Wheels Day poster

Alice and Ruby, our two Class Councillors,  did a great job of making a poster to promote Wheels Day on Thursday, 29 November.  You can see copies of this poster displayed in all the Year 3 classrooms.

Remember to bring your wheels, your helmet and a can and a treat to make someone's Christmas more special on Thursday.

It was a bit strange eating our lunch in a bike park on Wheels Day!

Science Club

It was with great excitement that Room 2 discovered that the Senior Science Club was open to Year 3 at this time of year, and not just to Year 4, 5 and 6 students.

 Everyone enjoyed experimenting with acid and alkali to make a gas.  Science Club Scientists, working in small groups of two, could decide the type and amount of vinegar,  the amount of Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate  and the shape of bottle they wanted to use.  It was interesting to compare our results and discuss which combination produced the most gas to blow up the balloons.

Scientists at work.

Art and Publishing Folders

At this time of year, we have started to make our art folders and publishing folders to take home our art work and published stories at the end of the year.

We looked at the work of the Canadian artist, Jenny Foster, to get ideas about how to decorate our letters - just look at those horse legs!

Jenny Foster's Horses

Ronan colouring his initials using this style.

Connor busy at work.

People could  choose a picture to colour for the cover of their publishing folder.

ICAS Success

It is with great pride that I announce that Nicole gained Distinction in ICAS Maths.  There was a special assembly in the staff room to honour students who had achieved a merit or higher in ICAS exams.

Nicole was also placed in the top ten students to achieve the most movement in her Maths ability using Maths Whizz in 2018.  Fantastic effort, Nicole.

Busy mornings

In the mornings before school is often a busy time in Room 2.

Some people play with playdough

Some people water our gardens.

Some people work together to make patterns with the shapes.

Some people help with the washing up.

Happy Halloween finishes. . .

On Friday, we finished Happy Halloween with poetry and art.  In the morning, we wrote  the 'Skeleton Parade' poem in our poetry books.  We illustrated the poem by cutting out our own skeleton and glueing it in.

Here is Nicole cutting out her skeleton.

To make our x-ray hand, first we drew around our buddies hand and then they did the same for us.  Next we bent our fingers and looked to see exactly where they bent.  We found a really good clue - own skin was wrinkly, like our knees, where there was a joint which made our fingers bend.  

We drew a little line wherever we could see a join on our hand outline,  It took a long time to work them all out, and then to mark them on the page.  When we had all the joints in place, we made the lines thicker and more distinct with black wax crayons.  Finally we dabbed vegetable oil very carefully on the 'bones', the parts between each joint.  When they were dry, we could put them up to the window and and see the picture we had made of all the bones in a human hand.  

If you look closely, you can see that our drawn wax and oil hands are nearly the same as the x-ray of a hand from a medical book.  There are 27 bones in a human hand.  Painstaking work,  Room 2.  Lots of perseverance evident here.

Happy Halloween continues . . .

On Thursday, we did Happy Halloween Science.  We learned about chemical and physical change and how to spot the difference.  After we finished our T-chart to compare the two types of change, we made a Happy Halloween cave.  We stapled extra black paper ot the OUTside to make it extra dark INside.  Then we were ready.

Here was our cave - not much on the OUTside, the fun didn't begin until the INside!

People could pick a glow stick and go into the cave with it, but they were not allowed to snap the glow stick to start the chemical reaction until they were safely inside and the door was closed.

Happy Halloween

We celebrated Happy Halloween on 31st October in Room 2 . . . and on 1st November, because there were so many Happy Halloween Happenings.

First we lit the jack o'lantern and decorated the walls with spiders' web.

Before school, some people had a go at making Happy Halloween shapes with the green slime play dough.

After the roll, we did Spooky Spider Maths - some people made webs to 10, others to 100 and some even to 1,000! (That's a LOT of spooky spiders!) 

After that, it was time for Happy Halloween problem solving.  Some people used multiplication and division facts, some people used basic facts, some people used repeated addition, some people used bowls and counters, some people used their fingers; BUT they weren't allowed to chop them off and scare people (even on Halloween).

After lunch, we did the Chunk of the Week Challenge, but we used two round pumpkin marshmallows for 'OO'.  The winners, Caleb and Isaish wrote 49 "OO" words!

Weka Day Camp 2018

This year, Weka Day Camp was on 30th October for Rooms 1, Room 2 and half of Room 6, and on 31st October for Rooms 18, 5 and the other half of Room 6.  Unfortunately, we got the rainy day, but we didn't let it spoil our enjoyment.  We just buttoned up our raincoats and tried to ignore it.  Luckily, it had brightened up by the afternoon when we all went on the tramp together.

We would like to thank all the parents who came along, and helped us erect tents, cook sausages, tramp through bush, find orienteering stations and generally enjoy getting wet with us.

First, the bus trip . . . always lots of excitement in the air!

After morning tea, we were divided into three groups.  Each group rotated through three different activities, but in a different order.  After lunch, all groups went on the tramp together before returning to school on the bus.

We had to read maps to find different orienteering stations.

Connor is not looking too excited about the weather!

Amber looks OK with it, though.

It certainly was quite damp!

We found the orienteering stations anyway.

We had to work together to cook over an open fire - one person held the pan, while the other person turned the sausages.

Mrs Bear was pleased to see that some pans had extra sausages for cold, wet, hungry adults.

This was possibly the best bit of the camp cooking.

Luckily, we could put the tents up inside and stay nice and dry.

After all the work, it was good to be able to try the tents out.

Mrs Bear was pleased to see that they had the right sort of tents!

We learned about some of the trees in the New Zealand bush.  Rangiora is sometimes called 'Bushman's Friend' because, in the olden days, bushmen used its large soft leaves as toilet paper.

We also tried out the rimu leaves as combs to smarten ourselves up a bit.

Here is a map of the Auckland Botanical Gardens.