Piwakawaka Team 2015: February 2015

Friday 27 February 2015

Burnside Assembly Stars

Today we welcomed 4 new students to the Piwakawaka Team. We have Eseta, Lea and Tyson who are brand new to school. We also have Jephthah who has joined us from another school. We are so excited to have you all at Burnside Primary and in our team!

Tuesday 24 February 2015

Small Sticks

It was our third "Small Sticks" hockey lesson today. We are getting so good at showing our haka hockey stance and keeping our sticks on the ground. We LOVE having competitions against each other!

Investigations

Today we had two groups of learners focusing on different parts of our investigations. First we did some shared writing so that we can send some letters asking for more bottle tops from cream and milk bottles. We know that we need these for Discovery Time but today we found out that we are also going to use them during Investigations.

At the moment we don't have enough so we are going to send letters to some places that we think use a lot of milk and cream, like the cafe where Dexter's Mum and Dad work. They are already busy collecting for us so we will have to try lots of other places. These learners copied our shared writing and then we decorated the letters at Reading Time.

Our second group of learners were finding out what happens to a tree when it is growing. These children are busy showing the roots of the tree, slurping up the water.

We are going to find out what happens to the water in the tree tomorrow and add to our picture. We made fantastic roots and then we were also able to teacher the other children. What clever learners we have in Piwakawaka!

Hui

Every morning we start with our Team Hui. During this time we do lots of rhymes, chants, pattern making, and find out about our day. We also do some activities to help us with our speaking and listening.

Today Miss Radford was in our class. She bought along a bird's nest that she found at Jellie Park yesterday when she went to the gym. She thought that this would be a great thing to bring along because of our rhyme this week - Two little dickie birds.

We investigated what we thought the birds had made their nest out of. We saw sticks and feathers and even some dental floss. There were 5 things that we have to try and remember for tomorrow. I wonder if anyone will be able to?

Thanks for bringing this along Miss Radford - it was super exciting and interesting.

Monday 23 February 2015

Butterflies, Butterflies everywhere!

Over the weekend we had 5 new butterflies hatch out of their chrysalis! There were 2 boys and 3 girls flying around the classroom when Miss Browne arrived at school. They really wanted to get outside, so unfortunately they had to be let go but we took photos so everyone could see them.

And then this afternoon, when we arrived back at school after a day learning about phonics, there was another butterfly that had hatched! It was another girl! We have had so many butterflies hatch now, I'm not sure I know how many and how many were boys or girls.

We still have some more chrysalis waiting to hatch. Hopefully they will wait until after the 1st of March so we can tag them and be scientists for the Monarch Butterfly Trust.