Busy, Busy!

What a super busy week we have had in Room 6!

Here are some of our highlights...

On Monday we had a visit from Marieke who is helping us get better at writing. We showed her how we are learning to join two good ideas together using and. This makes a compound sentence.

Have a look at some of our writing... This is Regan's ideas about what the penguin did in the weekend:

...and this is what Kree thought...

...and Israel decided that...

On Tuesday, we had a lovely visit from some little friends from Pre-School. We had an 'Rr' theme so we made roads, rock and rolled on the see saw, rolled balls into buckets, raced around an obstacle course and made robots, rainbows, rabbits from clay. it was an amazing sharing experience.

On Wednesday we had hangi preparations and our job was to make the stuffing. Have a look at how busy we were...

...and finally on Thursday it was hangi day, It was amazing watching all the workers building the layers up and covering the food with wet cloths, sacks and dirt. A few hours later we were watching the delicious food coming up out of the ground and we got to taste the result of all our hard work... Mmm delicious!

Silly Sentences and Racing Robots!

We have been learning about simple sentences.

We have been writing silly simple sentences...have a look at some!

'The penguin drove a tractor in his underwear.'   Owen

'The penguin did ballet in a tree.'      Regan

'The Super Hero played the guitar at his Nanas.'   Addy

'The turtle played the guitar in a dress.'       Aria

'The witch ate a worm upside down.'      Laura

'Santa went swimming eating a carrot.'     Breia

'The penguin had a bath in his underwear.'     Kree

'Pikachu drove the school bus in the river.'      Bryn

'Digger Dog did star jumps in his togs.'       Andie

'The bee had a bath in her underwear.'       Ahmarni

'Santa did star jumps wearing a dress.'     Cooper

'The penguin drove a tractor wearing sunglasses.'      Kyrone

'The Super Hero had a bath upside down.'      Israel

'The witch did ballet in his underwear.'        Bryleigh

Our letter this week is Rr so today we made some Racing Robots. They look amazing....but the really awesome thing is that if we put them over a door handle, they race up to the top!!

Sophie and Savannah came to 4Stars and they worked really hard and finished their robots in double-quick time! 

We all felt proud of our efforts!

Regan racing her robot up the string!

Peruse our publishing!

This week we have really been trying to work hard on our writing to record our ideas.

To do this we have to: 

-think about what we want to say

-use our word card to help us with words and sounds

-write whole ideas

-add a feeling 

Today was publishing day and our new learning for publishing was to have our letters the right size

-tall

-small

-and tails below the line

Here is some of our fabulous work. Look at how hard we were trying to get our writing right...and check out our pictures!  We are amazing authors!

If you read this post, send us a comment so we know what you think of our writing!

I' m back!!

It's great to be posting again after a long break due to illness and bereavement.

We had an awesome morning of 'I' activities with our visitors from Manaia pre-school today... There was insects, ice and rice, intersections, iguanas, in and out equipment... and ice cream!

Have a look at our photos....

Kyrone and Adalaide seeing what happens to white rice when you add red and yellow ice... Or blue and yellow ice. This held their fascination for quite a while!

Nevaeh worked alongside her brother creating an interesting insect!

This was a big intersection that Bryn, Kree and Israel made...

Regan was in the box!

Breia waitng for a turn to get in the cone

Blake was proud of his insect

Delicious ice cream at the end of the day!

Look at what we made!!

A...a... Awesome apple trees!

We are working with Aa this week. A is one of the important 5 vowels that children come across in every word... so they are super important to learn about and get right!

The first sound learnt is 'a' as in apple and this continually tricks some students, who say 'a' as in ahead. Keep referring back to the alphabet chart if you think your child is having any difficulty. If they are learning from the same resource at home, it should help to reinforce the learning!

if your child has been at school for a longer period, they may be ready to learn a little about the other important sound... 'a' as in ape. This is the long a sound where 'a' says its own name. Being aware of the different vowel sounds can help with tricky words in reading and writing.

Have a look at our Apple Trees... 

  

... And check out the correct letter formation... Important if you write this letter in your name every day!

We are reviewing number 9, even though we covered it recently. It has the same formation as 'a'  so it fits perfectly with our focus for the week. Do try to practise the number and letter formation if you have time as this will benefit your child. Check the correct formation below...

