Class Photo

StarFish come to Marshall Laing!

Yesterday, StarFish came to school to present an Anti-Bullying show. We learnt lots of things about making and keeping friends, and what bullying is. Bullying always involves four things:
1. It's not fun for everyone
2. It's nasty and cruel
3. The behaviour is repeated
4. Bullies are cowards
You can learn more about StarFish by going to their website
We will be using the show as a stimulus for more learning about friendships and kindness.




Reminders: We are not borrowing books from the school library any more this year, as they all need to be returned for a stocktake. Please return any library books you have at home. We will still visit the library on Thursdays and enjoy reading books.

Rooms 7 and 8 are presenting the Junior Assembly tomorrow, Friday 21 November at 9am. Come along and see!

Sports Day!

Sports Day was super fun. We played with the parachutes and put them up and down. We had a turn jumping in the long jump pit.

Ryan N says playing Rob the Nest was fun because you had to take balls to your team.

Krishneel says "I like Rob the Nest because I had ten balls and we won"

Jadon says "I liked the long jump because I jumped nearly over the whole sandpit"

"We had fun at Sports Day. We got to do everything and we had cards around our necks to check if we did all the things," said Samardh.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Lots of updates today!

Room 7 has lots of things to update you on. A couple of weeks ago, we were lucky enough to have an expert on spiders visit us - Grace Hall from Landcare Research. We listened to Grace talk, held an Avondale spider, and then wrote information reports about spiders. Come into the classroom to read our reports.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

What we made last Friday

Last Friday we made our own Spiders. All of our spiders have two body parts (a head and an abdomen), eight legs and eight eyes. We had a lot of fun making them, and learnt all about what spiders look like.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Merit Awards

Merit awards were presented outside today in the sunshine, after Jump Jam. We are not having Junior assembly until Week 6 this term, as the hall is booked with preparation for the school production. There is a whole school assembly next Friday however - parents and caregivers are welcome to attend.


Merit awards this week went to Nicole and Ryan N for writing some fantastic information about spiders - well done!

Have a good long weekend, everyone.

Spiders!

Room 7 have been learning about spiders this term. Next Wednesday we will have a visit from Grace Hall, who works for Land Care Research. She is going to bring in some live and dead spiders for us to look at and hold. We will be learning how to write an information report about spiders.

Here are some pictures of spiders to look at: Spiders

Maths Games

Today in the ICT suite we are playing maths games. Click on these links to play a game.

Funky Mummy
Feathers
Counting with Lecky
Pirate numbers

The end of term 3

Room 7 has had a very successful final week. On Thursday we had an exciting visit from Stu Duvall, who told a story about Captain Black Custard and Lamington Lil. We carried on the pirate theme for the rest of the day, and finished with an amazing pirate ship display, complete with pirates saying things like 'Aaarrr', and 'Ahoy there, me maties'! I will be back in school on Monday so will take a photo and post it on here.

We made knucklebones this week as a culmination of our inquiry unit on toys. The children mixed up some salt dough, and shaped their knucklebones after looking at some on the internet and a visitor from Room 16 who showed us all how to play. The children found it challenging dividing up their lump of salt dough up into 5 equal parts.

Thank you to Room 7 children for another fantastic term - 8 of our people were new at the beginning of term and it is amazing to see the progress they have made. Thank you also to the parents and caregivers - I really do appreciate your support and help. I feel privileged to be able to spend time with your fantastic children - they are a credit to you all.

Keep Trying!

Our shared book this week is Keep Trying, by Jane Buxton. This is a story about a boy who is trying to do lots of different things and finding them hard - his dad says "Keep trying, you can do it!" and then he can!

We thought of a time that someone had said 'keep trying' to us. Here are some of the children's stories.

Merit Awards

This week's Merit Awards went to

Sharmaine, for always producing vibrant, colourful artwork
and Emily, for beginning to speak in English. Keep it up Emily!

Wheels Day!

Wheels Day was a fun day organised by the school council. It was the Juniors turn at 2pm - teachers moved their cars out of the driveway so a track could be made for scooters, skateboards and rollerblades. Room 7 had fun riding scooters and using chalk to draw roads on the playground and wheel their cars around. Here are some photos and impressions from Wheels Day.




I had fun driving the cars. I liked drawing the roads on the playground.
Sharmaine

Me and Ryan C were being chased by a pretend T-Rex in our cars.
Rahul

I liked playing with the cars. I raced them with Rahul.
Samardh

I liked going down the hills fast on my scooter.
Max

I like to go fast on the hills. Vraj let me share his scooter.
Ryan N

I liked going down the hills on my scooter.
Nicole

I have a scooter at my home.
Faiz

I had a turn on a real scooter
Krishneel

It was a bit scary for me when I tried to get up the hill.
Jasmine

Reminders

A reminder that tomorrow is Wheels Day - the children may bring in scooters, roller blades, skateboards, scooters (all of which require helmets), heelies, toy cars, or toy prams.

Also, it would be great to have Room 7 parents filling out the 2008 Parent Survey, which can be accessed through a link on the Marshall Laing homepage. This is a chance for you, as parents new to our school, to have a say about the future direction of the school.

Thank you for all returning the forms and money for our trip to the museum which will be on Tuesday 16th September. Everyone is really looking forward to it!

Please return slips for Parent Teacher interviews. It would be wonderful to have children in the meetings as well - this is a good chance to discuss their progress and goals with them.

