Exploring beautiful autumn days

 This week we explored the beautiful autumn days with leaves on the ground. 

We threw the leaves in the air and they fell down over us. 

We used the leaves for our art and did some screen printing. 

We will share our screen print art next week. 

Learning about the history of our school: Interviewing Pippa!

 We have been discussing the history of Hamilton and Hamilton East School. We have looked at pictures from the very old times and have talked about how many things have changed. 

Like pictures used to be in black and white. Children didn't have technological devices. They had uniforms to wear and were to sit at the table in a classroom. 

We found out that Whaea Georgia was a student in Hamilton East School. Then, thought about how we could ask questions to Pippa the principal. 

Here are some questions we came up with. 

We were really excited to invite Pippa into our class. Each child drew a picture of Pippa and asked some questions we wanted to ask. It was so lovely to talk to Pippa and we learnt many things about the old times in Hamilton East School. 

Thank you Pippa for coming to our class to answer our questions. It was so lovely to see you and spend time with you! 

Celebrating New Zealand Sign Language Week

 

Literacy in play

 Here are some examples of what children are doing developing their literacy skills through play. With our Better Start Literacy Approach we are implementing in our classrooms, children are learning phonemic awareness, alphabet letter sounds, segmenting (identifying individual sounds in a word), and blending (putting the individual sounds together to make them into a word). It has been really interesting to observe the children’s play as they are using their skills and understanding in their play like making a word, writing a story with a picture, or coming to ask me how to spell a certain word. This has all been initiated by children. Introducing Sid the sloth has given children opportunities to engage in creating costumes for Sid, writing his name Sid, and writing a letter to Sid. 

Making clothes for Sid

 This week, we have designed and created clothes for Sid, our class mascot.

Our design process, drew pictures of what clothing item they were going to make, what colour felt pieces we will need. 

We made some designs using the felts. We used a glue gun to glue the pieces. 

Here are the completed items! 

 

Waharoa curved gateway

 We have a beautiful waharoa (curved gateway) located in front of the office. We went to see the waharoa, toyched the curving and talked about what we could see. 

There were taniwha, a fantail, and a lizard on the waharoa. There are also students, teachers, Waikato te awa, Mahehe and Hotumane on the waharoa too.

We drew and painted the waharoa today. 

What a beautiful job everyone did! We are going to use the pictures for writing next week!