Happy Halloween

On 31st October, we celebrated Happy Halloween in Room 18: through Maths, Word Study, Art and Science.  Desk inspection was scary as everyone had cobwebs and spiders in their desks and tote trays!

The jack-o-lantern smelt like burnt pumpkin as the candle cooked the lid!

First we did Halloween Maths.  We had to join pairs of numbers that make 10, 100 or even 1,000 to make scary cobwebs.

Later on, we worked out Halloween word problems.  Some people worked independently using their multiplication and division skills,  while other people used counters in the Halloween workshop with Mrs Bear.

For lunch, we made spider sandwiches, but thankfully NOT with real spiders!  We used vegemite for the body, and either sticks of cucumber or carrot for the legs.  Then we used red food colouring for the eyes and mouth.

After lunch, we had Spooky Word Study with jelly googly eyes.  We had to write all the words we could think of with the 'OO' chunk.

Afterwards, we could choose one Halloween sweet from the Skull because no one really wanted to eat the googly eyes when they had felt pen all around the edge - there were jelly googly eyes, false teeth or cut off fingers to choose from.

We also did spooky Halloween Art, but this took several days.  First we looked very closely at our hands to see where the finger bones were.   We bent our finders, rotated our wrists and made a fist to see our knuckles.  Then we drew an outline of our hand, and made little lines to show each join.  Next we drew in each bone, separating them at each join and coloured in the spaces between.  The last part was to carefully paint the bones with oil to make them see-through.  When they were dry, we stuck them to the window.  When the light shines through, they look just like X-rays!

Later on, we did some Halloween Science and learned about physical change and chemical change.  We looked at all sorts of changes and decided in which group they belonged.  We  classified things like melting ice, mixing sand in water or chopping wood as physical change because they stayed the same, but we classified making toast and slime and baking cakes as chemical change because things changed and you could not change them back again.

At the end of the day, little groups of people went into the Halloween Cave with a glow stick - was this a physical change or a chemical change?  Can we change the glow stick back, or not?  We thought about this as we whirled them around in the dark.  What do you think?

Cultural Art Work

Check out our cultural art on the Visual Art page - everyone completed a painting of themselves and their personal culture at the Te Tuhi workshop onsite. 

Also read our previous blog "Cultural Art at Te Tuhi' for photos of us in action!

Here is one sample - but look the other 28 art works too!

Clay Flowers

Take a look at all the clay flowers we made on the Visual Art page.

Weka Day Camp

Room 18 and Room 3 went together to the Weka Day Camp on Thursday.  We travelled first by bus to the Auckland Botanic Gardens,  and then by 'Shanks's Pony' all the way down to our day campground by the Wilderness Area.

We were divided into three groups, and each group rotated through four outdoor activities: cooking sausages on an open fire, erecting a tent, orienteering and tramping through the bush.

Unfortunately, along with our parents and grandparents, the rain decided to come too.  After a sunny start, we had a rainy afternoon.  The fire circle moved under the trees, the trampers were also protected by the tree canopy in the bush but the orienteering papers became soggier and soggier as we tried to keep clipping them at the different orienteering stations! 

However, everyone stayed relatively snug and dry in their jackets and raincoats, so the camping fun continued right on until the very last person climbed on to the bus.  A special thanks to all the parents and grandparents who braved the weather and helped make the day camp a success.

Little Gardens Get Big!

The Little Gardens we planted in Term 3 with Ali are now ready to plant out in our classroom garden.

Can you estimate how tall the sunflowers will be by the end of the year?  Keep watching and measuring!

Reading logs - update!

Here are all the people who have read for more than 100 nights in 2017.   Some people were very nearly there on 98 or 95 nights of home reading.  Still one whole term to go though - so keep reading (AND remembering to record it in your log!)

Hinus had the top boy's score and Ruby had the top girl's score.

Weka Open Morning - Writing Workshop

The Weka Team had an Open Morning in week 10.  We invited parents to a Writing Workshop where we wrote about our favourite toy.  Everyone took part in the workshop, and then broke away to work in small groups with parents or grandparents to improve their writing.  There was also time to share some of our favourite published stories from earlier in the year.

MOTAT visit

The Weka Team visited MOTAT to find out about robots and programming.  We also had time to stroll around the other exhibits - we even visited the olden day classroom (we can never get enough of school!) and took a nostalgic ride on the old MOTAT tram.