Star of the week, week 5 2015 term 4.

Our star this week is actually the recipient of our Principals Challenge Award. This is the Physically Active award and Te Pakira is always working her body well. She loves to run, dance, jump, skip, swim and moves with ease. She is always prepared to keep trying until she has mastered anything new physically and is an excellent role model for others who find new things a challenge, encouraging them to 'have a go' . Ka Pai Te Pakira!

Star of the week, week four.November 2015

Dantae received our Star of the Week this week as he has had a fabulous week of progress in all areas, he is focussing so well in class, showing his knowledge of letter sounds in his writing, working diligently on his Early Words programme and concentrating fully in Maths too. Keep this up, Dantae, you are on fire!!

Week four in Room One, Term four 2015.

Cool Keira!

We have been learning how to use tens frames and to recognise the patterns up to 10 and make them ourselves.

Our maths groups are great fun and we use many resources to aid our learning.

We made rocking chickens in art and brought them home this week.

"Now I know my ABC's"

With Athletics Day coming up next week we have been working on our high jump skills...

Showing our chickens in Junior Assembly (Team Time)

Everyone had the opportunity to speak up on the microphone...

On Thursday we had a red mufti day in aid of The Heart Foundation and our friends from Kindy came to join our mat time and show and tell.

Here you can see us 'doughnut sharing' together.

Look at all these eager faces from Birchwood Kindergarten - members of The Birchwood Club!

Don't we look fab in our red clothes??

Wow, Frankie filled her second sticker chart.

We have also been learning to group apparatus in Maths.

When we had explored our apparatus and grouped according to our own idea (we had pattern making, grouping by colour, grouping by tool type and some super games), we worked as a whole class and each hoop was chosen for a particular tool.

Buddy reading in Room seven.

Problem Solving task - who has the bigger font, you or your friend? Use teddies to find out...

Homework certificates recognising work out of school....

Busy problem solving together with friends.

And finally, we were awarded the "We Care Award" as our classroom is always so very tidy at the end of the day, we work hard to keep clearing up after ourselves after activities.

Week three - a short week but loads of learning!

Vince came on his first visit to school.

Charlie started school on Wednesday.

How is this for applying maths to everyday situations? We were all having a drink after morning tea and suddenly the children decided to measure their drinks bottles against each other and ended up ordering from shortest to tallest, all without me, well done, folks!

Checking out the line for height order.

One of our reading groups concentrating.

Maths games with friend groupings, taking turns and sharing so very well indeed.

These boys chose to play toy story dominoes.

Whereas another group chose dominoes with number patterns.

This group played dominoes really well too, with their own rules.

As a class we looked at each others' final games and decided if everyone was right in their rules and choice of number patterns to match up. Listening to the children discussing is very interesting.

Getting ready for our Friday assembly Kapa Haka performance - the junior syndicate.

Here is Charlie after his first day on Wednesday, welcome Charlie!

Keira received her homework certificate to reflect great work in her alphabet book.

Ella came on her first school visit this week as well.

To get our waiter correct, two lovely role models from Room 6 came to help us out, thanks girls!

Frankie can do magic with her string games.

Ozzy brought his fathers medal to show and tell.

I bought some new toys for the class and we loved discovering what was in the basket, using our maori to introduce ourselves before showing what we had chosen.

Keira is learning how to use this maths puzzle to 10.

Addison and Alice sharing the new food items.

Cohen and Roman sharing one of our laptops.

te Pakira, Imogen and Noah playing wiht our new doll, Lily.

Keira's Auntie Kelly brought her four pug puppies in for us to enjoy, they are so well house trained they even used their mats when they needed to go to the loo!

Room 7 were with us for buddy reading when the puppies visited so they were delighted to join our fun.

Buddy reading is fab.

Mia was ready for Kapa Haka Boogie when she was reading with Frankie.

To  help us with our training for Athletic sports, we teamed up with a senior class and watched them running in straight lines....

...then they helped us!

What super leaders we have at Birchwood, so kind and helpful with our little children.

Jaxson has completed his sticker chart, well done, Jaxson!

We have been building on our knowledge of animal groups based upon their coats, last week we used some great photo resources to group our animals and today in problem solving time, we worked in friendship pairs to assign groups to animals, choosing hair/fur, feathers or skin/scales which our animals are covered in.

Ozzy did great homework in his first week with us :)

Dantae was also due a homework certificate this term - he was away last Friday so didn't  receive his then with his peers.

I hope you enjoy our Blog this week - remember next Thursday is mufti, wear red and bring a gold coin donation please. Wednesday is library, so return books in order to borrow another one and thanks for a fabulous week, your children are amazing.