Tahuna Beach

On Monday we went to Tahuna Beach with the Kowhai Syndicate. We got to go on the model trains and see some cool mini trains. It was fun at Tahuna Beach. Then we played in the sand. We made footprints, a witch, a sun, people, sandcastles and lots more. After we played in the sand we had lunch at the playground. Then we got to have a big long play in the playground. To top off our great day we came back to school and had our first swim in the pool for the Summer. Sally thought we were very brave!

Written By Room 12 and Sally

Animals!

Last week we were lucky enough to have Kendra's puppy Bella visit. She is a cross between a Border Collie and a Springer Spaniel. Today we also saw another baby animal. Choi, the teacher of our buddy class had brought in a baby guinea fowl called Eric. It was the first of the 39 eggs to hatch!!! Choi is looking after the bird as its mother was scared off its nest by a hawk.

Shapes!

This week in Maths we are learning about shapes, both 2D and 3D shapes. We talked and classified shapes according to their attributes like the number of sides and corners they each had. We also used our bodies to make lots of different shapes. Can you tell what shapes we made?

Christmas Stories

This week we wrote Christmas stories to enter into the Eyebright Christmas Story. We brainstormed lots of different possible characters and settings and then we wrote our stories. We all hope that we might win a prize.

Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch went the sleigh. “Oh, oh, oh, oh” said Santa. “My sleigh is running out of petrol and there is no petrol because the place is covered with snow.” But a little fairy came and with her power she made a petrol station. Santa delivered the presents and they all lived happily ever after. Sofie

Pitter patter went the rain on the rooftop at Santa’s workshop. Santa wanted to make a sleigh but he didn’t know how to make it and he had never built one before. He asked one of his elves to build it for him but they said no. He asked another one but they said no, they were too busy. Then he asked another elf and he said yes so they got to work and there it was the sleigh. He was so amazed, “I can not believe it” he said. He filled it up with presents and delivered the presents to the children. Ta’a-Marie

The elves worked and worked. Finally Santa Clause had an announcement. He told all of the elves to stop working. They had to go in a line to meet new people. Santa was getting sick of all the noise form their hammering. The elves didn’t know what to do. They all went to new houses but they didn’t like them so they were sad. Finally they all found a house with nice people. Santa was sad, so he called the elves back and they all lived happily ever after. Josephine.

Over the Rainbow

We have been working hard lately learning songs and dance moves for our Kowhai Syndicate Production. It is based on the Wizard of Oz and we are the little munchkins. Come and watch our performance on Tuesday 8th and Wednesday 9th December, 2pm at the Nelson School of Music. Entry is by donation.

Narrative Writing

This term we are learning to write narrative stories. Our success criteria for our stories are:

Include who, where and when at the beginning of our story.

Write about a problem in the middle of the story

Explain how the problem is solved at the end.

Use adjectives to make our story interesting

Check out some of the stories we have written. Sally said that we had to write about a baby koura like the one that we saw when visited the Brook Sanctuary.

Once upon a time there lived a koura. The problem was he got stuck in a shark. The shark saw a fish. The shark opened his mouth. The koura got out and got home quickly. His Mum was so pleased to see him. Ta'a-Marie

In the calm stream there was a koura. It got washed down stream. It wanted to go up stream but it couldn't. Then came a turtle and the turtle pushed the koura upstream. Kendra

A koura went hunting and the koura got eaten by a whale. The whale said sorry so he burped him out. Joel

This term we are studying streams as part of our inquiry topic. Last Friday we visited Brook Sanctuary stream. We were investigating whether the Brook stream was a healthy stream. We found that the water was clear and clean, we could hear the stream bubbling so there was lots of oxygen and there were plenty of trees to provide shade, making it a healthy stream. We also had fun finding lots of bugs using nets and containers, which showed us that it was a healthy stream. We even found three baby crayfish!

Iron Bryon

Last week we were lucky enough to have Iron Bryon come to visit Nelson Central School. He taught about the four main food groups. They are 'Meat or Meat Alternatives', 'Fruit and Vegetables', 'Milk and Dairy Products' and finally 'Breads and Cereals'. Iron Bryon also had a dance competition. Sofie and Fin from our class won the best boy and girl dance competition. Way to go Sophie and Fin! At the end they gave us a very yummy hamburger.

