T-Ball with our Big Buddies.

We have been learning about the "Days of the week "and now we are learning the "Months of the Year". Mrs Paterson found a website with a great game for us to use to give us lots of practice. We can practice it at home. It is in the maths links section of our Blog.

Levi's mum took these great videos at the stadium last week. The children really enjoyed the warm up song each day. I am sure most of the adults felt tired just watching. The videos of the children floating on their fronts and backs show just how far some of the children have come in just 4 days.
Come along to the swimming sports tomorrow night so your children can show you what they have learnt.

Just before swimming each day we do exercise to music and we finish with some quiet relaxing music. Today we were in the exercise studio and we did aerobics just like some of our mums do.

Today we played "Duck, duck, goose" with Fiona at Futsal. We had to balance on the balls until it was our turn to chase someone. Poor Fiona got chased by lots of people. She will be exhausted tonight.

We had to learn how to save ourselves if the boat we were in, tipped over.We had to dig in and doggy paddle to a safe place at the side of the pool.

See how beautifully Hannah can float on her back.
Well done Hannah

Every day we begin Fundamental skills with a warm up session with all of the instructors.This is a little bit of the song we dance to.

At water Safety we are learning how to keep ourselves afloat and how to to get in and out of the pool safely. We are also learning what to do if we fall in. We practice by walking on a big mattress then we jump in. Some of us don't even need a hand to get to the side after jumping.This is Group 2 . See how brave they are.

Today everyone was so confident with their swimming and water safety. Well done. I was so proud of you for "Keeping on trying". Now some of you can actually say, "I can do it."
I took some videos of Jamie, Harry and Ben D in Group 2 today.See how clever they are at lying back on their cushions.

Day 2 of Fundamental Skills

The first day of Fundamental Skills:
What was it like ? What did we do? How did we feel?

We went down the ladder and we had to climb back up to the side and then we slippery snaked back in. Emily Kate
I got a frisbee for doing good stuff. It was all so easy. Levi
I did basketball. It was cool.You had to bounce it and try and throw it in the basket. It didn't work. Harry
I can touch the bottom in the deep pool.We did slippery snakes into the pool. Then we did monkeys. Emily
We did dodgeball. I did good swimming and was a good leader. I won a frisbee . Hannah.
I liked playing follow the leader. Ben was the leader and then the big person was the leader next.We had to copy Ben. Michael
I liked dodgeball. You had to throw the ball at each other.The life saving was the best. Ruby
I had fun swimming. I put my head under. Jamie
I had fun slithering in the water and ducking my whole body under the water. Alice
I went into the big pool and it was over my mouth so I had to stand on a trampoline. I wasn't scared. Jonty
I got a frisbee because I did a good job. I also cheated and went in the water when it wasn't my turn. Ben
I was a good sport and I got an awesome blue frisbee and I held on to the wall because we went down the deep end. Jackson

Our Wonderful Self Portraits

Buddy time with Room 9

BUDDY TIME WITH ROOM 9
We had a great time at buddy time today. Our buddies got out the parachute and we had to pump all the air under it so it went up high. We bounced a ball in it and we played a game. When our number was called we had to run under the parachute and get back out before it came down. At the end we all sat under it and it was like being inside a big tent. Thank you Claudia and Courtney for organising it.

By the way the sausages at your sausage sizzle were delicious. Have a great camp next week.

We have been learning about the days of the week. We read a funny story about Miss Pool. She is a teacher and her car broke down. Each day she came to school in a very different, strange way. Ask the children about it. We had some cool cars with all the days on them and we had to put them all in the correct order.

It has been great watching the children get so interested in making words. Every morning a group of children , that is growing fast, have been busy making and writing words. It has been especially good to see the children involving their mums in what they are doing. Thanks for taking the extra time in the mornings to share your child's learning.
This morning we did a 10 minute wordblast ( until now we have only done 5). All the children set themselves a goal of a certain amount of words. EVERY child met or exceeded their goal WOW! GREAT WORK. Have a look at their wordblast books next time you are at school.
KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK.

We are learning to make lots of words starting with our "Words of the Week". These are some of the ways we learn new words.

Making words

Healthy Food

We have been talking about what keeps us healthy. We came up with lots of things.
Fruit , vegetables, fresh air, enough sleep and exercise.
We will need to think about some of these to help us cope with Fundamental Skills next week.
Eating healthy food , getting enough sleep and fresh air will help us cope with all the exercise we will be doing.

Yesterday we talked about our favourite fruits and veges. Then we looked in the school gardens to see what was growing there.
Today we sorted felt pictures into fruits and vegetables. We weren't sure if an avacado is a fruit or a vegetable. The class couldn't decide so have gone home to see if they can find out. Watch this space...

Congratulations to Ruby who turned 6 over the weekend. We celebrated her birthday in class,on Friday. When we have a birthday, we do lots of special things such as, wear the birthday hat, take home Cookie Muncher for the night, get a birthday balloon and have a dip in the Lucky Dip box as well as blowing out the birthday candle as the class sing Happy Birthday.Room 2 came up with these celebrations a couple of years ago when we did an inquiry on Celebrations around the World. "Happy Birthday Ruby and Zach " (for those who don't know, Zach is Ruby's twin brother who is in Room 10).

