What's a meerkat?

We were doing a maths worksheet today and we had to count these little creatures:

 

We wondered what they were. Someone said they were meerkats. Someone else said Timo in Lion King  is a meerkat. We looked on YouTube and found this movie. It shows some REAL meerkats - they are cute!

Good Learners Practise

Well done, Zoe and Bryah! This is great counting. Zoe and Bryah did this maths practise together when we were doing reading. They counted the correct number of 'gummy bears' into the jars. We always want to know whose learning it is - so they have put their name cards beside their learning and taken a photo on the iPad.

 

Matty and Benjamin practised fast words, tracing the shape of the letters with beans. That takes a lot of patience. They asked someone to take a photo of them sitting with their practise - great work, boys!

Jack's Reading

Jack was reading this page in his book today. He knows about hippos already. 

"They charge you when you give them a surprise," he said. 

We wanted to see a hippo charging and we found this movie on youtube. 

Hippos can run FAST!

What I know, I can teach!

We are all learning together! This morning Awhina was showing her mum how we practise number writing on the whiteboards.  One day soon, Awhina is going to lead our number-writing session, she know exactly how to describe the numbers and is a very encouraging coach!

WALT: Use Lines in Different Ways

We read "T-shirts" together every day this week:

We usually spend some time each week responding to our big book in some way. This week Carolyn gave a us a paper t-shirt to design. We talked about the different kinds of lines we can draw; curved, straight, zig-zagged, wavy...
Then we used a black crayon to design our t-shirt. After that, we dyed the t-shirts bright colours. Here they are:

The last page of the book says:

So our t-shirts are hanging up on pegs in our class, waiting for you to come and admire them! We hope to see you soon!

Orangutan Day at RSS

Liam loves orangutans and he is very concerned that we humans are making bad choices that are taking away the habitat (living place) of the orangutans in Asia. He has organised a wonderful awareness week at our school. Here is the newspaper article about Liam:

On Thursday, Jamie told us that her mum had seen some orangutans! Her mum emailed us some of the photos - here they are:

"These were taken in Borneo, Sabah (back in 2006).  The baby orangutan photos are of an orphan being cared for at a resort.  The Sepilok photos are an orangutan rehabilitation sanctuary.  As you can see from the pictures the orangutans were being fed and during feeding times naughty pigtail macques turn up and try to steal the orangutans food."
Thanks to Jamie and her family for sharing these with us!

This is the link to Liam's YouTube video. He is hoping to get 1000 views to raise awareness.
Watch the video here.

Writing with Magnetic ABC

"I went to Bunnings."   Jacob

 "I am looking at Bear."  Jamie

 " I have a dog."  Basil

 "I am going to pick vegetables for my Dad."  Lizzy

 " I went to the park."  Awhina

 "I am going to my Nana's house."  Alessandra

 Benjamin wanted to write "All Blacks".

"I am going to the garden to pick my carrots." Arihia

Jacob Reading

Jacob is learning to point at each word as he reads. Didn't he do a great job?!

Our Cloud Art is FINISHED!

WALT: Use different painting techniques
(Sponge and Brushing)

We read “Little Cloud”
 by Eric Carle.
We used sponge to paint the blue sky.
We used brushes to paint the paper we used to make our cloud shapes.
We chose a shape for our own little cloud and told Carolyn what we wanted our caption to say.
Great work, Little Einsteins!

My cloud is a snail. I saw a snail on the wall at kindy.
When I touched it, it peeked out of the shell and hid the rest of its body.
Awhina

My cloud is a tree. It grows lots of juicy apples.
Matty

My cloud is a love heart.
I love my mummy.
Jamie

My cloud is a love heart.
I made it because they are in your heart.
When you run your heart gets faster.
Arihia

My cloud is a mushroom.
I have seen mushrooms on the television show “Jake and the Pirates”.
They hide under them so coconuts don’t go on their heads.
Jacob

My cloud is a snail.
I like snails because you can touch them on their shells.
Lizzy

My cloud is an elephant.
I can go with my elephant to the zoo.
Basil

Targets For Our Learning

 

On Monday, we played Tiddlywinks. Carolyn drew a target on the carpet with chalk and we all tried to flick our counters into the middle to hit the bulls-eye. Here is what we noticed:

It was hard to flick the counters - we had to practise and get better at it.

To start with we were starting from too far away - we all agreed to move our counters to the edge of the target as a starting place. 

It took a few hops to get the counter to the middle sometimes.

In reading and maths today we made targets for our learning. They look like this:

We all have things that we are doing our best to get better at. It might take a few goes to reach our target. Sometimes we might have to make our target a little bit easier to hit. We will have to practise the strategies we are using. We make a mark on the target to show how we are getting on. Today we all worked very hard so that we could move closer to the middle and reach the bulls eye.

Great learning, Little Einsteins!

Athletics Day

Wow - what an amazing day we all had at Massey Track! We all tried so hard at all the different stations. We had fun, too! Here are some of our thoughts about the day:

(We will add these on Thursday after we talk about them)

And here is a slideshow Carolyn made about our day!

  

 Congratulations,  Little Einsteins!

We Are Learning To Learn

We have been getting together with the Wise Owls each week. They are our buddy class and they are great Russell Street learners. The Wise Owls have been teaching us about learning.  Here are Lizzy and Arihia with the circle map we all made together to help us think about what learning is.

Whakawhanaungatanga - Positive Relationships

We HAVE to celebrate Jamie's wonderful first week at school. At school everything is very new. Going to the playground with ALL the other kids can seem very scary. But that's OK, you can do what Jamie did and walk with the duty teacher while you get used to it. All the Russell Street adults want you to feel safe and happy on the playground.

Jamie also has some GREAT friends in the Little Einsteins and they all said "Come and play with us!"
And on Friday, Jamie did! Her mum and dad told her she could do it, too, and so, with lots of encouragement from her family and her friends and the teachers, she said "Today I don't want to walk with the duty teacher." And there's Jamie with Lizzy, off having a wonderful time.

What a lovely example of our focus school value this term! And well done, Jamie!

"Little Cloud" by Eric Carle

We have a wonderful art project underway. It is taking a few days to complete so we want to show our work so far! Our finished pictures will be on a new post soon!

Getting Ready For Assembly

Here we are in the hall before lunch today, getting ready for assembly.

We are hosting assembly tomorrow with  the Wise Owls, the Bright Bugs and E-9. Stanley from the Wise Owls will be reading some of his writing. He is practicing using the microphone. We are listening very carefully. We will also be showing our art - Frogs in Togs!

AND we will receive our welcome certificates! We hope you can make it, tomorrow at 2:15. (Come early to get a seat!)

Our RSS Powhiri

Here we are after the Russell Street School powhiri, held in the hall to welcome the new students.
We are with some of the big kids from the kapa haka group. The powhiri was a very special thing to be a part of. Now that we have been welcomed to Russell Street School, we can sit with the whole school and help to welcome visitors to our school at the next powhiri.
After the powhiri we went to the staff room and had some yummy morning tea!

This is a post from the iBots blog about a powhiri. 

We Are Learning To Write

We are learning to write. This week we have been writing some of the "stick" letters - f/i/l/j/t on the whiteboards. Here we are with today's handwriting.

 

 The Little Einsteins have a "Writers Notebook". It has all kinds of pictures glued into it. We can have a look through it if we are not sure what we want to write about. Today, Lizzy and Arihia looked together. Once they had an idea they went and started their stories.

Each day we talk about what good writers do. This is the collection of visual prompts we use:

On Monday we looked at our stories and asked ourselves if we were learning to be good writers. We all had at least four "Good Writer" cards beside our stories!