Friday was the last day at Mt Primary for Mia and her sister Elly, who are off to Spain for two years. We are sad to see her go but also very excited for her. We wish her, and her family, best wishes for their time away.
This week we were delighted to receive a card and letter from our Christchurch guest student Sam! Look how happy we are:) Thanks, Sam! Good to hear that you have settled back in with your class.
We are very excited to be back in our newly renovated classroom after a week in the hall. It is bright and clean and new. Thank you to the parents who gave us a hand moving - it was a big job but many hands made (lighter) work!
Welcome back to a new school year! We are now Room 1 and we have changed from Year Ones to Year Twos.
During the last two weeks we had a special guest student in our classroom - Sam from Christchurch. Sam was at his school in Christchurch City Centre when the February 6.4 earthquake struck. He and his family have had some time-out at Mt Maunganui and have just headed back home as Sam's school is now repaired. We have enjoyed meeting Sam and he will be missed in Room 1.
Last week Team Tay visited the local NewWorld Supermarket as part of our Term Two 'Food' Topic. We had a good look behind the scenes in the bakery,chiller, butchery and packing area. We have written about our highlights for you to read:
Welcome new children from Room 12 and your parents and caregivers! We are working to ensure a smooth transition in becoming a Room 8 Great. Feel free to come and have a chat if you have anything to share or questions to ask :)
Weather Wordles
Iron Brion Show
We Love Iron Brion!
The Iron Brion Roadshow visited Mount Primary last week. We learned about the 4 different food groups:
Meat and meat alternatives, vegetables and fruit, dairy products, bread and grains.
Now we know that to be healthy and strong we need to eat foods from all of the groups.
The children that eat meat were given a hamburger to enjoy for lunch - yum!!
Thanks, Iron Brion!
Why does a boat float?
Water, Water, Everywhere!
Last week, as part of our Water Topic Inquiry we conducted some simple science experiments to find out what kind of classroom objects float and what kind sink, and why.
We found out that the shape, weight and densityof an object affect how much water is displaced, and whether it will sink to the bottom, or float on the top.
We excitedly took turns to dunk pencils, paper-clips, erasers, cotton-wool, corks, coins and the teacher's apple(!), into containers of water -and observed and recorded what we saw.
Some objects sunk quickly, and others more slowly.
Earlier in the week, we also investigated the differences between salt-water and fresh-water. The taste-testing part proved popular!
Bubble Bubble
This week we began our writing topic outside blowing bubbles. As well as having a lot of fun, we looked very closely and asked ourselves some questions.
What did they look like?What shapes were they?What did they do?What did they feel like?Some children also discovered what they tasted like... :-/
The children took photos of eachother creating the bubbles. Next they wrote descriptions of their bubbles on Kidpix on the C.O.W. laptops and imported their photos in as the background picture.
Finally we used ink blowing through straws to create a picture of our favourite bubble. Miss Walker made sure we used tissues to stop us accidently tasting the ink...
Room 8 is gaining from our time in the Life Education mobile classroom this week. We are learning about how to look after our bodies and what our heart, lungs, stomach and brains do. Some of the children were invited to be 'doctors' and to show their classmates where these parts of the body belong on the model.
We also gained some tips on how to be a good friend and look after each other. We are all special!
We are special
What a lot of characters!
Book Week
As Term 2 began, Room 8 celebrated Literacy Week by reading about and dressing up as, our favourite book characters. Pirates, witches, fairies and more, played happily with Hairy Maclary and his friends.
Didn't we enjoy the parade!
We also decided to learn more about local Author Lynley Dodd, as her books were among the most enjoyed in our class library.
We are learning about rainbows this week, as part of our Weather and Water Topic. How many colours does a rainbow have?What are the names of the colours?What order do the colours go in? We used Kidpix to show our learning. It was tricky to draw all the colours together in an arc shape! Everybody's rainbow looked different, just like we do!