The Stars of Matariki

This week marks the Maori New Year celebration of Matariki. It is a time for whanau to enjoy being together, share stories, plant winter crops, and make plans for the future.

What a great time we had this week celebrating with our wonderful buddy class and presenting at today's assembly. The children absolutely sparkled as we performed the Matariki Makarena. Our friends from the Court Theatre reminded us on Wednesday that Matariki is a time for whanau to come together to look after our people, land, and small creatures who are in our care. 
We also loved sharing a hot chip lunch with our buddies. Yum! 

What are looking forward to this year? Who and what is it that you care for in your life?  Could you plan a special whanau night to enjoy being together this weekend? Have fun and let us know what you did to connect with your family!

  

Mara'fun Winner

Here we come Rio!

We have some talented sportspeople in Room 15 - congratulations to Cadell who won the 7 & 8 year olds 2km race in the Mara'fun race as part of the Christchurch Marathon on Sunday. He ran a very fast time of 7:57mins. Here's a pic of Cadell and his brother receiving their awards. Well done boys!

Talking About Maths with Maths Talk

We have been busy learning about multiplication and division strategies in maths this term. We do this through problem solving, which involves working collaboratively with a maths mate to solve real life problems and then sharing our thinking back as a class or in a small group. This gives us a chance to see a range of different ways of solving problems and it also means that we have to have a deeper understanding in order to share our thinking with each other.
One of today's problems was: 20 Mighty Minnows children turned up to watch Hoon Hay's Got Talent. Miss Turner told them to sit 4 to a seat. How many seats did she have to put out?

Maddison and Bella show us how to make 5 groups of 4.
5x4=20 so 20÷4=5

Cadell and George discuss their ideas

We love having Mrs Dent challenge us all!

Its been great to welcome Mrs Dent into our room to share her ideas with us. We hope she can come again sometime soon. 

Actors in the Making

For the last three weeks our reading programme has consisted of practising and performing plays. The children are not in their normal reading groups but enjoy working with others in their class. They mostly learn about working in with each other, listening to others and making their play come alive for the audience.

Our younger brothers and sisters were invited for the performance - the best seats in the house!

A full crowd gathers for the big day!

We had a great turnout from the parents and grandparents who were thoroughly entertained by the first bird election, Santa getting caught in a trap, what happens when you mix a pirate film with a robot movie, a great bank robbery and humans meeting aliens!