Mask Parade

Mask Parade on PhotoPeach

Tonight we went in the Nelson Mask Parade. This year the theme was global spirit. At Nelson Central each class chose a different country to represent. We joined with Room 11 and represented Cambodia. We spent quite a few weeks making our masks. We did lots of painting and gluing of sparkly bits onto our masks.

Some of us were a little bit nervous before the parade but by the end we decided that we had had lots of fun. When we were marching in the parade we all sung the chorus from Bob Marley's song "One love, one heart" Room 2 and lots of parents provided the music for us. It was really neat when people were cheering and clapping for us. Now we just have to wait for another two years until we are in the mask parade again!

Please check back on Tuesday for a video from the mask parade

Kelly Sports

On Tuesday we were lucky enough to have Katelyn and Bryce come from Kelly Sports to do a sports demonstration with us. Read the stories we wrote about it below.

Today we did Kelly Sports. We lined up then played soccer, then we played basketball. It was fun. Akira

Today we went to Kelly Sports. Their names are Katelyn and Bryce. My favourite was getting the stickers at the end. Amber

Kelly Sports was fun because we got a sticker and it was lots of fun. Joel

Today I went to Kelly Sports. It was fun because Bryce was there. He was funny. It was so much fun. Becky

Gingerbread Men

To celebrate the end of our latest inquiry topic on fairy tales and citizenship along with the end of the term we made Gingerbread men. On Thursday we made up the mixture with Sally. We realised how important some of the things we had been learning in class are for real life. We had been learning all about instructions. When we made the mixture and we had to follow instructions so the mixture would turn out alright. We had also been learning about both fractions and measurement in Maths. We saw how important these are in baking. Kelly, Charlie's Mum then helped us cut the gingerbread men out. On Friday Sally brought the cooked gingerbread men back to school and we got to decorate them with icing and pebbles. Last of all, we got to eat them! They were yum!

What a week!

Week 9 Action on PhotoPeach

Wow what a week we've had. We have had an action packed week in Room 12. On Thursday we were lucky enough to be invited to watch a performance by the junior classes from Te Pouahi. They put on a dress rehearsal for us of their performance for the Kapahaka Competitions. On Thursday we also made moouse as part of our instruction writing. Throughout the week we have kept working on our masks ready for the Mask Parade at the end of the first week of Term 4. On Friday to wrap the week up we had a folk dancing demonstration. We did a dress rehearsal for our buddy classes and then we did our main performance to our parents. At the end of our performance we had our parents and buddies come and join us for the birdy dance!

Measurement!

Today Sally told us all to bring along our favourite teddy for Maths. We have just started a topic on measurement and today we were learning all about length and the keywords short and tall. To begin with we got in small groups and we had to arrange our teddies from shortest to tallest. Some of the groups really had to think carefully and use their co-operative skills as some of the teddies were about the same height. After this we had to measure our teddy bears using multilink cubes. Max and Sofie's teddies were the tallest because they were 21 cubes tall. Amber's teddy was the shortest because it was only 5 cubes tall. Tomorrow we are going to measure Sally's huge teddy (he's in the middle of the photo). I wonder how many cubes tall he will be?

Ordering our teddies from shortest to tallest

Ronald McDonald visits!

Today we had a very special visitor to our school. We had no idea why Sally was taking us to the hall, then suddenly Ronald McDonald appeared!! He spoke to us about road safety. We learnt that we need to stop, look and listen when we are crossing the road. He also talked about being safe around driveways and wearing seat belts when we are in the car.

John Bevan Ford!

On Tuesday we went to the Suter Art Gallery. We visted the John Bevan Ford Exhibition. We made a colourful bird. We had to draw patterns like John Bevan Ford on our manu (bird). We also got to make a huge puzzle of one of John's artworks. The puzzle was as big as one of our big tables in our classroom. We even did Maths there because we had to count all the birds in the room. There were over 100 birds!

Written with help by Sofie and Nikkita

Rights for Everyone!

This term we have been thinking about rights for everyone. We have particularly thought about the rights of those with disabilities. As part of the last stage in our inquiry model we had to communicate with others all the things that made Nelson Central School disable friendly and things that didn't make Nelson Central disable friendly. We also had to come up with new ideas that would make Nelson Central even more disable friendly. We have made a movie to communicate this with others. Sally showed us about story boarding and then with Sally's help we planned out our movie. It was also very exciting because Sally and Tania taught us how to take little movies using the digital camera. Check out the movie below!