Thanks
Miss Robinson

A message for Sophie

Room 7 miss Sophie, who left our class to move to Dunedin last week. Here's a video especially for you, Sophie.

Hi everyone
Sorry it's been so long since our last post - I had some trouble last week uploading our worm farm video. I will post it shortly.

Room 7 has had a successful couple of weeks at school - we have been enjoying our handwriting with new handwriting music from Miss Easterbrook. Rooms 6 and 7 presented an assembly for the Junior School. We have another assembly coming up.

I have added an Important Dates section to the blog, on the left hand side, and also another couple of links for our Favourite Sites list.

Thanks
Miss Robinson

Letters of the week

Room 7's letter of the week this week was K, and on Friday a group of children took some amazing photos! We came up with a list of ideas as a class, and 4 children set about taking the photos. I also found another letter of the week poster from last term - the children took these G photos with Mrs B.

Tidy Kiwi!

The Tidy Kiwi is given to the class that has the tidiest cloakroom. Today Room 7 and Room 6 won the Tidy Kiwi!

Merit awards today went to Rahul for helping new members of our class, and Hunter for settling in so well to Room 7. Keep up the good work both of you!

End of the first week

What a great week it has been. We have 8 new children in Room 7 - welcome to Hunter, Nicole, Faiz, Jadon, Zainab, Emily, Hem and Sharmaine. Room 7 is now full, and new children from now on will go to a brand new class in Room 8.

This week we read a big book called '"Smile" said Dad', and wrote our own version of the story. Parents, come in and read it if you have some free time when you are dropping off or picking up your child.

Welcome back to Term 3

Wow, what a first day! A very warm welcome to the 7 new children that started in Room 7 today, and a warm welcome to their parents and families. This takes us up to 19 children, nearly a full class. I know that our new people will settle in quickly with the help of their kind and friendly classmates.

We have an exciting term coming up - here are just a few of the things we will be learning about this term.

• Our art work will be based on the work of Eric Carle, author of the famous Very Hungry Caterpillar. We will be looking at how he produces his amazing illustrations using tissue paper collage, and making our own versions of his illustrations. These will be used for fundraising calendars which will be available for purchase later in the year.
• Gym Fun will be happening over the next three weeks - Room 7 will go to the hall and do gymnastics activities such as rolling, jumping and balancing.
• Our inquiry unit this term is all about toys and games in the past - do you have any that you played with as a child that you could share with us - either lending to the class for a few weeks, or bringing in to show? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!
• We will continue to read a new big book each week during shared reading, and we will often do a fun, practical activity based on the book on Fridays, such as cooking, painting or craft.

Keep checking our blog for regular updates of children's work and achievements, as well as further information for parents and caregivers.

Thank you

Katherine Robinson

Our Class Office

Room 7 have a class office! Included in our pretend office is a phone. There is a phone book with phone numbers for Catwoman, Goldilocks, Old MacDonald, Curious George and more. The children love to call their favourite characters. This enables them to practice real life skills as well as number recognition and reading. Here's a video of two children calling The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Healthy lunches

Marshall Laing has a big focus on keeping healthy as we are a 'Gold Award' school. More information can be found here... http://www.nhf.org.nz/index.asp?PageID=2145836824

Room 7 looked in their lunchboxes today, then took pictures of healthy lunches. We used the smartboard to put ourselves inside our lunches!

Making Jelly!

Letter of the week - C

Our letter of the week is C. Rahul found a cow in our animal babies puzzle. Sophie took a picture of a crown. Ryan took a picture of a cat.

Term 2 is flying by in Room 7! It is hard to believe that none of the children have been here for more than 5 weeks. They are quickly becoming enthusiastic, independent learners.

Please remember that parent helpers (and grandparent helpers!) are always welcome. Even if you can't spare the time during the day, pop in with your child before or after school and get them to show you what they have been doing. Thank you for all your comments on the blog - the children love to hear what people have said about their work when we check each morning.

Our inquiry for this term is motoring along. The schoolwide focus is on rubbish and recycling, and following the children's interests, Room 7 is making a worm farm to solve the problem of food scraps in the rubbish bin. We are lucky to have a large plastic 'builder's tray' where messy activities can be contained. This week, we have worms and dirt in there! The worms were a great talking point today.

This afternoon Room 6 joined us to watch a Youtube video about making a worm composting bin. The children have been learning to ask relevant questions and our focus question while viewing this video was 'What do worms eat?'. Here are some of their ideas. Enjoy!

How do you write a j?

Today we wrote the letter j on the Smartboard. Here is our video of how to write a j.

Worms worms worms!

Our inquiry learning this term is all about Rubbish. We have decided to make a worm farm to eat up our food scraps. We will need to keep our worms alive and happy.

What do we know about worms? We held some worms that Ryan C brought in and then made this video.

Our next step is to decide what we need to know about worms to build a worm farm.

Letter of the week - Bb

We were very excited to find that our letter of the week was Bb - that meant bubbles!! We blew some bubbles this morning and read a book called Bubbles by Dot Mahony.

Two new people started in Room 7 today - that means we have 7 people in Room 7! Not for long though - another person starts on Wednesday.

Later this week we will be baking some blue biscuits.

Letter of the week - Tt

Here are our letter of the week photos. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Lemon Biscuits for Ll week

Welcome!

Welcome to Room 7's blog. Term 2 started yesterday and so far we have four children in the class. Our letter of the week this week is Ll. This morning we took a walk around the school and took turns taking photos of 'L' things...here they are!