Bike Track

Pheyton: Two men were digging the field.  They were on their diggers. I was watching a cartoon with diggers.

Sophia: There are diggers and the drivers are men.  They are going to put concrete on the path so we can ride our bikes on there.  I already have a bike. It's my brother's but he can't ride it so I've got it and he's got a little bike.

Zakaria: They cut a tree to get the diggers in.  They're digging up the grass. It's for riding your bike. I have a blue, shiny bike.  I ride with Aadil.

Pauline: Ms Mey took a photo of us at the field.  We were looking at the trucks and diggers.

Sonny: There's yellow stuff so nobody can go in.  The diggers are making a track.  It looks messy.

Luqman: I saw two diggers digging.  They were picking up the dirt and making little hills.  They will take the hills away and put it on the field to make it flat.  At the other side we saw a gate broken and a tree cut down.  There were some tall trees and shady trees.  They are going to get cement on top of the path so it will sink. It's pretty curvy like a zigzag.

Shyloh: There were diggers.  We saw another girl.  She had boots. It was fun.  We saw the dental clinic. I like the trucks.

Raagavi: I saw a white butterfly.  I was looking at it.  It was so pretty.  It was on the grass.

Leonzay: The diggers are orange.  There are two diggers.

Race Relations Day

It's always special when we celebrate Race Relations Day at May Road School.  Although we always show respect for others, Race Relations Day gives us an opportunity to see each other in our cultural clothing, talk about ourselves and ask each other lots and lots of questions.
We were so lucky that Room 11 helped us to use Explain Everything at the end of the day to share some things about ourselves.  Watch this space for more on that...

EOTC week

What a busy week it's been! While Kauri team have been at Camp and our lovely Samoan Bilingual classes have been rehearsing for Polyfest, we've had lots of fun doing activities outside our classroom, focusing on fitness. On Monday we did lots of tabloid sports. On Tuesday we had James from Roskill Rugby come and teach us how to play Ripper Rugby. We also had a visit from Constable Telisha and Constable Trev come and talk to us about their jobs. On Wednesday we had athletics and then the lovely Year 4 children at school taught us some new games. On Thursday we walked all the way up our special mountain, Puketapapa, and all the way back down! On Friday we went to Waikowhai Park and looked at rockpools, native trees, did lots of walks and had a play on the awesome playground. Phew!

Green Day

On Friday 24th, our school had a Green Day - an opportunity for the whole school to focus on looking after our environment and keeping our school looking great.

On Monday we looked at how to recycle properly.

On Tuesday we looked at the butterfly garden and planted seeds that will hopefully grown into flowers that butterflies like.
 

We also observed a praying mantis and adopted a couple of snails we found in the garden.  We did some sketching and writing about them before returning them to the garden.
   

On Wednesday we did some weeding in the rainbow garden and on Thursday we did some more weeding with our buddy class.  We dug out some potatoes and harvested some silverbeet, mint, parsley and spring onion.

 

On Friday, we enjoyed a potato salad made with our produce, raked lots of leaves and hosted green day assembly with our buddy class.  Phew!

 

Action Stations

Here are some pictures of what the children do when they're not working with a teacher. Ask them about Action Stations.

              

Swimming with Dushon, Hun-Hi and Sandra

Shyloh: We go to the pool to learn to swim.  I kick and I don't drown.  I put my feet on the ground and stand up and take a breath.

Pheyton: You have to go under the water and kick with your legs.  The water is cold.  The teachers are trying to let us practise.  We make the spaceship shape with our hands. You have to put your swimming togs on in the art room and then go to the mat.  We practice keeping our legs straight and kicking. My mum came to take photos of me.

Pauline: We are learning to swim by ourselves.  We have to float. You can use a board and push the wall with your legs.

Leonzay: I like swimming.

Sonny: We practice swimming. We kick with our legs.

Pauline: If you're in the water you put your feet on the wall and push with your feet and then you swim.  The teachers help us in the pool.

Sophia: We learn to do kicking and to go under.  We learn to hold the rail and hold the board and not let it go.  We kick to go forward.  We lie down on our back and don't put our head up.  At the Wave Pools I did a handstand in the pool.

Vaiona Lovely: We kick and we swim back to the wall and we swim back to the other wall.  We lie on our stomach and on our back and we float.  We blow bubbles. We have to close our eyes.  We walk to the ladder and climb up and turn around and come down.  And then we get changed.

Luqman: When we started swimming the water was icey.  They must have put ice cubes in there.  When I get my whole body in it's freezing.  It starts to make my whole body shiver.  I'm learning how to kick, float and keep my arms and legs straight.





  

   
    

All aboard for 2017!!

It's lovely to have some new and familiar faces in Room 8.  We have started off with small numbers, which is great for getting to know each other really well.  We had a high ratio of adults to children on Wednesday as we had only 7 children and three adults (Mrs Noakes, Ms Mey and Mrs Azim!).


Even though we have only been at school for 4 days, the children are doing and learning so much already.  Here are some pictures of what we've been up to in the first week:


Using different materials to show the number of days we've been at school.


Learning to read!!

 
Making playdough and using it to make letters and numbers.


Working with a buddy to solve Maths problems.


Learning to swim across the pool.

Patterns, Patterns, Patterns

Patterns are everywhere but they can be hard to describe, continue or create.  We have spent a few afternoons looking around our classroom to find patterns and describe patterns, and also to make our own.

Some questions the children had to think about:
- is a row of the same colour a pattern?
- if you are using 2 colours, do you have to put them in an order to make a pattern?
- how many bits (colours / shapes / different components) can you have in a pattern?

Some people found it tricky at first but after a few goes, everyone was able to make patterns with different colours or shapes.