Christmas in America

We are very proud to have finished some of our Christmas projects!

Here was our criteria;

How do you think we did?


You can't hear it but we also read along with our slides!

Christmas Projects

"There are many ways to celebrate Christmas and people in different countries blend their cultural traditions with more universal Christmas celebrations. It is common for many households to have decorated Christmas trees, either real or fake. Many homes are also decorated to fit the Christmas theme prior to and on Christmas Day. Many workplaces hold Christmas parties in the weeks leading to Christmas Day. Many people have a day off work and spend time with their families and loved ones on Christmas Day. Festive activities include exchanging Christmas presents, joining in Christmas feasts, and listening to Christmas-themed music or movies. For some cultures, Christmas is an exclusive family affair that sees relatives travel from different geographic regions to unite at this time of the year. Other people may choose to openly invite friends to a Christmas buffet or pot luck lunch or dinner. Christmas Day is a special day for children who receive gifts that they have been longing for. Many children believe in Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, a figure who is believed to provide Christmas presents to children. Some children write “letters to Santa” a few weeks before Christmas Day, asking for a gift that they desire most. Christmas cards are also exchanged among adults and children prior to Christmas Day. Many churches have special Christmas Day services, some of which include choirs, joyous singing, and meet-and-greet opportunities after the church services. Many churches are beautifully decorated and may include a crèche or miniature Nativity scene. Some large-scale Christmas church services are televised for those who do cannot attend a church service."

http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/common/christmas-day

So we decided to use our e-learning and literacy skills to find out more about christmas in different countries around the world!!

Here are our initial ideas;

Keep an eye out for some of our finished projects!!

East Tamaki Sequencing / Recount Activity

In writing we are learning to sequence our ideas in our plan and use these words to help us with our recount story. Check out some of our completed work, we used Padlet to create our work in a digital format!

Contractions

We are learning to identify contractions in their expanded form as part of our reading. Check out this video of TJ playing one of the contractions games linked under out 'Literacy Learning Links'!

Buddy Reading with Room 10

We were very keen to have some buddies to read to, so Mrs Lashlie and Miss Ladley got together and organised for room 15 and room 10 to read to each other! We really enjoy it and it is very exciting when we get to help room 10 to read to us!

Trip to East Tamaki School (Garden 2 Table)

On Wednesday we were VERY lucky to take our class trip to East Tamaki School to check out their amazing Garden to Table programme. We have been learning about Enterprise, with a focus on food so this was excellent opportunity to see some very clever entrepreneurs in action and also get a chance to ask them about some of our focus questions in our inquiry.

 

We were very impressed to see the very large gardens that they had full of vegetables! Half of us worked here in the garden and helped find worms in the composts to go in the soil to help the gardens grow. We also made our own mini worm houses!

 

 

The other half of us went to work in the kitchen where we used the vegetables that were grown in the garden to make some fabulous Vietnamese rice paper rolls, an orange and fennel salad and some lemon muffins. Not only was this a fantastic opportunity to see the way in which they use their vegetables, it was a great learning opportunity in many other areas; we used out maths knowledge to work out what fraction of the muffins we were allowed to glaze in our groups, we used our time knowledge to work out when to take the muffins out of the oven in 20 minutes, we did lots of measuring and we even learnt a little science about liquid and solid states!

 

After the food was cooked, we helped to clean up the kitchen and set the tables. We then all got together and we were all able to eat the food we made! It was fantastic! Nearly all of us tried something new we had never tried before. We found the fennel and orange salad interesting, it tasted a bit like licorice!

 

 



All the left overs them went back into the compost and it began the cycle again!

Keep an eye out for a few of our recounts of the day, coming soon.

"In the past three years we have increased the size of our vegetable gardens. We also have many more dedicated volunteers. This increase has allowed us to offer this amazing experience to more of our students. The students continue to enjoy planting, harvesting, cooking and eating the fruits and vegetables we grow in our gardens. They are becoming experts at indentifying different types of vegetables which they may not have been exposed to at home and really appreciate the opportunity to try something new. Children willingly give up their lunchtime to sow seeds, thin out seedlings, weed the vegetable garden or just wander through to see what is growing.

Our disused swimming pool was removed and the hole that once was the pool filled up with soil. This very large garden has been split up into smaller gardens with paths in between and has as distinct Pasifika theme to it with banana trees and taro being planted in the middle. The old changin sheds have had a makeover and now serve as a potting shed and extra storage space.

The vegetable garden has become even more attractive with the addition of some garden themed murals. We are always very willing to show our gardens and kitchen to others. The Garden to Table Programme is a significant part of the school and we are very proud of it." - East Tamaki School

BNZ Closed for Good

We were very lucky to have one of the BNZ staff members come to EPS during their annual 'Closed for Good' day. Viktoria Morgan who is a fabulous dance teacher (and even teaches Mrs Lashlie) came in to take us for a dance lesson. We had an amazing time and were all practicing our 'Cha-cha-cha's for the rest of the day!! We can't wait for another dance lesson with Mrs Lashlie soon! Check out some photos.

Geometrical Art

For Maths week we were learning about Geometry and Shapes, the last task asked us to create some geometrical art using a computer programme. To make sure we were all able to have a go, Mrs Lashlie got out our classroom set of shapes and we had a go at making some of our own. Check them out!

 

           

Math Olympiad

Monday the 26th - Friday the 30th of August was Maths Week at EPS. This meant we held the annual Maths Olympiad for the Year 4's. We had two teams, the first team was TM, SE, SH and SA and the second team was ST, RF, JB and KB. Both teams did a fabulous job and we are all VERY proud of them!

