Term 4 Week 7

We went for an "art trail" walk around Kaikohe on Monday. Here is some of the art we found:

Grafitti art at the skate park.

Our friend Christian on his unicycle.

Whaea Erin told us about the art.

There is art everywhere in Kaikohe!

We stopped at the park for ice-blocks and some kai. 

On the way back to school we were invited to visit Santa's grotto. It had only just opened and we were the first visitors!

Trinity enjoyed looking at the beautiful decorations.

We wrote letters to Santa.

Term 4 Week 6

We wrote simile poems this week. Jazmine earned "Writer of the Week" with her poem.

Term 4 Week 5

We were very lucky to see some Mounted Games this week on our school field. If you want to check out what they were doing have a look at this video:

And to prove they really did come to our school - here are some photos:

We practised being safe in the water again. Whaea Tracey taught us "If you can float, you can survive." 

Term 4 Week 4

We had Chromebooks in our classroom this week so we spent lots of time learning how to file, create and share our work. It was fun doing our writing with a keyboard instead of a pencil.

Marty, Tracey and Avril from Swimsafe New Zealand are visiting our school for the next two weeks. On Tuesday we wore life jackets and learned how  to huddle and make a chain to help us survive in the water. On Thursday we were shown some more survival techniques and we got to practise them wearing our new swimming caps.

Term 4 Week 3

Wow! What happened to Week 3? It went so fast! On Tuesday we had lots of stories to share about the long weekend. On Thursday we spent the day with Miss Nicola learning about plants and creating more artistic masterpieces. Our garden has grown rapidly and we will have to start eating our garden kai soon to make some room in our planter box!

The seeds we planted have started to sprout too!

We had more fun with Room 4. They have been helping us with our Te Reo (the sound quality is not great but here is a video):

Finally, the sun was shining on Friday so we made the most of it and had a game of scatterball with our Room 4 buddies. 

Term 4 Week 2

This week was all about small creatures. We were talking about how our writing could persuade people to reduce, reuse and recycle their rubbish when a mouse ran across the classroom and into the cupboard! We decided that would be much more fun to write about! Here are two of our stories:

“A mouse! A mouse!” we screamed. A mouse jumped out. We all screamed and Ana laughed. The mouse ran away. Troy H, Tamati and Honey looked in the cupboard. It was gone.

Lyncon 

“Eeeeek Eee!” went the mouse. I screamed as loud as I could. The mouse was in our classroom. Just today it happened. Mrs Bingham jumped up and up and up. “Haha, haha, haha” said Mrs Bingham. Room 1 laughed “Haha, haha, haha, haha.”

Trinity 

We also had worms in our classroom this week! Mrs Bingham brought them from her worm farm at home. 

Tarelle wrote his story about how worms help our garden:

The Worms

Worms are good for your garden. They make your garden happy, then your garden grows faster. They make food into mud and then they make the mud turn into liquid. Then you get the liquid and you tip it into your garden.

Tarelle

Term 4 Week 1

Kaikohe West School looks amazing with all the new gardens being planted. On Monday we went for a walk to have a look at what the other classes are doing.

Wow! We want a garden like this one!

The school greenhouse is full of seeds and seedlings.

   

Mrs Wihongi showed us the Monarch Butterfly egg on Room 16's Swan Plant.

We filled our new planter box with soil.

And planted our first lettuce!

Before the end of the year we will be feasting on lettuce, parsley and  pak choi. YUM!

Term 3 Week 10

This week was all about eating and drinking! Whaea Gina from Project Energise showed us how much sugar is in some of the drinks we like.

Water is the healthiest drink.

We shared hot chips with our buddies in Room 4 and watched Despicable Me to celebrate the end of term. And Oliver's mum brought a birthday cake to school.

Click here to see the video of Oliver's cake. 

Room 1 Winner!

Te Kawana Makiha was awarded Most Disciplined Player for the Under 7’s Whanau Rugby League Team this year at prize-giving held last night. Ka mau te wehi Te Kawana!

