How great to finally have some lovely weather. We were all able to take advantage of it on Thursday morning when we had our junior school athletics. Everyone had a great time showing their running, jumping and throwing skills. A big thank you to the parents who came and supported us all and a special thanks to the room 14 helpers who did such a wonderful job at not only helping the teachers but encouraging and supporting the younger children. Well done!
The children are continuing to enjoy the swimming sessions with the instructors from the Find Your Field of Dreams programme. Last week the focus was on water safety and how, when and where to use a lifejacket:

We look forward to the next three weeks of swimming.
This week we are focusing on Road Safety and have Constable Amy coming to remind us all about staying safe.

How lucky we were to once again have the chance to have a go at ice skating. The children really loved the experience as you can see from the photos below:

There was some nervousness at first, but everyone got the hang of it quite quickly.

For Maths we have been learning about units of TIME. The children have been enjoying showing hours, half hours and minutes on the analogue clocks during our maths sessions.

During our Mandarin session we were extremely lucky to be shown some Tai Chi moves. We were shown the Tai Chi routine and we then had a go at some of the moves. It was great fun!

This week we started our swimming programme and on Wednesdays and Fridays have three swimming instructors who come and help us with our swimming skills. These instructors are part of the "Find Your Field of Dreams" programme and do a fantastic job. To make the most of this opportunity we expect the children to bring their togs to school every day from now on as this is part of our school P.E. programme.

Firstly a BIG thank you to Matua Tim for all his wonderful work in room 3 during term 3, as part of his Master of Teaching practicum. We hope that he will visit us again and wish him every success with his teaching career.
During the last few weeks of term 3 we were all busily working on our group New Zealand Author display boards. We shared these during the last week of school.

We all created a book jacket for our favourite book. These included a cover design, a blurb about the story and a mini autobiography. We were able to go and share our efforts with the children in room 14.

During the last week of term 3 room 14 children came to our classroom and shared their Inquiry Learning projects with us:

We really enjoyed sharing our learning and hope to do it again this term.

As part of our Mandarin sessions we learnt about the Moon Cake Festival and made lanterns as part of the celebration.:

We look forward to an exciting term.
Just a few reminders for this term:

• Remember to bring a named hat to school every day.
• $4;00 for the Ice Skating needs to be paid by this Monday 30th October.

This week we have been busy continuing with our Inquiry tasks: finding out about our favourite New Zealand author. We have been presenting our findings ready to go onto our display board.:

Today we were very priviledged to have a visit from Swim Safe New Zealand. Wendy talked to us and showed us ways that we can keep safe in and around water. We all had lots of fun practicing our sculling movements.

We are all looking forward to some summer weather so we can practice our skills in the pool. Thank you Swim Safe New Zealand for coming and teaching us about water safety.

What a busy and exciting start to the term we have had.
In week 3 we had a very successful Grandparent's Day. How wonderful to see so many Grandparents come and be part of our junior school singing assembly and visiting the classrooms.
As part of our work leading up to Grandparent's Day the children in room 3 wrote about what makes their Grandparents special.  Here are some examples:

Last Friday room 3 had a visit from a group of Japanese students. After a waiata the Japanese students showed us how to make a range of origami objects. At the end we each sung our National Anthems.

Room 3 have been training hard for the runathon and the cross-country, focusing on keeping a steady pace and building up our stamina.

As part of our Inquiry topic this term we are learning about three New Zealand authors: Jenny Hessell, Juliette MacGiver and Joy Watson. We look forward to sharing some of our topic work with you later in the term.
We are very priviledged to have Matua Tim, a Masters of Teaching and Learning student in our classroom this term. Welcome Tim and we are all enjoying having you in room 3.

Winter Hikau

We wrote Haiku about how we feel in winter. We learned that Haiku have 3 lines of five syllables, seven syllables and five syllables. We wrote some Haiku together as a class, and some on our own. We illustrated them with pastel.

Our egg containers

As part of our Inquiry unit we have been doing in room 3 we explored how egg cartons are made, what attributes they have and how people carried eggs in the past.

We had to work together in groups to design and make a container that would hold one raw egg and keep it intact when the container was dropped from a one metre height.

We then tested our containers by dropping them from first 1.5 metres and then 2.1 metres for those that were still intact. We recorded the results and decided what we would change if we were to make it again.

To make our design better we should put more foam on the top of the egg. It was a success when we dropped it from 1.5m but when we dropped it from 2.1m it cracked because when you dropped it from a few more metres it goes further it also bounced up. I liked watching the other group`s emotions when they dropped the container. I found out the egg breaks easily when you dropped it from a certain height. I also found out the egg containers are made out of paper mache.

By Jessica

Our egg stayed whole when it was dropped from 1.5 metres. When the container was dropped from 2.1 metres it cracked. It cracked because the container wasn’t strong enough.

If we made another container we would make ours smaller. We would put cotton balls around the egg. We would make a little box shape.

I learnt that egg cartons are light so people can carry them. The part I liked best was dropping our egg container.

By Aurora.

 This week we have been learning about Matariki, and been doing lots of activities about Matariki and stars. We will show you some of our art work soon!

We have a great start to the term. Below are some photographs showcasing some of the work mentioned in the last blog.

Just a reminder that the children are encouraged to read their book from school  to an adult each night and to practise writing their spelling words for the week.