Early Christmas at the Art Gallery

Our trip to the art gallery focused on the big question we've been looking at here at school...

                      "How do we tell our stories?"

THE REMAINING CALENDARS...

The remaining calendars are now finished and can be viewed below.  An order form has come home with your child today that details the prices if you wish to purchase either a calendar, diary or set of cards for Christmas presents.

ART, ART AND MORE ART!

We have so much we want to share with you but we can't because it is top secret until the Art Exhibition!!!  We can tell you though that we have had an absolutely fabulous week creating with our artist of the week Ange Spears (a.k.a the lady that painted the library mural).

We have also been busy creating our Calendars for our end of year school fundraiser.  We think these are looking pretty flash and would make great Christmas presents for family.  Shortly the school will send home details on how to order etc but we those of us who are finished thought we would give you a sneak preview...

 

DREW COMES TO BRADFORD...

We have been working on our clay tiles with a man called Drew. We have also been making pinch pots. We had to do it in room 1. We had to do it about something that we like about school.  The whole school made them. Some of the classes did tiles for their Whanau groups and we have the the whanau group symbol inside.

By Lorilee

KIA ORANA!

Kia Orana and welcome back to Term 4!  

We have all had exciting holidays with many of us so busy that we told Mrs Knopp we are coming back to school for a break!  Mrs Knopp laughed and said she had news for us with a very busy and creative term coming up. 

Mrs Knopp had a fabulous holiday in Rarotonga and has lots of exciting stories to share with us all.  The Rarotongan people speak Cook Island Maori as their official language - but most people speak English as well.  Cook Island Maori is very similar to NZ Maori...so much so that you can usually recognise most of what is being said like "Kia Orana" for Rarotonga and "Kia Ora" for Aotearoa NZ.
Mrs Knopp's absolute favourite part was all the cultural singing and dancing.  What she saw will come in handy for our learning this term as we are looking at "How people around the world tell their stories" through legends and art.

This week we are lucky enough to have Andrew Wills in at school as our 'resident artist' of the week.  Drew will have daily sessions with the children helping them create a tiled mosiac for outside our class that represents our place in the school community.  Should be fabulous!

OLYMPICS COME TO A CLOSE...

We have really been enjoying learning about the Olympics recently.  Many of us have discovered sports that we didn't know we were interested in and have followed them closely on television.  Darrin has really enjoyed learning about the Archery at the 2012 Olympics.

Ty has really been enjoying watching the BMX racing and quite fancies himself representing NZ

when he gets older - so remember, you heard it here first if he goes on to be an Olympian!

We have also been using a computer programme called 'Wordle' to present our findings in an interesting manner.  We are lucky enough to have 15 new school laptops which means that we can share with a buddy and take turns at learning new skills.  

Wordle is a really neat programme that is pretty easy to use once you know how.  First you enter in the words you wish to display and then select which  colour  and font.  Then you ask it to 'randomise' and it shows you all different ways of displaying those words.  You can keep clicking until you find your favourite. We used our favourite Olympic Sports to create one each. After we had made an Olympic one, we did some family ones and they looked great.  Mrs Knopp thought they looked so great that they would make super Christmas presents if they were printed on canvas!  

Here are some examples of our Olympic ones: 

 

ASK US TO DEMONSTRATE TO YOU AT HOME 

HOW TO CREATE A WORDLE.

 

Going for Gold with Olympic Maths...

 

In Room 5 last week we held the "Measuring Olympics" as a Mathematics activity.  

There were six different stations to compete in:  

• Straw Javelin Throw 

• Paper Plate Discus 

• Right-Handed Marble Grab 

• Left-Handed Sponge Squeeze

• Big Foot 

• Cotton Ball Shotput

 

We went around in teams but competed individually. 

Here are some of our competitors in action...

Callum competes in the Sponge Squeeze using his right hand as he is a natural leftie

Aden competing in the Cotton Ball Shotput

Paolo competing in the Straw Javelin

 

Measuring for the biggest foot

 

And the winners were ....

Discus:  1st Campbell 908 cm

              2nd Brayden 900 cm

        3rd Paolo 818 cm

Javelin:    1st  Kelli 661 cm

               2nd Ty 542 cm

                        3rd Arleyah 498 cm

Sponge Squeeze:   1st Josiah H   250 ml

                          2nd Kodie 220 ml

                      3rd Zoe 200 ml

Cotton Ball Shotput:  1st Brayden  943 cm

                                      2nd Josiah H 420 cm

                               3rd Aden 400 cm

Big Foot:  1st Paige  24 cm

                      2nd Antonia 22 cm

                                                      3rd Equal  Alex and Rebecca S  21 cm

We had a fabulous couple of days and were all great sports when it came to supporting our fellow mathematics athletes.  Overall, Josiah H was our Olympic Winner with a whopping 3 medals in different areas closely followed by Brayden who received two medals.  We sung them the NZ National Anthem whilst they stood on the podium proudly representing their country!

WELL DONE EVERYONE!!!