Over the holidays I discovered that there was another way to allow you to make comments on our blog. I have now changed the settings to allow anonymous comments. This will mean you don't need a gmail account to comment. I always moderate comments before allowing them to be published and I will only publish if there is a name attached. So why not encourage Grandparents, Aunties and Uncle to have a look and leave a comment, not forgetting Mums and dads as well.

Summer Soccer;

I was excited because it was the first day I had played soccer. If I enjoyed it , Dad said he would buy me a new pair of sneakers in the weekend. by Emily Kate

It was very, very cool playing soccer. Mum and Dad were saying, "Go, Harry, go!" by Harry

My brother was watching me and he took lots of photos. It was really, really cool! by Alice

My brother scored two goals in his first game. by Ruby

Well done Levi. You haven't even started school yet but you played like all the big kids. We are very proud of you. Mrs Paterson

Summer Soccer Starts

Showing compassion for children in Australia
Today our school is having a special mufti day to help raise money for the children in Australia who have lost everything in the terrible fires.
Our class of 11 children has raised $30.10. We will put all our money together with the other classes and send it to the Red Cross.

Thank you all for being so generous. At lunch time we are going to put all the money on the word Australia and a reporter from the "Sun" newspaper will take a photo. We are challenging all schools to do something as well. Watch out for next weeks paper.

Emily's Dad is a Rural Fire fighter and he is going to Australia soon to help fight the fires. He has to stay here at the moment because it is so dry that we could have a fire here too!

When all the money was counted, our school had contributed $500. Thanks everyone.

Today we had a surprise visit from Timmy the Pony. He belongs to Tom Leonard's (in Room 10)family. We were allowed to pat him and he happily licked our hands and even Tom's mum's face!!!


The pony was sniffing me. Jamie
He licked my hand. Hannah
He was moving his head around for everyone to pat. Ben
I have riding lessons on Timmy. When we finish we take off all the gear. He recognised me and and gave me a big lick. Emily
I watched him lick all the lipstick off! Harry
I liked patting him. Michael
It felt hot and tickly when he licked me. Alice
He eats grass and hay and he sucked me. Jonty.
I liked patting Timmy. Emily Kate
You have to hold on tight and wear a riding helmet. Ruby
He was licking Ben's hands. Jackson

Yesterday I was the "Worker of the Day" and I got to take Ted home for the night and we set a hut up and my sister helped. We jumped on the trampoline. Ted slept in the hut with my other toys for company. My mum made Ted some pants. The material is cool, it has Teddy Bears on it. My class and Ted said, " Thanks very much for the cool pants."

by Emily Kate

Last Thursday we met our new buddy class, Room 9. They are a Year 8 class and they are the oldest children in the whole school. We filled out a sheet of questions all about ourselves so we could get to know each other. It is nice when we see our buddies in the playground because they say hello and ask us what we have been doing.

Our new Big Buddies

It was lovely to catch up with you all today. We had a very busy day going over our routines and talking about Our Place- in Room 2. We talked about what we could do to help Room 2 be a happy, safe place for our learning and wrote some of these in a jigsaw and signed our names. We made a jigsaw of pictures of ourselves and put it all back together.

Today the children took home the first part of a special little book "All about_______".Please help them complete the information ,making sure that you talk about it as you go. We are going to share these booklets and find out more about Our Place- in our family.

Welcome children, I'm glad you're here.
We're going to have a wonderful year!
We'll read and we'll write,
We'll sing and we'll play,
We'll paint and we'll draw,
And learn new things each day!

Skate Day

Three Room 2 children were stars in the Christmas Parade yesterday. Did you see them?

On Tuesday we ran the whole school assembly. We had a Greedy Cat theme. We showed our Greedy Cats, our awesome paintings, a slideshow of our kidpix pictures with a podcast of the original Greedy Cat story.
We shared some of our own Greedy Cat stories and sang his song.We were very proud of ourselves as it was the first assembly that most of room 2 had been involved in. Lots of parents came to watch which made us a bit nervous to start with. It was a nice way toe finish our inquiry.

On Saturday night I went to the "Shall we dance" concert at the Marlborough Centre. Emily was dancing and these are some photos of her during the show.

Book Launch with Room 9

I kept falling down like I was playing rugby. The team got 1 goal and we got zero.I am getting good at kicking the ball. I am really good at soccer.

by Josh

Today I am going to play the best game of soccer. I am going to play winter soccer as well. Mrs Paterson is going to soccer to film us.
This is the little film she took.

by Jack

As Monday is December 1st I thought it would be okay for us to start thinking about Christmas. I hope you enjoy this little Christmas song.

What a wonderful day we had in Room 2 today. Jackson, Jonty and Ben were visiting for the morning. Jackson is 5 on Monday and the following Monday, Jonty and Ben turn 5.
The big event of the day was a very special visit from Tania (Marlborough Distict Libraries childrens librarian) and Greedy Cat.
It was so exciting actually getting to meet him. He was very quiet. He must have felt shy, just like we do when we first come to school. Tania read us lots of cool books and we sang the "Greedy Cat" song.
Tania read some of our books to Greedy Cat. She said that our stories were amazing and suggested we send some to Joy Cowley. I am sure she would enjoy them.
You are welcome to come in a read our books. We are very proud of them. We will share some of them at assembly in week 9 and we are putting a copy of each book in our library for other children to read.

Greedy Cat and Tania come to visit

Making biscuits for Greedy Cat's visit