ICT Conference

This week Room 3 participated in our very first Kilbirnie school ICT conference. It was such good fun. The senior children planned and led the workshops that we attended. We learnt about all sorts of topics - how to make our own comics on comic life, how to get better at kicking or throwing, using a video camera, how to use the internet safety website - super clubs plus. Along side many, many other things. At lunch time we had fun playing with some new technology - some ipads and our new x-box kinect!

A great big thank you to all the staff and students at Lyall bay and Normandale schools who lent us their equipment to support our big day.

MATHLETICS!

This week we are taking part in a free trial for the site Mathletics. So far, we are loving it!!
IF we like it enough, we are able to subscribe to it (through school) for a reduced price. It is certainly testing our maths skills. These are some of the statements from the children about Mathletics:

"Mathletics is like two things in one - it's fun and it's learning!"
"I like playing against people from all over the world"
"I have got perfect scores on some of my levels already!"
"I can't wait to have another turn on mathletics"

Follow this link to get onto the site:

www.mathletics.com

Sprinkling stars

Go the Amazing All Blacks!!

On wednesday  me and my sister and my mum and greg  went to the parade and we took a few pictures of the All Blacks.
By Zico and George.

Diwali

Room 3 have been learning about Diwali this week.  We have found out that it is a Hindu and Sikh festival and is celebrated on 26th October 2011.  We listened to the story of Rama and Sita and tried to understand whether this story would fit into our topic of 'Myths & Legends'.  We decided that it might be a legend.
We made our own Rangoli patterns to welcome people to our homes.
Have a look at this website to find out more about how people celebrate Diwali all over the world:
Diwali website

Letter writing

This week we have been learning how to write a 'friendly' letter.  We have written letters to our families to ask them if they know any myths or legends.  We found out that lots of children in our class have families from all over the world and we thought that it would be interesting to hear some myths & legends from other countries.  We wrote our letters, put them in envelopes, and wrote our addresses on the front.  Finally, we walked to the postbox in Hataitai village and posted them.  Has your letter arrived at your house yet?

Hello Room 3!

Hello room 3!
Here is your homework for the next week....You don't have to do all of the things, they are just suggestions.

1) Check out Oscar & Andrea's cool animation that they made last week! Download the 'styx' programme onto your computer and see if you can make your own stick man animation. http://www.stykz.net/ Mum and Dad might have to help you to do this...
2) Play 'go fish' with your family...if you need to know the rules, have a look at this website - http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/
3) Practise your tongue twister using the links below.  Can you make up your own alliteration tongue twisters?

Tongue twisters - How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

Tongue twisters - Sally sells seashells

Tongue twisters - Peter Piper

Wicked - Hooked on Te Reo Maori

Rachel has shared some fantastic things with our class this week in Te Reo Maori.  She showed us an animation about a little boy who kept on loosing things! It was very funny! This website has lots of fun things on it too

WickEd

tens frame maths

Hey Room 3,
I've added a new maths game to our websites to try section.  Have a go at practising your tens frames and number recognition.
Have a good weekend :0) 

hooking in day

We had such a great day on Wednesday the junior syndicate got 'hooked - in' to our new topic.  Each teacher chose a story from Maori myth & legend.  Mrs Moses read the story of how the kiwi lost it's wings, Mrs Brown read the story of how Maui slowed the sun, Miss Rhodes read the Battle of the Mountains and Mrs Mudge read the story of Maui and the finger of fire.

Making our waka paddles last week

All the children split into four groups and then visited each class in our Wakas! (We made waka paddles last week)  We collected things along the way to remind us of each story that we heard. At the end of the morning, we reflected up all that we had heard and tried to think about why the stories exist.

Our paddles at the end of the morning

Welcome to Term 3

Welcome back Room 3! It is so great to be back at school. Today we have had our spell-a-thon. I am so impressed by your super spelling and what a lot of money we have raised for school. Don't forget, now you need to collect your sponsor money and bring it back to school.
Congratulations!

Sing-a-long!!

Artemis was singing 'Abba' today at school - she couldn't remember the words, so we googled it! Once we had finished our sing-a-long, Artemis was keen to share it on our blog, so we could all sing and dance a-long!
Enjoy!

Space ships

Happy Birthday Zico!

Happy Birthday Zico, thank you for the lollies that you bought to school today - what a kind thing to share on your birthday. 

Room 3 get arty!

We have begun our sprinkling stars pictures today.  Room 3 looked carefully at Ira's picture to see how she used her paintbrush  - which direction did she move her brush and what patterns did she make.  We also looked carefully at her colours.  We started off by painting a dark blue background.  Next we painted the sea.  In the afternoon we painted the stars.  We watched Ira's video again to remind us of how she painted a star.  

A message from Ira...

Hi Room 3,
Ira emailed me this evening and said that we could share two of her paintings on our blog.  So, here is the matariki painting, and also, she was really proud to show you the cat & the mouse painting that she was doing when we skyped her! Imagine, you will be some of the first people to see her finished painting!

Sprinkling Stars

Pussycat, Pussycat

Skype!

We have been looking forward to today all week! At the beginning of the week, we found a Matariki painting by Ira Mitchell-Kirk.  Ira is an artist who lives in Christchurch.  She offered to answer some of our questions on skype.  We emailed our questions to her and then today, she skyped us and talked to us about her paintings and how we can be great artists ourselves.  It was so exciting to see Ira and hear her talking about our questions.  We have begun our own 'sprinkling stars' paintings - Ira can't wait to see how they turn out!

Here are Ira's website and blog if you want to have a look at her paintings:

http://www.iramitchell-kirk.com/

http://www.iramitchell-kirk.com/blog.html

We all sat beautifully whilst we listened carefully to Ira.

Ira showed us how to paint stars.  This is her current painting of a cat visiting London.....we can't wait to see how it turns out!