Dinosaur Dig

Room 3 read a story this morning about a group of ten dinosaurs who build a swimming pool together. The dinosaurs in the story use all kinds of different machines and different materials including cement and concrete to make their pool. To make cement and concrete which are tough and strong, it's important to properly measure the amounts of each earthy "ingredient" to be added to the mixture - just like cooking! Special - industrial sized - containers and scales are used to make sure that the measurements are just right.

We had a dig of our own out in our sandpit, and played with some differently sized containers. Once again, we filled them up until they were full (at capacity), half full (half capacity) and empty (no capacity in use!). We worked so hard that we earned 5 minutes of free construction time :)

You can't catch me ...

Room 3 have been learning about capacity this week, and about measuring the amount of something which a container can hold when it is empty, full, half full ....

As you can see we were inspired by the popular fairy tale, The Gingerbread Man. We had to use our understanding of capacity when measuring cups, tablespoons and teaspoons full and half full of ingredients to mix up our cookie dough. Yum yum!

Term 4, Week 3

Thanks again everyone for another excellent week in Room 3. We have really been enjoying the sunshine and getting outside during our break times and our training sessions for athletics. Although it was a shorter school week, we still managed to fit in a lot of reading, writing, maths and technology. Did you see our recyled newspaper fashions on the school blog? We were proud to share our designs in junior assembly, together with some of our writing. We loved learning to weave paper with Mrs Jessop on Wednesday, and plaiting our own friendship bracelets on Friday. Fabric and fibre is certainly turning out to be an awesome art focus for us!

This week we’ll continue our athletics training by practising a range of jumping techniques, however our particular focus will be on maths as we begin our new measuring unit – capacity. Monday will kick off with an exciting introduction to baking as we measure out our ingredients for our very own – real! – gingerbread men! On Tuesday we’ll further explore capacity with a sandpit session, and we’ll be reflecting on and evaluating our ideas on Thursday and Friday. It’s tricky to understand the difference between capacity, size and shape – we might be in for some surprises! We’re also looking forward to making our very own recycled sock puppets in art/technology, as we recreate our favourite characters from the Gingerbread Man story.

Please check out our awesome calendar art – orders close on Friday!!!

Finally, please note that nits have been about once again in Room 3 – notices were sent out to all families last week. In order to eradicate the problem, it is essential that all children have their hair checked over every night, and that nits are treated immediately (with repeat inspections and treatment after one week). Nits are passed from one child to another through contact between the children’s hair as they sit, stand or play closely together. While nits are a reality of school life, with everyone on board we can certainly hope to minimise the spread!

Plastic fantastic - our technology challenge

Room 3 had so much fun making newspaper costumes on Monday that we decided to have another go today. However, when we thought about the different types of rubbish which we make, we realised that it was more important to find a use for the waste which we have no other way of recycling or composting - all the plastic packaging and sad wrap from our lunches, as well as plastic bags!

We had a look at our possible materials, and then we each had a go at designing a plastic fantastic outfit (in our topic books). After we had shared our ideas with each other, we had a go at dressing up our model, Ashleigh, to try out some of our thoughts.

We are looking forward to each making our own plastic fantastic costumes for the junior/middle syndicate show "What a Load of Rubbish" later in the term ...

All here today!

We were also thrilled to have everyone present today, and on a sunny day! As well as the old timers from term one, we had all of our term two joiners, and our term four joiner - Kieran :) Aren't we beautiful??

Technology in Room 3

This term at Birchwood School our topic focus is on technology - making things! Because our school is so interested in reducing waste, we're going to focus on ways in which we can reuse or recycle problem waste products to create new pieces of art or equipment.

Today we embraced a whole school challenge - to design and make a fashionable outfit using ... newspaper! First of all we explored a few cutting, folding, ripping and taping techniques as a class, and we dressed up our lovely model, Bridget - doesn't she look stunning :)?

Then we split off into our desk groups. We had to pick one model (choosing our models was very tricky for us, and some learners had to compromise because they all really wanted to model ...!) and a team of fashion designers. We had 15 minutes to put together our outfits. Here we are at work ... 

And here are our gorgeous designs - four princesses and a super hero ninja! What talented designers we are in Room 3 :) This would be a great wet weekend activity for us to practise again at home ...

Term Four, Week 2

Well done everyone on a great start to our final term in Room 3. We had a lot of fun together, trying out our cricket skills, listening to some awesome stories by visiting author Jane Buxton, and creating our fabric and fibre school mural. We also worked really hard this week on our doubling and halving in maths, and we focussed on the parts of speech (nouns, verbs and adjectives) to create sensible and interesting sentences. We began our athletics programme with some sprints!

This week our maths focus will shift to place value – recognising the number of tens and ones in a two digit number, and we will look at adverbs (words to describe verbs) as another part of speech that we can use to make our sentences more interesting for a reader. We’ll also be beginning our technology topic for the term, considering ways that we can re-use or transform gladwrap (which is non-recyclable and non-biodegradable) from our school lunches into something wonderful, in order to be more sustainable as a school community. We’ll continue our athletics focus while tuning up our throwing skills, and we’ll be plaiting some friendship bracelets on Friday to wind up the week.

 Please continue to bring your book bag to school every day this term, and to work on your homework (reading, spelling and maths) every night from Monday to Thursday – homework is marked over the weekends, so please ensure that books are returned on Fridays.

This week we welcome back Mrs Fleur Jessop who will be completing our calendar art, and beginning the new fibre and fabric module with us.  

Author visit by Jane Buxton

We were so lucky in Room 3 today to enjoy an author visit from Jane Buxton. Mrs Buxton has written many titles in our school reader series, as well as a number of picture books to be found in the Birchwood School library. Today she read "The Red Overalls" for us (her first published book) as well as "Stepping Stones". Mrs Buxton also showed us the first (tiny!) book she ever wrote, at age 6, and answered some of our questions about being an author.

Term 4, Week 1

Welcome back to Term 4, our final term together in Room 3 for 2012! What a term it’s going to be – we’ll have a new topic focus (technology for sustainability – trash and treasure), we’ll be preparing for our end of term show, we’ll be working with fabric and fibre to create classroom and Christmas crafts, and we’ll be finishing off our Calendar Art with Mrs Jessop. Of course we’ll also continue with kapa haka and te reo, and we’ll be enjoying a range of fitness activities – cricket, athletics and team games. We even have an author visit this Friday!

In maths we’ll be working at counting on or back from a number in our heads to solve problems without numberlines or materials to count on (imaging – using our imagination to “see” what we’re used to seeing when we count). In both reading and writing we’ll be focussing on how authors (including ourselves!) use the parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs – to start with!) to create interesting sentences that make sense and contain all of the information that is important for a reader to know. 

 Please remember to bring your book bag to school every day this term, and to work on your homework (reading, spelling and maths) every night from Monday to Thursday (no homework on Fridays or at the weekends :)). 

Please also remember that children must wear a school hat at all times when playing in the sun during Term 4 – children without a hat will spend play times in the shaded play areas only (this excludes the field and playgrounds).