Found Alphabet and Numerals

Our next task at looking closely was to find letters and numerals where we didn't expect to find them. The image below is the alphabet that adults have put together. Whole teams of people do alphabet and numeral hunts all over the world. I think some of ours are just as good. The children were very creative and all of the team work and co-operative skills we have been discussing and trying to build were so evident.

Found Alphabet, Pintrest

O

Y

T

X

A

Y

B

F

H

Another O

X

A Real Find - No one in Room 9 would ever do this however.

Thank you Leena

Leena has been working away in her own time, thinking about how she could help other people. She organised and donated a gift basket to CanTeen and has recieved a thank you card from CanTeen for her kindness.

Leena shared this with us today. We are so proud and grateful to have such a special and caring person in our class. What a lovely difference to make in the world Leena.

Using Perspective

We have been talking about perspective, both how other people see things differently and using perspective to take really cool photos.

Here are some photos of Room 9 taking photos that use perspective to make some things look big or small rather than close up of far away.

And here are the photos we took...

Zooming In

We have been looking at lots of books which zoom in and out, using point of view to create amazing images.

We made our own in co-operative groups using small objects on top of National Geographic magazines. Here are some of the best and funniest.

Treaty Signing

All of the junior classes meet outside Room 3 to sign our class treaties. We have been talking about the Treaty of Waitangi and about how different people interpret things that are written down. This connects with our learning focus on looking closely and thinking about perspectives.

We wrote our class treaty with positive ways to be at all times not just in our classroom. We looked at lots of pictures of us working so far in Room 9 and everyone agreed that we are doing a great job so far of living our treaty everyday. Our treaty was signed with our fingerprints and initials (because everyone loves playing with these at the moment). Maita is 'M and M' like the lollies, which everyone thinks is the best.

Our treaty is hanging up in our classroom next to the pictures of us 'Loving Learning as Active Achievers at Maori Hill School'.

It reads:

Everyone should be included.
Be compassionate and kind to everyone.
Forgive and be generous.
Show gratitude by looking after our school and classroom things.
Remember, all day, everyday, we are here to learn.

Cricket

We have enjoyed two sessions on cricket skills this term.

 We held the ball with our fingers in the rabbit ears position.

In this game we had to try to hit the wickets, each time we did one wicket was removed. The first group to get rid of all the wickets were the winners.

Tapa Cloth

We have a big tapa cloth in our room. We read a legend from Niue about a lady who rode inside a whale to Tonga and she was well know for being a great tapa artist. The legend described the process of making tapa. William shared some videos of this process and Carolena bought along lots of information and pictures of tapa art from the Pacific. Tinaania made lots of connections between the fibre art forms she practices at home. We talked about crushing the fibres and wetting and drying them to soften them up and bind them to one another.

We made our own art inspired by the process. First we made patterns which we felt represented what we connected with in the story. Lots of people included whales and fish.

Then we had lots of fun, we scrunched our paper, some people jumped on their paper and broke the fibres until it was more like a fabric.

The Respiratory System

Harold has again visited Maori Hill School. This year we learnt about the Respiratory System, our heart and lungs mostly and the breathing cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

After Harold's visit we worked with our thinking buddy to represent our learning using some objects in our classroom. Here are some of our own respiratory and circulatory systems reinterpreted. Some were even working models.