Santa Visit

And to finish the year . . . a visitor.  Better than Santa even, Mrs Smith came to visit to celebrate Christmas with us.

I would like to take this opportunity to say how much I have enjoyed working in Room 2,  and wish every one a very Merry Christmas. 

Remember to say 'hello' when I am on duty around the school, even when you're Big Year Fours.  You'll be able to find me - I'll be wearing my fabulous Mrs Bear sunhat (thank you Zoe and Mrs May).

Over and out . . .

Christmas shared lunch

On Wednesday, we had a shared Christmas lunch.  Afterwards, people could tell their Christmas joke from their cracker for the afternoon roll instead of the usual "Good afternoon"!

Christmas comes to Cockle Bay

Our Christmas tree is up and all our Christmas buddies have arrived, along with a few extra random teddies.

Celebration Night

On Tuesday, the weather was kind and our Celebration Night went ahead.  Everyone did a fantastic job.  Mrs Bell gave Room 1 and Room 2 a 10/10 for their Samoan sasa at rehearsal, and we did not disappoint on the night.

An extra special mention to Hannah D who introduced the sasa in the Samoan language, and Ruby who was main character who introduced the dance items through her family's button box.

Room 2's button box

On Celebration Night, we are performing the Button Box, where the main characters look at different buttons and reminisce on past events.  In Room 2 we enjoyed looking through Mrs Bear's button box and sorting the buttons in different ways: boring, interesting, favourites, or by size or colour or shape.  Here are a few of the sorts:

Reading our fish stories

The weather is getting warmer, so it was a nice change to take our SSR outside under the trees.  Instead of books, we read our published fish stories.  We exchanged stories a few times, so everyone had a chance to read to few different ones.  You can read them all in the Writing page.

Here is Cooper's creative story, but you can read them all on the Writing page.

Sketching butterflies

We watched the video, Anton's butterfly, which shows how a boy improves his sketching when he looks very carefully and listens to specific feedback

Well done Amber.  in your third attempt, the butterfly wings look very much like the picture we are copying.

Great work Mitchell.  In your third attempt, the butterfly wings are the correct shape. 

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No more homework for 2018

Everyone seemed to take the sad news of No More Homework in their stride - such resilience.

CBS Hairdressers

We also had gardens in the classroom!  We recycled plastic soft drink bottles to make flower tubs, and gave them all faces.  Next we filled the the bottom with bark for drainage, and then added topsoil.  Then we mixed lawn seed with potting mix and topped up each flower-man with a layer of grass seed.  It was interesting to see the tiny grass seeds germinate. 

We kept them watered, and sometimes gave them a day out in the sun on the wooden tables.  After two weeks the grass was so long and thick, our flower boys and girls needed a haircut!  It is surprising to see how fast their 'hair' has grown - by Monday, you could hardly see the difference.

Our best hairdresser was Kaydon, who showed us how to hold hair between our two fingers before each snip.  

Garden Art

Room 2 has worked hard to keep the flower tubs looking lovely.  The Spring flowers have died, and we now have tall cosmos and cascading lobelia in the flower tubs, and parsley and tomatoes in the middle vegetable tub.  People are often watering or weeding before school.

To complete our garden, we made clay 'doughnuts' and painted them in the school colours.  We collected milk bottle tops over several months, and recycled them as spacers when we installed our garden art work.

Waterslide

After the junior school had Splish Splash Day, classes in the senior school could take turns on the water slide in the afternoon.

Room 2 Workshop

Room 2 has had a workshop for three weeks as we dismantled different electronic and electrical equipment to see what was inside to make them work.  Families brought in a fantastic array of electrical goods for us to investigate: a fan, TV, printer, toaster, kettle, sound system, microwave, RT system, scales and hair dryer.  Over the time we operated the workshop, we became more skilled and practised as using different screwdrivers and other workshop tools.

It was interesting to see what was at the back of a TV,

This printer had an amazing array of circuits inside too.

Baxter was the first to discover the great fingers a telephone cord can make!