C..c..Cute, colourful, creative cats!

Just look at our gorgeous cat masks and cat poses!The children were so creative with their patterns and colour choices and they worked amazingly well to get these finished and ready to wear before the bell went!

Ofcourse you can probably tell that our letter is Cc. We know C is a copycat...it doesn't make a sound of its own - it just borrows s or k's sound. As a rule... Ca, co, cu make a 'k' sound, and ce and ci usually say 's'

As you come across words with a c at the start this week, look with your child and see if our rule is right!

Whats been happening in Room 6..?

I thought it was time to include a post that highlights what your children are doing daily as we explore and develop our ideas and learning....so here are a few photos taken this term for you to enjoy.

The letter this week is.....Oo!

As our letter is O and we learnt about different shapes recently, we made octagons today and used them to make a pattern...just like our kitchen floor at home might have a pattern.

Have a look at our cool work...we had to colour in the shapes and cut carefully around all 8 sides. Don't you think we did an amazing job??  Can you see our different patterns?

   

Here's the Letterland rhyme to help get the right letter formation...

.....and our number this week will be ZERO.

It may seem like a rather unimportant little number, but it is a place holder in numbers like 10, 100, 1000 etc, and it is a way to signify nothing added or taken away.... So it will become a really important number as your child works on developing maths understanding. Talk about the concepts this week to help build their understanding.

V...v...for vegetables, Vicks, vases, vertices.....and Vehicles!

It's time for V! It doesn't seem like a really significant letter all the way down the alphabet, but as we started collecting words it was surprising how many we could think of. Add to that the fact that it can appear in the middle of words ( e.g. think five, seven, river and even) and you can see how important it is to know the sound for writing and reading!

Unfortunately I forgot to photograph the letter and number formation this week... But have a look at the various vehicles we made yesterday...

Y...y...y...!

Look at our amazing Ys!  Y is our new letter of the week so we sewed yellow yarn onto yellow y's. 

Y can be a tricky letter to master as its sound is often given to u by mistake. This could be something to talk about this week to help your child clarify these letters and sounds.

We have talked about what happens to y at the end of words. Sometimes you hear an 'e' sound- Baby, tricky, sunny, easy..... and sometimes 'i' - try, fly, sky etc. The English language sure is tricky!!

Look below for the formation letter rhyme and our Number of the Week...

M...m...m.is for Mother!

Welcome back to another term! 

Because it is Mother's Day on Sunday, Mm seems like a perfect focus letter for the week! 

Some lucky mums will be receiving a special treat for their special day...handmade by their little cherub.

if that's you...don't look any further if you want to be surprised on Sunday!

Don't they look amazing...even better tomorrow when we add our special writing about our special mum.

Hope you tune in to our blog this term to keep up with our current learning.

See you again soon!

FIZZ AND SPLUTTER! Science with Mr Cripps!!

    

Mr Cripps brought some science excitement to Room 6!

Look at what happened when he put dry ice into water.....      

                                                                                                                                                             

K..k for Kites!

Our letter last week was Kk. Kk is known as Kicking King. We learnt that another letter makes the same sound...Cc is a copy cat and it copies the sound. You can help by talking about this with your child and showing them places where k and c make the same sound.

We had fun making kites ...look below to see our photos. Sorry this has taken so long to post but we had such fun that we didn't want you to miss out on seeing it!

   

Bet you can't guess our letter of the week......

Have a look at our photo of today's Letter of the Week....Can you guess what the letter is???

it isn't Gg for glasses..... It's Nn for nose  and glasses!

We were busy practising our pattern, colouring and cutting skills and just managed to finish in time for a photo. Don't we look fantastic!

N has a 's-t-r-e-t-c-h-y' sound made with the tongue tucked behind the top teeth. Talk about n with your child and encourage them to hear the 'n' sound at the beginning and end of words.

We were all thrilled to have Bryn join us again and he worked hard with his new (and not so new) friends!

This is the correct formation for Nn "Naughty Nick"....                                                                         

... And our number focus this week will be 4. 

You could help by talking about ways to make 4 - use fingers or anything you can find around the house.... Talk about 1 and 3, 2 and 2 (this is a double) 3 and 1 and 4 and 0.

Here is rhe correct formation and number rhyme...