Apollo 11 Revisited Part One

As promised, here is the first of two movies about the Space paintings. Children wrote their voiceover using deBono's Thinking Hats. They thought about the experience of the astronauts and their experience as a painter.

Spaced Out!

The Apollo 11 Paintings

Watch this space for the movies which will give you a closer view of these magnificent paintings and a voiceover comment from each artist. We are looking forward to beginning to make our aliens next.

We're On the Move...Around the Sun.

These children seem to have a good understanding of why we have night and day, and the four different seasons.

The Commonwealth

We are going to be learning about the Commonwealth.
This is what we think we know now:
An Englishman found New Zealand and that is why we have a Queen.
Every four years we have the Commonwealth games.
Queen Elizabeth the Second(QEII) is the Queen of the Commonwealth.
Commonwealth countries joined together in the War and they fought together against other countries and won.
The USA isn’t in the Commonwealth.
Western Samoa is in the Commonwealth.
France is in the Commonwealth.
Australia is in the Commonwealth.
England is in the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth Games this year are in India so they must be in the Commonwealth.

What we want to find out:

What countries are in the Commonwealth? Is Fiji, or Japan?
Why aren’t the USA in the Commonwealth? Were they ever in it? Will they ever be in it?
Will we always be in the Commonwealth?
What are the Commonwealth Games?
What is the Commonwealth?Why does it exist?
Does the Commonwealth ever end?
Why are we in the commonwealth?
How does the Queen lead us? She’s never here. What does she do for us?
How did the Queen get the job?
What is going to happen when the Queen dies?

Click here to find the list of Commonwealth Countires

An Afternoon at the Aquarium

We had a very successful visit to the Aquarium on Thursday.
Before we went we made these lists -

We think we’ll see:
manta ray
turtles
shark
flounder
kiwi
starfish
dolphin
sting ray
eels
elephant fish
crab
orca

We think we might touch:
sting rays
seahorse
crab
starfish
shark
paua
coral
sea anemone
eel

We hope we’ll learn about:
sharks - about their ancestors
which animals you can and cannot touch
sea horse - why are they called sea horses?
sharks - how many teeth they have
dolphin - do their teeth fall out?
Dolphin - do they squirt water from their blow holes?
Sea Horse - how can you tell if they’re pregnant?

When we returned to school we had a brainstorm to write down all the things “We never knew...” Here is a photo of that brainstorm (warts and all), and a few rather fuzzy photos. (You are not able to use a flash on your camera in the Aquarium - that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it).

A Learning Story

Our topic for Term One was, "How Can I Help Save Our World?"
We have all set goals for changing our own behaviour. This iMovie might give you some ideas about what you can do to help save our world.





We enjoyed looking at some websites about native animals. The Kiwi Conservation Club is a good place to start.

This is a fascinating clip about the native bat, the Pekapeka.

OK, GO!

We loved this Carin Berger book and used it as inspiration for the art works we made for this iMovie.
You can visit Carin Berger's website to find out more about her and her work.

Orana Park Big Day Out

We had a wonderful experience at Orana Park yesterday. The children demonstrated perfectly why they deserved such an outing. Their behaviour was excellent and the Orana Park Educators commented about how knowledgeable and inquisitive the children were.
On returning to school we played Sleeping Lions and although I stopped the game after 3 or 4 minutes, I think the children would have managed to "be" sleeping lions until 3!We started to write an acrostic poem but had really all run out of puff before we finished it.
Samantha completed a poem at home last night

Our Big Day Out was at Orana Park!
Really fast flying fox.
Animals are cool in their own habitats.
Noisy gibbons.
Animals need your help.

We loved seeing the endangered animals.
I loved feeding the giraffes.
Lemurs don’t like water.
Darkness surrounded the kiwi habitat.
Louise taught us lots.
I will do my part to protect the animals.
Fish swam in the lake.
Endangered animals

Puddle of otters.
Amazing to see the lion cubs.
Rhinoceros horns are very heavy.
Kissing spider monkeys.

Thanks Samantha for this great work.

The Lorax

This Dr Seuss book is a classic tale of conservation and eco-awareness. We have been studying the story and drawing parallels with our lives. This is a photo of the Mural we have made. You will notice Truffula Trees, Bar-ba-loots, Swomee-Swans and Humming-Fish.

There is a great website where you can read about Dr Seuss and play some games based on his stories. You can go there by clicking on the link below.
http://www.seussville.com/