Term 3 Week 1 - Science!!

We have all been very excited this week with the first science experiment for our Term 3 Inquiry.  Greta's family have provided us with some wheat seeds so that we can grow wheat in class just like Greta did earlier in the year.  Thank you very much to the Stuart family for helping all our learning!

Our first stage of our experiment was to get the seeds germinating.  We brainstormed and planned what equipment we would need for the experiment on Tuesday afternoon. 

On Friday morning we started the seeds off using egg cartons and cotton wool.  We are in groups for the experiment and are in charge of looking after our own group's seeds (checking if they need water).  Each group has agreed a schedule of who will check the seeds each day and look after them.  

Our seeds are on the two desks near the sink in front of the window.  This side of the class gets the sunshine in the afternoons, so hopefully it will be a great place to grow seeds.  When you visit our class please come and see how they are going for yourself and ask us questions, we are keen to share our learning with you. 

We will keep you updated of how the experiment is going throughout the term.

Writing Term 2 Week 10

This week in writing we finished off the descriptive writing we have been focusing on this term with a fun activity describing items in jars using our senses.  The items in the jars were wool, pebbles, oats, crystals and playdoh.

We made notes on what the items looked like, felt like, smelled like and sounded like as we moved round each station.  We then shared our ideas with the class and wrote descriptions of the different items in the jar.

At the end we tried to guess what the crystals were.  A lot of us thought washing powder, but actually they were radox crystals!

Here are a few of our descriptions:

'The crystals sound like rattling sand' Levi
'It feels like hair [the wool]' Max
'The wool looks like a fluffy cloud' Laura
'The pebbles sounds like...gun shots and fireworks' Seidyn
'The pebbles feel smooth and hard' Renzil
'The Crystals sound like crackling rice bubbles' Alice

T2W6 Corey Baker Visit

On Thursday Corey Baker came to visit YMS to share his Antarctic Dance with Te Māhuri 1 and 2.  Corey used to be a student at YMS when he was younger.  He enjoyed looking around a bit and seeing how the school had changed since he was last here. 

We learned about the dance he created in Antarctica and what it was like to be in such a cold place.  It was amazing just how many layers of clothes Corey needed to wear each day and we really enjoyed the chance to try them on.  Everyone found it funny to learn about why the fur is on the outside of the gloves they wear there!  He talked with us about the message behind us dance - climate change and its impact on the Antarctic.

Corey lead us through some dance activities in the Whare Hui and we got to watch a recording of his dance with him.

Making ourselves into an iceberg

Trying out Corey's Antarctic clothing

Talking about Climate Change

Spellbound watching the dancing

T2W5 Loopy

This week we have been learning a new maths game to practice our addition basic facts.  Loopy is a new maths game to most of us in TM1 that can be used to practice many different sorts of maths skills - addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and geometry to name a few.  Please ask us about how the game works.

Once we get a little more familiar with playing this we will start to time our round and add the element of 'beat the clock' to our games.

T2W2 - Kelly Sports

This term we will be having a PE lesson on Tuesday afternoons run by Steve from Kelly Sports.  We will be focussing on developing skills we will need for playing sports games, such as attacking, defending and working as a team. 

In this first lesson our warm up games included one with bean bags where we needed to throw to a partner five times and then the person who ended up with the bean bag needed to move off and find another partner to throw with.  After a few tries and some different ideas we learned that it was so much easier to find a new partner if the people who were free put their hands up or called out - we could quickly move to a new partner once we knew who was free!

Easter Fun Afternoon - Hat Making in Te Māhuri

Te Māhuri threw themselves into hat making on Thursday for the Easter Fun Afternoon.  In Te Māhuri 1 we were fortunate enough to have Rebecca helping us out making hat bands for us.  Thank you Rebecca - your quick work making and fitting people's hat bands was such a help getting us ready in time for the hat parade!

We were really impressed with the amount of sharing, co-operating and encouragement we saw as everyone worked hard and fast to create all the wonderfully creative hats and accessories you can see in the pictures below. 

T1W8 - Get Writing New Zealand!

For the last couple of weeks Te Māhuri has been taking part in an exciting writing programme with other schools from all over New Zealand.  We have been given buddy schools and have been working on a set of postcards to send to each other.  The Weka and Kiwi writing groups have been working with Mrs Hancock and have a buddy school up in Hamilton.

On our postcards we are writing a metaphor about ourselves to share with our buddy class.  In our writing lessons we have been learning about metaphors - describing ourselves (or other things) by comparing ourselves to something else.  When we explored our playground we came up with some great metaphors about what we saw:
The sky is a big blue blanket over the top of us
The trees are a line of soldiers standing straight and tall 

We noticed that our postcards all had part of a picture on the other side.  After we finished writing our metaphor on our postcards, we spent some time solve the puzzle of what picture the postcards made.  Worryingly, we found that our number 19 postcard was missing!  We hunted high and low to try and find the missing postcard, but with no luck.  Thankfully, a couple of days later we found the postcard, and so we have a full set to send to our buddy after Easter.

Our almost completed puzzle - missing postcard no. 19!