Term Three, Week Eleven

Welcome all to the final week of Term 3. It seems to have arrived incredibly quickly, but here we are with only five days to go until the holidays! Everyone has worked very hard and made wonderful progress this term, and the children are looking forward to their well deserved break…

Last week we enjoyed our first kapa haka session with Matua Tom, finished off our calendar art with Mrs Jessop, and learned some new tag and invasion games like scatter, and rats and rabbits. We also loved our last two sessions of Grasshopper Tennis – what a  lot of skills we’ll be able to take forward to the summer tennis season! We also took home our Learning Journals and – for some – our National Standards Reports, and were proud to share these with you.

This week we’re wrapping up our literacy and numeracy programmes with a few – enjoyable! – little assessment exercises, and we’ll be writing and publishing some animal stories with an emphasis on using interesting verbs in a variety of tenses – past, present and future. We’ll continue to develop our fitness skills and to practise our new games, and we’re looking forward to making our own zoo animals come to life in drama.

Please remember to return your learning journals this week :) 

Term 3, Week 10

First of all a huge thanks to all who attended and helped out with the amazing Home and School   disco last week – it was a huge success and the children all looked fabulous and had a wonderful time! Please do consider whether you might now like to become more involved with the other awesome parents who form the Home and School committee – they are always so keen to welcome new members, and it is a great way to make sure that your child has every posisble opportunity while here at Birchwood School :) We were also so thrilled in Room 3 to begin with our first Grasshopper Tennis lesson last week! We had a great time rolling, bouncing and throwing out on the back court! We have also been really enjoying playing different musical instruments (including our selves as vocal and percussive instruments!) to support our narration of the story Alleycats by Jill Eggleton.

We are now excited about our first whole school kapa haka session this Monday afternoon with Matua Tom. We will also enjoy some more tennis lessons and begin our latest PE unit on tag or “invasion” games, taking full advantage of the spring sunshine :)! We’ll continue to work on our calendar art with Mrs Jessop on Wednesday :)

Please note that as the term closes in on us (only two weeks to go!) Learning Journals and, for some few children, National Standards reports will go out this Friday :) Finally, on a more serious note, there has been at least one reported case of school sores in the junior syndicate of Birchwood School in the last week – this is highly contagious, and children with symptoms must stay away from school to avoiding infecting others, and must be taken to a doctor for treatment. For more information on symptoms and treatment please go to http://www.kiwifamilies.co.nz/articles/school-sores/ or you may collect a brochure from the school office.

Tennis

We were so excited about our first Grasshopper Tennis lesson yesterday! We had a great time using the rackets, balls and nets provided by Grasshopper Tennis, and our coach Suzanne showed us how to play "in and out", how to roll a ball around our racket, and how to bounce the ball off the springy strings of our rackets. We also had a go at throwing tennis balls back and forth with a buddy to get used to the position and height of the nets.

Music videos - Peter and the Wolf, Carnival of the Animals

If you would like to watch again the videos we saw for Peter and the Wolf and for Carnival of the Animals, here are the youtube links ...

Peter and the Wolf

Carnival of the Animals (with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck)

Term 3, Week 9

Once again, thank you so much to the wonderful families who helped us out with our visit to the Nelson Recycling Centre last Thursday – it was a really interesting morning for us all, and reminded us about how important it is to use and reuse our resources sustainably. Unfortunately our Grasshopper Tennis lesson was rained out again last week, but we finally begin today($5 to Miss Driver please if you have not paid already J) and again, there will be an additional lesson to ensure that all children get the full four lessons :) We will also draw on what we learned last week about using musical instruments to capture the rhythm, pitch and tempo of characters’ personalities to create musical “stories” which accompany words and images, this week interpreting and creating our own musical score for the Big Book Alleycats by Jill Eggleton. 

Also … The Home and School Disco is on this Thursday night at 6.30pm, only $5 entry (including great music and some fabulous treats)! The theme is When I Grow Up, so go wild with your imagination – we look forward to seeing some amazing costumes! Please remember that a very small group of parents work very hard to provide the children with these social opportunities. The kids absolutely love these events, but in order that they may continue to run, further support from families able to help out before, during and after the event is required. Please contact the school office or leave your name and contact details with me if you are able to assist this dedicated group who do so much for all of the children :)

We continue to work on our calendar art with Mrs Jessop on Wednesday :)

Music discovery in Room 3

This week in Room 3 we've been exploring the way different musical instruments can be used to give "voice" and personality to characters. We have listened to the sound track for Peter and the Wolf (Sergei Prokofiev) and to the Carnival of the Animals (Camille Saint-Saens), and have considered the ways in which pitch, tone, rhythm, tune etc create the mood or idea of each animal or character (thinking about not only that animal's natural "voice", but also its movements, habits, physical presence etc).

We are now beginning to explore the ways in which we can create our own character concepts using musical instruments. This coming week we'll read the big book Alley Cats by Jill Eggleton and will consider the sounds and (potentially!) musical moments that we can enhance with a little percussive performance! Here we are experimenting with shakers, castanets, xylophones, triangles, drums, tambourines, bells and cymbals (among other instruments too many to name :)) ...

The Nelson Recycling Centre

Thank you to all of the wonderful parents who supported our visit to the Nelson Recycle Centre last Thursday. We really enjoyed seeing the different second hand but reusable goods for sale, and were fascinated by the huge mounds of papers, cardboard, plastics, and metals being sorted, collected, and compacted for recycling into new products. We also really enjoyed watching the non-recyclable waste being crushed in the hopper, although we hope to reduce this kind of waste since it goes into the landfill!

Home and School Disco - 6.30pm on Thursday 13 September

Don't forget the Home and School Disco next Thursday 13 September at 6.30pm in the school hall. Only $5 a ticket including some yummy treats and fabulous music! The theme is When I Grow Up, and we can't wait to see the amazing costumes on the night!

Please be aware that a very small group of parents work very hard to provide the children with these social opportunities. The kids absolutely love these events, but in order that they may continue to run, further support from families able to help out before, during and/or after the event is required. Please contact the school office or leave your name and contact details with me if you are able to assist this dedicated group who do so much for all of the children, and ensure that these opportunities continue to be available for everyone to enjoy :)

Drama in Room 3

Yesterday in Room 3 we really enjoyed a presentation of the play The Dragon starring Tom as the King, Bridget as the knight Sir Tim, Aliyah as the brave Frog, Ashleigh as the terrible dragon and Aislinn as the grumpy princess. Well done to these five readers who had a go at using not only voice and expression but also action to convey their character qualities as well as the plot.

We are focussing on reading for meaning and using expression at the moment - I hope that we are all practising using expression and movement during our home reading as we develop our dramatic skills :)