Toitu Museum- Transport History

Here are some pictures from our school trip to Toitu. Thank you to all of the parents who joined us. I hope they all enjoyed the trip as much as us. It was wonderful to have such small groups to enjoy the museum together.

Keep checking the blog for a few more learning experiences from our transport studies. Thank you also to the families who have shared the interviews of grandparents' memories of transportation from their childhood. The children have learnt a lot from this and found it very funny that so many grandparents didn't have their first plane ride until they were in their twenties. Some grandparents families had horses and most families all had just one car. Some of the grandparents remembered their fathers going to work on bicycles. One grandparent went to a small school and the teacher picked up all of the children every morning. Imagine if Room 2 did this every morning.

Sailing Ship- Wind Power

Josephine

Harakeke waka.
This would take 2 days to make and then was left to rot away when it was no longer needed.

 

Horse Power

Electric Trolley Bus

 

 Timothy spotted the overhead wires that connected the trolley bus to the electrical power source that powered the buses. Sullivan told us about the trolley buses in Wellington, Wellington city kept their trolley buses.

 

One group learnt about the trams that went up Dunedin step streets. They realised that you would have been on an angle as you went sideways up hill. The seats had wooden ridges on them to stop the passengers rolling on top of each other.

 

Lots of the children enjoyed trying the Penny Farthing bike.

Hockey Session

We had Courtney our Hockey Coach come to school today to work with our class on our first hockey session for the year.

We played a game called 'Rob the Nest' we ran to a big nest to collect a ball and return it to our own nest, when we heard our number called.

Rob the Nest

The Winner

We learnt to hold our hockey sticks correctly and the most important rule- KEEP YOUR STICK ON THE GROUND.

Then we played this same game but had to dribble the ball to our nest.

The Next Winner

Then we had to dribble our ball around the court and stop the ball when Courtney yelled "STOP!", it was fun and Room 2 were the best listeners. Courtney was very impressed with us.

Painting

Sketching our Portraits

This term we have been working with paint to create some self portraits for our writers' wall. We experimented with using white to lighten colours and faded these gradually out in circular shapes. We used these experimental pages as colourful frames for our writing on our writers' wall.


We experimented using the brush in lots of different ways. We used the side of the brush to dab paint so that when we mixed colours they didn't mix into one flat colour but had lots of different shades of the colour we used with white.

We looked at the hydrangeas blooming in the garden outside our classroom. We used the dabbing brush to make green backgrounds as leaves. Then we selected our colours for the hydrangeas.

We think they look so beautiful. This week we will be drawing harakeke (flax) seed pods. Some people in Room 2 have been rubbing them on the ground at lunchtime to learn more about them so we will cut some up and see what is inside.

Bubbles

On Fridays we have an experience which connects to an interest or concept we have been discussing in class.  Then we write about this experience and Mrs Walker often publishes this work for our writers' wall. We have been swimming for the last four weeks so we haven't been doing our usual Friday programme.

These are some pictures and stories from our bubble blowing experience.

 

Bubbles

I blew my bubbles up, up, up.

Over the grass.

Down, down, down,

Over the wood…

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!

Alice

Bubbles

My bubbles went over the bush.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Aoife

Our First Post for the Year

Welcome to the Room 2 blog for 2014.

Sorry it has taken me so long to get our first post online but I should get something on the blog most weeks from now on.

Here are some pictures from our visit to Harold's caravan and some pictures of the work we have been doing on the digestive system.

Some people got to be the doctor with Richard and Harold and find organs in the body. A light came on when we touched the organs and bones that we were learning about.

 

We made digestive systems out of playdough in pairs. Then we used paper and drew around one person and cut out the parts of the digestive system and put them in the right places on our paper outline of a person.

Clothing Designers

 Room 2 have had a go at designing clothing for warm climates out of newspaper. It has been an activity at Reading time which has led to some very big tidy-up times. Here are a few items from the collection. We have looked at traditional clothing and discussed how the weather impacts on traditional clothing.

We had some questions about why some countries are hot and some are not. Fergus has brought along his globe to explain how it works. Thanks Fergus.

Printed People

 

Room 2 making our printed people with classroom objects and white paint on black paper.

We wrote poems about ourselves and used our prints to illustrate them.

Here they are...

 

2D and 3D Shapes

We have been exploring 2D and 3D shapes this term. We have learnt about the differences between 2D and 3D shapes and have learnt about the language of these shapes.

Ask us how many sides and corners a 2D shape has and to count the faces on a 3D shape.

We have been loving making 3D shapes, some people have shown a great deal of persistence and creativity to build 3D shapes with as many faces as possible. Clever kids!

Room 2 Measuring Fun

We have been doing lots of measuring in Room 2. We use centimetres on our rulers to measure lengths and widths.

Photos of Room 2 using string to measure curved objects and then lining the string up along the rulers. 

Tiddywinks practise.

 

After our practise we had a class competition. We used chalk to write on the carpet and measured our jumps. We can teach this game to our families for 'Home Learning' soon. Tyne and William P got the biggest jumps. Some of our jumps backfired and we got negative centimetre measurements. It was fun to talk about negative numbers. Andrew is our negative number expert. Great work Room 2.