Newsletter Term 4

Hi all,

Welcome back to another busy term with athletics, possibly swimming and our Junior School Christmas Show all trying to fit into 10 weeks with the usual reading, writing, mathematics and topic. 

This term we have a real push with getting our letters the right shape and size.

We are also concentrating on writing at least 3 sentences in our recounts and we will be looking at instructional writing. This writing is about how to make or complete a task, i.e. making a sandwich, making toast, recipes.

Maths we are looking at learning how to read a clock to the hour and half hour. We will look at analogue and digital clocks.  Numbers see us focusing on adding and subtracting numbers to/from 10. Consolidating our knowledge of numbers to 20 and looking towards counting in 2s, 5s and 10s.

Reading will be about consolidating sight words, understanding ending such as 'ing, ed, er, s and es'. The children will be asked to talk about what happened in their book and what might happen, as well as answering questions about the characters and the main ideas in their books.

Topic/Art this term continues our theme of protecting our earth with reinventing, recycling, reusing and reducing. We have already discussed how to protect our earth with our main idea being to compost our foods and looking after our plants and animals. This term we are looking at reusing and reinventing objects.

We are going to try and use a 600ml coke bottle or similar and make four different types of flowers from that bottle. We are also going to try and make an aeroplane from another 600ml bottle. So if you have any spare bottles around please store them for our art project.

Dates to remember:

22 October         Labour Day (school closed)

26 October         Hi 5 Fruit, Fitness and Fun Day

8 November      Junior School Athletics Day @ 1.15pm  p/p 9 November @ 1.15pm

16 November    Show Day (school closed)

13 December    Junior School Christmas Show

19 December    Last Day of School (school closes at 12 noon)

The Bokashi Bucket

Last week we had Lesley Ottey from the Waimakariri District Council come in and talk about how we could use our food scraps in the garden. We learned about the Bokashi Bucket. We learned how to look after the Bokashi and how to use the the food scrap inside the Bokashi when the bucket was full. This talk by Lesley was to kick off our inquiry about Rethinking, Reducing, Reusing our rubbish to help protect the earth.

Lesley shows us the Bokashi Bucket

This is what we put in the bucket to keep the smells away.

We need to remember to push all the scraps down to take out all the air between the food scraps.

Maths

The children have been learning about halves and quarters. We have been using some items from our lunch boxes to work out what half and quarter looks like in food items. The key point to note are that half is two pieces from a whole and quarters are four pieces from a whole, each piece must be equal. You can transfer this information to your home by asking your children to help cook, help clean using the terms half and quarters in your conversations. 

Patiki Production

Studio 8 had the opportunity to view the Year 3/4 School Production. This production was based around looking after the earth and the animals and plants on the earth. Why not ask your child about what they liked about the production and what message they got from it. Here are some of the wonderful pictures from "The Final Frontier".

The Court Theatre - Antarctic Adventure

Last week we had the opportunity for the Court Theatre to visit our school with a court production called "Antarctic Adventures". The story revolved around scientists studying penguins in Antarctic. They are wondering where all the penguins have gone.  One of the scientist disrupts the natural balance when she feeds a baby penguin and this leads to their adventure together. Why not ask your child what they might have learned from the production. The message of the production was about how humans affect the environment and how we all can play a part in helping our environment.  Here are some pictures from the production. You might like to talk to your children about them.

Meet the Penguin Family

Meet the Scientists

Scientist meets Penguin

What is the Orca looking for?

Oh, no our scientist is stuck!

Who is this character? What has he got?

Look out! A pirate

Go Baby Penguin

Daddy!

Meet the Penguin Family

Our Song

How clever were our children. They did a fantastic job singing our song to the whole school. Jack and Rebecca did a fabulous job as our presenters.

Studio 8 and Studio 23 practising our song

Welcome to Term 3

Welcome back everyone,


This term promises to be as busy as last term. Over the next four weeks we are focusing on The Olympics. Our class will be learning about the different symbols in the Olympics and the values of the Olympic Games. We will also look at Ethiopia as this is the country that Studio 8 has chosen to represent at our Olympic Games Day (30th July).  From Week 5 we should be looking at Recycling. We will have a visit from Lesley Ottey, she is from the Waimakariri Council and she will be looking at composting and reducing our rubbish footprint. Lesley is also involved in our community garden.