Wacky Hair Day

On Friday to help raise money for Daffodil Day as part of the Cancer Appeal we had a wacky hair day. There were lots of wacky hair styles in Room 12. People had teased their hair, painted their hair wacky colours, put pipe cleaners in their hair and wore wacky wigs. We all brought along money which we used to make a coin trail with the rest of the school. We managed to raised $450!!!

Now you see us...

Last week with Caroline in art we were learning all about the technique of folding as part of our unit on 3D and sculpture. We each got to make a fan. Check out our fun pics below!

Now you see us....

Now you don't!

Mmmm Milkshakes!

This term for writing we have been learning to write instructions. Today we made chocolate milkshakes. Check out Ali's instructions below.

How to Make a Chocolate Milkshake

1. Get the chocolate milkshake mix.

2. Open the chocolate milkshake mix.

3. Measure the chocolate milkshake with a teaspoon.

4. Put the chocolate milkshake in the cup from the teaspoon.

5. Open the milk.

6. Pour the milk in.

7. Mix the milk and the chocolate milk shake.

8. Drink it.

Book Week

This week the Kowhai Syndicate celebrated Book Week by having a dress up day on Friday. We had to come dressed up as our favourite book characters. Check out our favourite book characters below!

Book Week on PhotoPeach

Our special visitor Mike!

Yesterday a man named Mike came and spoke to us about his disability. He is visually impaired because he can not see out of one eye and in the other eye he can only see 1/4 of what most other people can see. Mike uses a magnifying glass to help him see things. Even though Mike has a disability he has still managed to play lots of sport like running, sailing and even cricket. When he is playing cricket he uses a special ball which has a bell in it so he can hear the ball coming. We think that this would be very tricky!

Yesterday we were lucky enough to have Anne come and visit us. She brought along her special friend Peddie. Peddie is her guide dog. She is three years old. She has had Peddie for about 2 years. When she wants to turn she says to Peddie 'left' or 'right'. We think he is a pretty smart dog.

She doesn't know how to read braille, but instead she has talking books and she has a talking computer!

Maori Language Week

(Photo by Akira)

As part of Maori language week we were lucky enough to have Elmus come and read the story of Hohepa te Pura or Joseph The Bull in Te Reo. We all loved the great expression that he used when he read us the story. Elmus then taught us a Maori counting game. Thankyou Elmus!

Basketball

Today we were lucky enough to have Dallas from Nelson Basketball come along and do a session with us. She taught us some new skills like passing the ball around our body and how to bounce the ball properly. Check out what we thought below.

Sally's sister Amy visits

Today Sally's twin sister Amy came and visited us. She has a disability called Cerebral Palsy. It means that she can not walk or talk. She is in a wheelchair. Sally and Amy's Mum Robyn told us that she has Cerebral Palsy. She has Cerebral Palsy because when Sally and Amy were born Amy did not get enough oxygen and this meant that part of her brain died. We asked Robyn lot's of questions about Amy's disability. Robyn bought in some of the equipment which Amy uses. We all got to have a go using the wheelchair or walking frame.After this we explored Nelson Central looking at all the things that help people that have a disability like Amy. We found the disabled toilet and noticed the ramps. We also noticed that there are a lot of steps that Amy couldn't get up, a steep hill to get up to our classroom and a speed bump which all made it tricky for Amy to get around our school.

Visitors!

Last week we had some special visitors to our classroom. Our special visitors are visiting New Zealand learning all about sustainability. We showed them our movie that we made about all the different ways that we can help save the planet. We also had fun learning how to say "Hello" in their language and using google earth to explore where they come from. After this we had fun showing them what we do in music. We only showed off a little bit!!

Making toast!

How to Make Toast!

1. We first put the plug in the switch - Ta'a-Marie

2. Put the bread in to the toaster. Cassandra

3. Push the button down. Dillon

4. You wait until the toast cooks. Ali

5. We put what flavour we want on top of the toast. Joel

(We had margarine and marmite)

6. You cut it up. Finlay

If you want to cut the crusts off the side you can. Dillon

7. Eat it and say yum! Charlie and Lucy