The teachers also had their own Maths Olympiad which was very exciting, Mrs Lashlie's team won!!!!

Madame Butterfly

On Friday the 2nd August we were lucky enough to have Madame Butterfly to come in and teach us about butterflies.  Check out what we learnt.

Mrs Dane even dressed up as a Monarch to help show us.

Hiwi the Kiwi

On Monday 6th August we were lucky enough to have Hiwi the Kiwi, Mr Minstrel and his wife to come and teach us about fishing, boat and water safety! Check out some of our photos.

Kai moana, food from the sea.

Kai moana, to feed the family.

Fish for the future and there will always be,

more, kai moana, for you and me!

Learning to Structure our Recount

One very sunny morning, a bright one too, I went to my dad’s in the afternoon. It was for  6 day’s. On the first day, Kelly told me next time I came here it will be my little brother Jayden’s birthday. The next thing I did was read a story to my little sister, half way. My little sister fell sleep which was very unusual. On the 5th day my dad ad kelly organised to go hose riding. So we got in the car and headed dawn the road...When we got to the barn no one was there was there, so we went to there house. No one was there either, so we  went back to the barn and waited. Finally someone came, so we went to wake up my little sister.Then we went to see the horses.The one I rode was the naughty one. 2 hours later, when we got to the rodeo (the rodeo is a place where  people ride hoses and bull’s) I got told it was April’s birth day. April got on the hose she was on it  for 2 an a half hours I got on after. I got scared because  I was afraid of him bucking me off  him (buck means a horse picks up it’s back legs when you’re on it). April hopped back on him and Freeway bucked her off. Her dad kicked Freeway. I didn’t go back on Freeway but I did go on the biggest horse called chocolate didn’t buck. Oh yeah I forgot Mr love, he is not broken in yet (he can not be ridden yet). 1 more horse, the most friendly horse of all, Cody, you can stand behind  him and he won’t buck. The next thing we did was go back to the barn. We watched a movie and I said “I’m tired it is time to go home”. I read a story to my little sister Tayla and we watched Charlotte’s Web, Mickey Mouse and then Over the Hedge. We all went to sleep after that. The next day I woke up. I was tired as a sleepy lion and as slow as a sloth. I remembered I was going home. Tayla asked me if I can play the song Taylor Swift We are never ever getting back together again on my iphone. I said “Yes you can”. “Tayla what do you say?” “Please Summer!” “Here you go.” Kelly said “It’s time to change into your kindergarden clothes Tayla.” “No play time.” “Get changed.” “Okay Mummy.” “Five minutes to pack up or you won’t get to see your boyfriend Kaile!” We dropped Tayla at kindergarden. Then we went for a two hour walk but we took one hour because we were very fast. Then I went home. I love going to my Dad’s house!   - SE.

"In writing we have been learning to structure our recounts. We need to have an introduction that says who, what, when and where, a body that has two events, with a little but more detail and a conclusion that has a feeling" - KB.

"SE has done a great job of having all the right things in her recount" - KH.

Te Tuhi

My class and I went on an adventure to Te Tuhi.

We had no idea what was ahead of us. We had to walk because it was not far from school. Most of us were tired when we were nearly there. When we got there everyone was so tired so we sat on the mat at Te Tuhi.

Then a man lead us through the building to an ond looking art room. We saw real tapa and we got to feel it. It was soft and a little hard.

There was a piece of paper in front of us, I wondered what we were doing on it. There were some pastels, paint and dye.

We shaded with the pastels, dyed with the dye and painted with the paint. "Ta da!" We had just created something which looked like tapa and felt like tapa.

I felt so good that I made something I never thought I could make before.

--- KH

Connecting to our learning

In Room 15 we have been thinking about what makes learning easier. To understand how to make a complex task easier we decided to use our knowledge of success criteria to make something challenging... like balloon dogs!

Mrs Lashlie first let us have a go without any success criteria... Boy was that a laugh, we all tried to blow up the balloons with our mouths but we soon realised that wasn't going to happen!


So Mrs Lashlie blew them up for us using the pump and we had a going at making our dogs by looking at Mrs Lashlie's finished one. We didn't know where to start!

We soon realised the importance of success criteria in completing complex tasks.

So Mrs Lashlie modelled how to make a balloon dog and we worked to co-construct the success criteria for making our balloon dogs. The success criteria we cam up with was:

• Use a pump to blow the balloon up.
• Tie a knot in the end of our balloon, this knot becomes the nose.
• Squeeze the balloon a little way down and twist to make a little head.
• Hold the head and squeeze and twist another section of balloon to make an ear.
• Bend the balloon down so it is the same size as the other ear and squeeze and twist the second ear.
• Hold the ears together and twist at the narrow part to join the ears together securely.
• Squeeze and twist a section for the neck and repeat with two bigger sections, bending the balloon down to make sure they are the same size, to make the front legs.
• Hold the legs and twist at the narrow part to join the two legs together securely.
• Squeeze and twist after a large section to make the body, repeat for the two back legs, ensuring they are roughly the same size as the front legs but remember to leave a little for the tail.
• Hold the legs and twist at the narrow part to join the last two legs together securely.
• The left over balloon makes the tail.
• Tada!

Other things that we found helped us to be successful were:

• Working with a peer.
• Feedback and feedforward.
• Persistance.

With the help of the success criteria was everyone able to be successful? Absolutely!