H h Hats, hats, hats!

 We had a busy Four Stars day on Thursday! Our focus letter for the week is h so after watching Hats for Sale, we made fantastic hats.

You can help your child to remember the sound made by 'h' in many ways. Using the alphabet chart regularly and focusing on our weekly letter is a good start.... Also by highlighting the sound as you say words that have an h at the start... And just by saturating them with h words through the week! Have a look at our heavenly hats.......

D-D-D-Dinosaur!!!

Today we made DINOSAURS because our focus letter is Dd.

As well as rhe initial consonant, some of us will be finding out about d at the end of words, and dr as a blend next week.

At home you could practise the sound that d makes as it can be tricky....and practise writing 'd's as they can commonly be confused with b! (Remember "b has a belly, d doesn't!)

Here are some of our DINOSAURS.....

A is for ...... Alligator!

Today at 4 Stars we learnt about the letter a.

A is a vowel and it has two main sounds- 'a' like apple and 'a' like ape.

New students are focusing on the short a and older students are thinking about both the sounds that 'a' makes. This will help them when reading or writing trickier words!

Have a look at our hungry alligators that love eating 'a' or words that have a in them!

Cc.......The Cat in the Hat

We have Cc as our letter this week. 

C is a copycat, it borrows a sound from k and s and doesn't have one of its own! It would be great if you could share some 'c' words with your child to help them build their understanding. 

We read 'The Cat in the Hat' and then we looked at all the words that rhyme with cat.... They all have the -at chunk in them. Our older students thought about blends  that start with c, like cl and cr.

Next we made our own crazy cat hat and wrote some -at words to glue on.

We are very proud of our work, hope you think they look great too!

X and Z - Our Letters of the Week.......Welcome Back to Term 4 at Matapu!

Well the holidays raced by didn't they, but it's nice to be back with all our Room 6 friends- and to welcome Paxton Burke to our class! We are so excited that you are with us.

This week at 4-Stars we looked at the letters X and Z. We are pretty good at recognising the sounds these letters make so we knew we could study 2 letters at once!

X is often found inside words rather than at the beginning so we made fox masks to remind us about the sound.

Z is the very last letter and it likes to have a bit of fun so it is often found in words like zip, zap and  zoom! Have a look at our cute zebras that would be the highlight of any zoo!

Umbrellas up! Letter of the week is u!

We had a busy and crafty day yesterday! 

Aftr our busy B morning with pre-school, we had 4- Stars in the afternoon. Our letter this week is U so we read a delightful story about 'Tiny Miss Dott and her Dotty Umbrella' then we made our very own dotty umbrellas..... We think they look fantastic!

U is a tricky letter for sounding out so thinking "Umbrellas up... Up, up, up" is a good way to help your child to attach a sound to it.

We are beginning to learn that a,e,i,o,u are vowels and that vowels have two sounds.

We will look at the long U sound next week........

B Day with Pre- School!

The pre-school came for a visit yesterday. We had a 'B' day together making and doing 'b' things. We made buses and boats with b animals in them and we built buses with blocks. Some of us went outside where we could:            

.....blow beautiful, bouncy bubbles,                                                                                   ......bounce on the tramp

......bowl balls into a bucket

.....balance our bodies on the balance boards

.....bounce and catch the beanbags

Ww - Wet Washing on a Windy Day - With Waffles!!

Our Letter of the Week is W, so we got stuck in and did the washingtoday!                                         After reading 'The Wild, Wet, Wellington Wind'........

   

.........we made fabulous T- shirts, shorts, sweatshirts and dresses using crayon and dye. Now we have 'Wet Washing on a Wild, Windy Winter day' blowing about across our window!

We finished the afterrnoon with WAFFLES made by Mrs H, isaac and Autumn. WOW, they were good!

It was wonderful  to have our pre-school visitors Lucy, Paxton and Steffi joining in, creating colourful art and helping others too! Lucy even brought her Grandma along to help out.

Great work everyone!

Vivid and Vivacious Vases!

 We are looking at the letter "v" this week so we created these wonderful VASES - full of a VARIETY of VERY VIVID flowers!. 

We were excited to have  three 4 year olds - Steffi, Lucy and Paxton -VISIT and create their own VERY beautiful VASES! Lucas was a big help too!

When you are working wih the alphabet chart this week, remember to focus on the stretchy 'v' sound and talk about the name of the letter too.

K is for Kiwi!

Our letter of the week was K, so we made these amazing "Kiwi" flags!  We have been seeing them alot with the Commonwealth games just finished so we decided to find out what the flag means. Here is some writing we did about it.

The New Zealand flag is cool because it is blue for the sky and the sea. It has four stars because the stars are cool.    CALEB

I like the New Zealand flag. The Southern Cross is my favourite. They are important to New Zealand and I like it.     TIAMA

The New Zealand flag is cool because it has the Southern Cross and it has the Union Jack. The Union Jack is up in the top corner. I feel proud of the flag.     MIA

Week 6, Term 2 ....GORGEOUS G's!

Our letter this week will be Gg. Today we read a story about Gladys the Gorilla, made some Gg Gorillas....and created our own Great and Gorgeous Gorilla Grub! Ofcourse this involved bananas, bread and yummy sprinkles...... We had fun!

Have a look at our Groovy Gorillas and check out the Gorilla Grub!

Letter of the week

This week our letter is Y, which children can find tricky! It is often confused with U, so do lots of sounding with this letter. Here is some of our work around the letter Y...

Patterns and more patterns!

We have been looking at patterns for our maths focus in the last two weeks.

The children have been busy identifying patterns in the world around us, and making patterns using different materials in the classroom. 

It is great to see how quickly some students become aware of the repeat of a pattern. This helps them to identify what will come next... Or even what the pattern will be in 2 or 3 changes. Great reasoning when you are still only  five!

Here are some pictures of our work....

ROOM 6 RAMBLES!

We have had a busy start to the year! 

Isaac and khan have joined us and we have welcomed Brodie back after he started the year with chicken pox!

We are looking forward to the athletic sports at Kaponga  on Thursday. We are all practising hard at fitness in the mornings so we can run like the wind and score top points. It would be great if Matapu got placed this year!

At swimming we are all learning how to float using noodles and milk bottles. Thank you to Deanne and Michele for helping us every day.

Maths and writing activities in Room 6

Matapu kids are great!

First Day

Hi Everyone,
It,s great to be starting the year!