenting her project to her Mum and Dad. 

Wednesday 5th April

Inquiry

This term our Inquiry topic has been “What Can I Tell You About Me”. The children have all been working really hard on their presentations. It has been great to see everyone taking initiative with their research and working independently on their projects. Some of these include slides, show me’s, posters and presentation boards all about themselves and their families. We can’t wait to share these at the Whanau afternoon early next term.

Thursday 24th March

Kiwi Art

A couple of weeks ago the Middle and Junior Room students were with Miss Ward and we did some art. We were drawing Kiwis for our art since our inquiry topic is Kiwiana. Miss Ward said to make them big like a watermelon and not small like the size of a normal human hand because we wanted them to stand out. After we did the body and coloured it in, we had to draw some stars to make it look like night time. Then we would go to the dying table and dye the background black for the night time. Check out our Kiwi drawings down below!!!

They are pride of place in our classroom!

Written by Courtney

Tuesday 21st March

Museum visitor

Today we were lucky enough to have a visit from Gary from the South Otago Museum. We learnt about the early days of Waiwera South, the founding families and how we could research our own families/family trees. This was great as it related to our inquiry topic ‘What Can I Tell You About Me’ as the children were able to find out more about the place that they live and get an understanding of what sort of information they might want to find out about their own families.

Thursday 22nd September

Sports Activator

We have has a busy last week at school. We had a great day for Greer to visit to have another session of touch skills. We start off with some warm-up games which were a lot of fun. Then it was time to practice our skills especially passing and stepping. We round off with a quick game which was very fast paced. We are all improving so much each time Greer visits. These lessons are going to help many of us with our after school touch.

Practicing our passing.

Keep an eye on the ball.

Rats and Rabbits!

Testing our reactions.

Georgia on the run!

George stepping.

Baking

The past few weeks for Maths we have been learning about fractions. We have all worked hard and learned a lot. For our reward for working hard this term Miss Chapman let us do some baking! We had to deal with lots of measurements like ½ cup, ⅓ cup and tsp. The class split into two groups and made lolly cake and russian fudge. They both tasted so yum! Unfortunately we didn’t take any photos of the end products as they were gobbled up so quickly!

James checking Bree has measured correctly. 

Flynn stirring the fudge. It was delicious!

Oral Presentation Day

This term our inquiry has been focussed around Then and Now. We have looked at things from the past to what they are like now. These included transport, household items, clothes, and schools. We have worked really hard to produce a speech about a topic we are passionate about. Today was the day we presented them to the whole school, parents and friends of the school. We were all very nervous but everyone of us did a fantastic job. Then it was time to perform our dances we have been learning with Kayleigh Broad after lunch on Thursdays. These were performed down at the hall and we got a big crowd watching us. We got a lot of great feedback that we did an awesome job! Check out some photos of us delivering our speeches and our Then and Now dance performance.

Esther talked about computers from Then and Now.

Bree dressed as a soccer player! 

Georgia taught us all about singer Daniel Skye.

Nic came as his role model: His Dad. 

Taylor makes a pretty good queen!

George explained all about harvesters.

Flynn had a lot of knowledge about farming.

Kordelia transformed into Justin Bieber.

James told us about old and new tractors. 

Julienne delivered a speech about Meghan Trainor.

Maddie knew a lot about dolphins!

Courtney dressed as her Dad!

Cooper transformed into a logging truck driver. 

Middle and Senior Then and Now dance. 

It was great to watch!