A visit to the Senior School gardens

Today we went for a mini field trip across the road to the senior school. Mr Eames told us all about the garden and about how much work the senior students have done to create and maintain such a wonderful garden. We looked inside the worm compost and found out why it is so important to put our food scraps in the red bins at school... Our food scraps feed the worms and the garden! We liked holding the SQUIGGLY, SLIMY worms in our hands.

Flat Stanley visits England!

Flat Stanley had some incredible adventures in Sussex. He visited the train station, lounged under the hot sun and strolled through beautiful gardens. We loved looking at all the information that Flat Stanley brought back, especially the books and pamphlets about castles and knights!

While in England, Flat Stanley adventured in the Rossendale Valley. He travelled on the steam train, flew model planes and visited the panopticons which are large modern sculptures. The beautiful halo that lights up at night was our favourite.

Flat Stanley also visited London, what a lucky world traveler! While in London Flat Stanley went to Buckingham Palace to visit the queen, he went to Big Ben and to the Tower of London... And he even went on the London Eye! Lots of us have been to London before so we loved sharing our stories about our own travels.

Luke's grandad made us a special slide show that charted Flat Stanley's journey through London. We loved reading his funny comments! If you would like to see the slideshow please come and have a look on our Flat Stanley board in our classroom.

Soccer Tournament!

Room 4 had a BLAST at the soccer tournament. We played many games. We loved running really fast, scoring goals and cheering for our friends. Have a look at the photos.

Australia!

We opened five packages from Australia! Flat Stanley travelled to Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Karratha! What an experience!

Flat Stanley visited Mines in Karratha:

Dreamworld In Brisbane:

And beautiful beaches in Melbourne and Sydney:

We noticed that there are many similarities and differences between New Zealand and Australia. Here are some of the ideas we came up with:

Similarities:

1. We have a harbour and a boat dock in Wellington.

2. The city of Brisbane looks similar to Wellington. They both have tall buildings and busy roads.

3. We have a Zoo in Wellington with lots of animals just like in Sydney.

4. We have beautiful beaches as well!

5. The main language in both places is english!

Some Differences:

1. In Australia there are koalas, kangaroos, crocodiles and snakes!

2. There are different road signs like ones that tell you to watch out for kangaroos!

3. They have different sayings like, "G'day mate!"

Flat Stanley goes to Tauranga!

This week we opened Zane's Flat Stanley package. Zane sent his Flat Stanley to visit his Auntie in Mount Maunganui.

This is what we learnt about Flat Stanley's trip:

1. Hot Pools are special because they are salt water from the sea that has been sucked into the earth, heated, and bubbled back up to the surface.



2. Tramping up the mount is great exercise.


3. Mount Maunganui is famous for its surf beach. There are lots of sand dunes at the beach and great big clumps of seaweed!




Some other things we learnt about New Zealand are:

1. New Zealand is made up of two islands called the North island and the South island. We live in Wellington city which is on the bottom tip of the North Island.

2. Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand and that means that the government buildings are here.

3. John Key is the Prime Minister of New Zealand and he works at the Beehive.

We loved looking closely at the Maps!

We Can't wait to learn all about Australia next week!

Amazing Violin!

In room 4 we were very lucky to have a wonderful violinist play one of our favourite songs for us... Dan played twinkle twinkle little star, he was fantastic! Have a look at the video to see for yourself. Thanks Dan, we loved listening to you play!

How long?

In Maths we are learning about length. We have learnt that a centimeter is around the same length as the width of our finger. Our fingers are around 5 centimeters long and if we open our arms wide they are about one meter long!

We had lots of fun measuring objects around the classroom to see how long or short they are.

We even measured each other to find out who the tallest and shortest children in room four are. We found out that Kai Matthew is the tallest while Esme is the shortest.

A visit from Bob Kerr

We were very lucky to have Bob Kerr Visit our classroom! Bob Kerr is an illustrator and an author. Our favorite Bob Kerr stories are the ones about Mechanical Harry and all the crazy inventions that he creates!

Bob Kerr answered many of our questions. We found out that when he was a little boy, Bob Kerr used to invent things himself and that's where some of his ideas for Mechanical Harry came from.

Bob Kerr brought in examples to show us how drawings change into the pictures that we see in books. We learnt that many of his illustrations come from observing real life things! Like when Bob draws a picture of a little girl he would take a photo of a little girl and then make a drawing from that.

The small drawing that he makes are then enlarged or made bigger. Then Bob uses water colour paints to make his illustrations colourful.

In the end all of the words and illustrations are stapled together and a machine like a photo copier is used to make the books.

Bob Kerr showed us how to make observational drawing of each other. He drew pictures of Lizzie and Harper and then we all had a chance to draw a friend. We were so lucky to have such an amazing visitor! Thanks Bob!!

My Special Place

WALT (we are learning to):

1. Title
2. Start with an interesting beginning sentence
3. Use adjectives to describe our special place
4. Write about why it's our special place

Enjoy reading our wonderful stories!

Lollipop's Playland
By Sam

Lollipop's Playland has spinning things and they are fun.
And it smells like chocolate.
And it is fun because you can play with whatever you want.
Lollipop's PLayland is fun and it has a big ball pit.

The Zoo
By Kai-Matthew

My Favorite thing is to go to the Zoo.
The Zoo is so fun and good and good and good! And it has zebras and
tigers and lions.

My Cousin's House
By Angus

Their house is really big. They have two pigs and one dog. And one cat. And five or four Chicks. I have to sleep in my cousin's room. He is fourteen and my other cousin is twelve. It sounds like chicks. It smells like a pig's pen. It is hot and it is fun because I get to jump into their pool and then I will swim back to the other side of the pool. And I like feeding the chicks and the pigs. Then I go and swing on the swing and then I go and have a rest and then I wake up. Then I go watch tv then I go and play and then I go to sleep.