Reading activities with Explain Everything

Some of the learners in Room 19 have begun using Explain Everything for their reading follow up activities!  We work on these in small groups with Mrs Belt first, before doing them independently!  Mrs Belt really likes how hard we try with our activities.  Have a look at Hendrix's activity after he read the book "My Sandcastle".

Golfing around

We had another Golf session today with Shannon.  We combined with Room 16 and it was great to see our friends as we learnt some more golf shots.

We used a new club which Shannon helped us with!

iPad Bingo .... using our stylus for the first time!

Our iPad stylus has arrived and today we used it for the first time!  In maths we are learning to recognise the numbers 1 - 9.  Mrs Belt had created a Bingo board for us in Explain Everything and we played Bingo today using our stylus to cross off the numbers as they were called out.  We have to be very careful with our stylus as they cost the school a lot of money.  Mrs Belt told us about how we can look after it so that it lasts a very long time.  We have to be very careful not to touch the soft end with our fingers.

MakerSpace - week 2

Once again some very excited learners from Room 19 joined Mr Barks for their MakerSpace session.  When Mrs Belt popped in to see what they were doing, they were learning how to hammer a nail into wood as preparation for making a house later in the term!

It was great to see the engagement from all learners and the great skills they were showing!

Our Learning Rocket gets bigger ...

Room 19 welcomed two new learners today!  Jezer has previously visited us with the Pt England Kindergarten and it was wonderful to welcome him for his first day at Pt England School.

Jezer at MakerSpace today

Brittany also started at Pt England School today and arrived just in time to enjoy our MakerSpace session with Mr Barks.

Welcome to Pt England School Brittany and Jezer - we are really happy to have you with us in Room 19.

Te Reo with Whaea Saff

We welcomed Whaea Saff to Room 19 for the first time today!  She's going to be helping us learn Te Reo Maori.  Today we worked on the Maori alphabet and counting to 10!  Hendrix already knew how to count to 10 in Te Reo - well done Hendrix!

We really enjoyed the colours song that Whaea Saff taught us today and she had some great signs that we were able to use to help us remember the words.

A Watermelon Party

Riverson's Mum bought in some watermelons for the class to enjoy!  As we only had a few learners, we invited Room 16 to join us for an afternoon watermelon party under the trees.

We enjoyed some stories and a game of duck, duck, goose with our friends from Room 16!  We also practiced some of the things we've been learning in our Pt England Way inquiry topic - sharing, taking turns and looking after others!

More Kid Pix ....

We welcome Mrs Fester to Room 19 on a Wednesday to help us with our computer skills and using Kid Pix!  The learners of Room 19 were able to build on the activities we completed the previous day and today we created multi-coloured blankets.

Because we only had five learners we were all able to work on this at once with the help of both Mrs Fester and Mrs Belt.

This is Mele's blanket - we really love how many colours she is using!

Kid Pix on the Computers

After lunch today Mrs Belt introduced us to Kid Pix on the computers.   After learning which icon we needed to click, we practised drawing a square with a small black pencil.  This reminded us of the squares we made with Mr Barks at MakerSpace yesterday.  We had to be careful to close our square completely and then we were able to fill it with a colour using the paint pot feature.

We only had five learners this afternoon and we were able to all have a try at the same time.  It was hard getting our fingers to work with the mouse and using it to click in the right space.  Mrs Belt gave us lots of time to practice.

Mele created five shapes using the black pencil and filled them all in a different colour.  Its great to see that she closed all her shapes up!

Golfing fun

Today we joined with Room 16 for Snaggit Golf with Shannon!  She had some fun activities planned to introduce us to golf.  We had coloured hoops which we had to stand in and while we were in the hoops we could roll the ball or hit it with our golf club.  Our partner, in the other hoop, helped us taking the balls off the targets.  We found the targets tricky as the balls stuck to them and were hard to take off!

Room 19 really enjoyed the golf and can't wait for our next session next Tuesday!

Our Rocket gets bigger ... welcome Anthony!

Today we welcomed Anthony to Room 19, so we now have 6 lovely learners in our room.  Monday is Mrs Belt's release day so Ms George had a great day in the classroom.

We also had our very first MakerSpace session with Mr Barks today!  Room 19 had fun exploring squares - check out what they did.

Heading outside ...

A beautiful sunny Auckland day and an opportunity to head outside with our iPads today!  After reinforcing the rules we headed off out under the trees.  I gave the learners very specific instructions as to what photos to take.  Our first photo was of a tree.

Photo by Whare

Learners then had to find something blue to photograph (surprisingly none of them tried to photograph the sky!  I really liked this image created by Hendrix - he carefully climbed onto a lower platform on the playground to position himself for the photograph.

Photo by Hendrix

Lastly I asked for photographs of something that was moving - it was great to see the different interpretations of this - litter on the ground, a classmate, a blade of grass, and cows through the fence.

Photo by Riverson

A Kindy visit and our class grows some more :)

We've had an exciting day in Room 19 today, with a visit from the Pt England Kindergarten.  We met some wonderful learners who will be starting at Pt England School this term.  Mrs Belt had some wonderful alphabet activities for us to complete and we all made a very hungry alligator!

Today we also welcomed Mele to Room 19 - we now have five wonderful learners and will continue to grow over the coming weeks.  Mele enjoyed her first day with us and particularly enjoyed using the iPads for maths today.  We were using teddy bears to show a certain number and taking a photo on our iPad to record and share our learning.

Photo by Whare

Room 19 is growing

Room 19 on Day 1 ... 

Room 19 on Day 2 ....

We look forward to welcoming more learners to our class over the coming weeks!

iPads for Learning

We welcomed Gabriel to Room 19 today and enjoyed our second day of learning.  For maths we used bugs on our tens frames as we demonstrated the numbers 1 - 5.

Later in the day we used our iPads for the first time.  We enjoyed the iPad safety video about how to use our iPad correctly and then took photos of our friends.  It was great to see the learners of Room 19 being careful and taking things slowly.

Photo by Gabriel

After lunch we again used our iPads, this time to take photos of our polydron creations.  This gave the learners of Room 19 a chance to create and then share their creations with whanau via the class blog.

Photo by Riverson

Blast-off .... our first day!

Mrs Belt welcomed Riverson, Hendrix and Whare to Room 19 this morning.  The boys all started school today and we've had a great day, beginning with a tour of the school.  Mrs Nua and Ms George both visited our room during the day.

During our literacy time we worked on the alphabet and did reading for the very first time.  The boys are very keen to take their books home and read with their whanau.  

We spent some time building farms and zoos for our animals and we had some great conversations as we created.   Just before lunch we had some fun with counting and writing some numbers.   After lunch we enjoyed the polydron before it was time to head home for the day.  

T-minus .... 1 day!

Tomorrow is it!!  I look forward to meeting the new learners of Room 19 and introducing them to Pt England School!

Don't forget to get a good nights sleep tonight - see you at assembly tomorrow!