Term 3 Week 9

Sean joined Room 1 this week and we love having him in our class. We got our Duffy books on Tuesday and enjoyed reading them straight away.

Room 1 reading their new Duffy books

We also worked on our new art project - clowns! Mrs Kerr-Bell brought in lots of pictures of clowns and even some clown clothes so we could all have a turn at dressing up.

Then we started making our own clown pictures.

Then we painted our clowns
with lots of bright colours.

We drew the clowns with chalk and traced over
the picture with black crayon.

We read A Wizard Came to Visit and wrote our own wizard stories. Here is Winter's story:

“What do you wish for?” said a wizard as he walked straight into my room. I was complaining, “Heeeeeeeelp” I said. “A wizard, a wizard, help. He’s going to eat me.” But the wizard didn’t care – he gave a flick of his wand and made me stop shouting.

“All I want is to give you a wish. I’m a good wizard” said the wizard.

A boy walked into the room and said “Hello, my name is Te Kawana.” Te Kawana said “WOW, a wizard. Cool! I wish for a bike, a video game, my own car, a vacation going to Fiji….”

“Hold on” said the wizard, “Only one wish.”

Te Kawana said “One million dollars.” So Te Kawana got one million dollars and there was no more magic in the wizard’s wand and I didn’t get to make a wish.

Trinity made a video and read her story with great expression. Mokonui was the wizard and Soraya was the camera operator:

Term 3 Week 8

We had an exciting week because Harold and Bridget are visiting our school in their Life Education truck. Room 1 had two sessions in the truck and we learned how to be Happy 'n' Healthy. We talked about feelings and how it is okay to get angry sometimes but you should never hurt yourself or anybody else. 
On Thursday we made cupcakes. The best part was decorating them (or  maybe eating them!).

Soraya's cake looks delicious.

We made 5 different colours for our icing!

Term 3 Week 7

This week we wrote cinquain poems for Father's Day. These are the rules for a cinquain poem according to the Poetry for Kids website:

1. Cinquains are five lines long.
2. They have 2 syllables in the first line, 4 in the second, 6 in the third, 8 in the fourth line, and just 2 in the last line.
3. Cinquains do not need to rhyme, but you can include rhymes if you want to.

We learnt about syllables by clapping our names. Mokonuiarangi and Hineuamairangi have the most syllables (7), Troy only has one!

Here are some of the poems we wrote. We think our dads / uncles / papas will love them.

My Dad

lovely, happy

loving, hugging, caring

I like to go swimming with Dad

Dad's cool

Father

gentle, clever

loving, biking, sharing

We love to spend time together

Best Dad

My Dad

noisy, funny

thinking, fishing, cooking

I like it when Dad cuddles me

Best Dad

Father

smiley, speedy

cooking, driving, working

Spending time with the family

Flash Dad

Term 3 Week 6

We had another busy week. Our 4 medal winners headed off to Ohaeawai School on Wednesday to compete in the inter-school competition. They all did a fantastic job representing our school. Well done to Te Kawana who came third in the 6 year old boys. 

Davalamayne, Te Kawana, Trinity and Jazmine.

Te Kawana in his Kaikohe West uniform.

Our school focus for the week was teamwork. Ana and Trinity built this amazing structure together from the foam shapes in our maths centre:

Room 4 (our buddy class) designed, planned and made costumes for us to wear on Daffodil Day. On Thursday Room 4 was a hive of activity as we all worked together on our fabulous creations.

Jesse and Jaya checking out  some ideas on the Chrome book.

Bentley and her buddy planning the costume.

Making sure Charlie-Gurl's headband will fit.

Some great teamwork with our tuakana.

We all did our share of the work.

We enjoy working together!

We all went up on stage to show everybody our Daffodil Day costumes.

Week 5

We had our school cross country on Tuesday and Room 1 have heaps of fast runners! Congratulations to Trinity, Te Kawana, Jazmine and Davalamayne who are off to Ohaeawai School on Wednesday 27th August for the Interschool Cross Country.
On Friday we learned a new card game. It is just like fish but instead of matching pairs you need 2 cards that make 10. We were good at sharing and taking turns.