Wednesday 25th October

Sports Activator

Today we had a visit from Mitch who is our Sports Activator for this term. The focus today was cricket. We began with a quick warm-up game of turning cones. We were in two teams and had to turn up as many cones as we could. The other team would have to turn them back the other way. It was a very fast paced and exciting game! Next, we moved onto some cricket skills. We worked on our catching skills where Mitch would throw us really high balls and we had to run in and catch them. Then it was time to practice our running between the wickets. We also worked on our bowling where we had to bowl at the stumps. It was a really fun session. Thanks Mitch for coming along, we can’t wait for your next session.

Tuesday 24th October

Maths

Lately in Maths we have been looking at Mass, Volume, and Capacity. Today we did a fun activity where we had to design a boat only using tinfoil. The aim was to see which boat would hold the most marbles before sinking. It was interesting to see the different shapes and designs of the boats. We found out the boats that held the most were the lighter boats with larger surface areas. The boats lasted longer if the marbles were evenly distributed throughout the boat. It was a fun activity that we all enjoyed.

Building the boat

Thinking about the design

James had a good design! 

Lincoln's boat finally sinking after holding a lot

This boat held plenty!

Friday 20th October

Pet Day

Today was our school pet day. It was an awesome day that was made so much better by having fantastic weather! It was great to see all the excitement and enthusiasm shown by the children. They all did a fantastic job getting their pets prepared and presenting their facts and information to the judges. Thanks heaps to all of the judges who gave up their time to do the judging. There were some difficult decisions to be made! Thanks also to Westpac who provided a delicious BBQ for everyone to enjoy. And finally thanks to all of the parents and guardians who brought in the pets and to all those that helped organise this event. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Check out some of the photos from the day.

Pet Day 2017 on PhotoPeach

Tuesday 17th October

Welcome back to school everybody! We are in for another busy term with lots of fun and exciting things happening both in and outside of the classroom. Make sure you keep checking our blog to see what the Middle Room have been busy getting up to!

Below is the Morning Programme schedule for this term. This starts in week 2 and will finish in week 7. Enjoy :)

Friday 29th September

Animal Safety

As part of our safety unit this term we had a visit from Elspeth from the Clutha Vets last Friday. Elspeth brought along 3 four-legged helpers- Lulu, Jim, and Polly. The students thoroughly enjoyed this visit and learnt lots about keeping safe around different animals. Some of the tips that Elspeth gave us were:

• Ask before you pat someone's dog.
• Pat dogs under the chest as it is non-threatening.
• Don’t crowd around a dog as they can get scared.
• Do not tease a dog.
• Don’t approach an unknown dog.
• Don’t put your face close to a dog.

Thanks so much to Elspeth for coming in! We really enjoyed your visit and learnt a lot.

Wednesday 20th September

Author Visit

On Monday we were very lucky to have a visit from Kyle Mewburn who is a New Zealand author. He has written books such as Old Huhu, Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck!, Chick’s Sick, Seesaw Po, Duck’s Stuck and the Dragon Knight and Dinosaur Rescue series. Kyle lives at Miller's Flat which is about an hour away from our school.

Kyle shared some of his books with us and talked about why he writes the books he does. He mentioned where he gets his ideas and inspiration from for his books. Being an author isn't an easy task, you never know if publishers are going to accept your books or not so you can not rely on making a huge income from being an author! It can take up to two years to write a book.

Kyle took three groups of students doing some writing workshops with them. It was really neat for students to get to work through a different process for writing a story. Kyle got these students thinking really hard and they did some cool writing!

We also had a book character dress up day. Caitlyn who was Harry Potter and Esther who was Cat in the Hat won $10 credit at Scholastic for being best dressed!

Thanks for coming to see us Kyle, we look forward to getting more of your books for our school library in the future!

Friday 15th September

Clean Up New Zealand afternoon

This afternoon the whole school picked up rubbish around the Waiwera South area as part of Clean Up New Zealand week. It was great to be able to do our bit to help but we wish people wouldn’t dispose of their rubbish in our beautiful countryside. Thank you to Anna, Leanna, Donna and Julie for helping out along with all the students for being so keen to make a difference.