Calendar Art

Every year, Cockle Bay makes calendar art.  Every class has to design a picture to fit on an A4 page.  It has to be colourful and interesting enough to make into a calendar or diary to last for the whole of 2018.  Families can also order a set of cards which they can use for birthdays or 'thank yous' - you could even use Room 18's pictures to write favourite recipes inside.

Room 18 looked at all sorts of foods and then drew them on plates.  We also looked at gingham table clothes and chose the best colour.  We used black markers and dye to colour our pictures.  The most interesting thing was that we used cotton buds instead of paint brushed to apply the colours.

If you would like to make an order, you can view all the calendar art work on the classroom window at any time during the weekend or scroll through them on this post.

Fraction Fruit Salad

In Room 18 we are learning about fractions.  To help us learn about fractions of shapes we made a fraction fruit salad.  Everyone brought different kinds of fruit, some small like blueberries and some big like rock melon.  Then we cut them into pieces.  We cut small fruit like grapes in half, but the bigger fruit were cut into many small pieces.  Some were not fractions of the fruit as they were not the same size.  Even so, when they were all mixed together, they tasted juicy and delicious.

We would like to thank the Mums and Dads who came to help us and supervised us using sharp knives.

Teddy is not keen on fruit salad, but enjoyed the company.

The Squirrel and the Eagle

We watched this video:
The squirrel and the eagle
Then we pretended to be the squirrel.  We talked about how we would feel and what we would do.  We brainstormed all the verbs we could think of that we could use in our story.

One of our goals was to use as many precise verbs as we could, the verbs that would tell the reader exactly what we were doing.

Here is one of our published stories, but you can read more on the Writing page.

Kate O's story and photo

Self Portraits

When we were looking through our class blog, we realised that our self portraits had not been uploaded.  This is art work we did when we were learning about sketching in term 1.  Underneath is the personal profile we wrote about ourselves, also from term 1.

Here is one of our self portraits.  Look on the Visual Art page for many more.

Kaleb's self portrait and  personal profile

Wacky Mufti Day

On Wacky Mufti Day, we had two new students: Mr Chicken and a new boy all the way from Sweden,  just for the day.  With lots of kindness and caring evident from the other students, they both settled into class well.

Our Clay Day

First we had a Clay Play Day when we could explore using clay.  Then we had a Clay Day when we made a tile and  a flower to sit on top. We learned how to take the air bubbles out of the clay; how to roll it into a square shape; fashion petals and stamens and attach them securely to the tile.  We made a criss cross pattern on the areas that touch and used plenty of slip to stick the petals in place.

We now have to wait about three weeks for them to dry out before firing them in the kiln.  You will be able to see the finished tiles at the Art Expo later this term.

Here we are rolling out the clay to make a tile.  We kept turning the board around to make sure that our clay was a square shape, and not just a long ribbon shape!

Here we are banging the air out of the clay.

We pressed in a glue stick lid to make the round centre of the flower, and then fixed petals around the circle.

Wed made sure that we scored the clay with a toothpick in a criss cross shape to help

We had to work carefully - our tiles took us a whole day to make!

Grandparents Day

On Wednesday, 26th July, the Junior School hosted a Grandparents Day where people shared their things and memories of school in the olden days.  We made a venn diagram with stickies to compare then and now.  It was interesting to see what was the same, such as skipping and chess; and what was different, things like computers, inkwells, fidget spinners and . . . the strap.  We also heard about games like Kiss Chase, school pet days and making terraniums.  Maybe we should try some of these!

After a sharing time, we served our guests morning tea.  Thankfully, there was plenty for everyone, including all the students.

Everyone made an invitation to send to a family member - here is a selection of invites

Everyone contributed to our venn diagram to compare past and present school life,

Kate O's Granny shared her photo album.

We played this board game from China, which is a lot like chess.

Mathew s with his Nana and Pop.

Kyan with his Nana.