Super-Duper-Cooper's Holiday Adventures...

Cooper has been having great fun these holidays.  He visited Matiu/Somes Island, in the Wellington Harbour.  

You might remember our blog post about visiting Petone Beach and hearing all about the legend of the taniwha of Wellington Harbour.  Matiu/Somes Island was the island we could see from the beach.  

Here is a picture of Cooper (green hat), his brother Charlie, his mum Lara and his Nanna on Somes Island.

Cooper even wrote a fabulous story about his adventure.  Ka pai Cooper, what great writing.

I went on a boat to Somes Island.  I went with my Dad
and Charlie and Nanna and Mum.  By Cooper.

For more information about this interesting place to visit, check out the Department of Conservation website.

Theodore's Big Adventure...

So after a term of tooing and froing between school and different kiddies homes, and embarking on all sorts of exciting adventures, it's time for Theodore to go on another ... in the washing machine.

In the last week of school we talked about how this would be a 'really big adventure' for Theodore.  One child commented it would be like going on "one of those rides at a fair or like at Disneyland". Maybe so, but with a few more bubbles and lots more dirty socks.  

Well today is the day, and Theodore excitedly climbed into the washing machine and took his spot on top of the other dirty washing.  He has come out looking sparkly clean with that gorgeous big grin still in place on his lovely face.  He is looking forward to another term visiting more of our E7 families ...

Happy Holidays E7...

Kia ora E7 friends and family...

Happy Easter.  I hope you have had a lovely long weekend and have some nice relaxing things planned for the school holidays to follow. My family and I have come to Picton for Easter. Theodore came with us.  He is having his 'big adventure' (remember ... the washing machine), this week so we thought he could have a little holiday first.  Enjoy these pictures of him out in the Marlborough Sounds.  He even got to be Captain for a bit and steer the 'Silvermist'...  clever wee cat.

We'd love to hear and see what you've been up to.  Remember to send your pics and stories through to Mrs P.

Happy holidays Super-Duper E7, from Mrs Pescini.

Pete the Cat ...

In our last week of school we've been reading about Pete the Cat.  Have you met Pete before?  He is a VERY cool cat.  

We read a story about Pete and his nice white shoes.

As Pete walked along he stood in different things and his shoes changed colour.  We had a great discussion about what else he could walk in and what colour it would make his shoes.

We decided to write our own stories ...

We read a story about Pete and his Groovy Buttons. 

In this story Pete loses his buttons one by one, until all he is left with is his belly-button.  We all thought the story was really good, and liked the catchy rhyme that Pete sings throughout.  We made our own 'Pete the Cats', but instead of adding 4 buttons like in the story, we added 10 groovy buttons.  We are learning to count forwards and backwards, and this was a really good way to practise our backwards number counting.  

We're going to revisit these stories next term when we learn more about addition and subtraction, so watch this space... 

Principal's Award for Excellence...

Today at our Junior Assembly Mrs Mander came along to present the Excellence Awards for Term 1.  

Showing excellence in class means demonstrating all of our school values. For example, always trying our best, showing respect to others, showing resilience when things get hard, taking responsibility for our things ...  

Today Peter received the Principal's Award for Excellence for his consistent effort this term. Congratulations Peter for showing Excellence at school.  We are very proud of you.

Peter receiving his special award from Mrs Mander

A lovely surprise to have Peter's Mum at the assembly too...

Congratulations Peter

I am so proud of the children in E7.  Having been at school no more than 11 weeks, they have made wonderful progress settling well into school and are quickly learning new skills and acquiring knowledge. We have a lovely bunch of kids, who enjoy one another's company and work well together as a class. I am looking forward to see what the rest of 2014 has in store for Super-Duper E7.

Happy Sinhala New Year ...

Today marked a special day in one of our E7 families calendar - the Sinhalese New Year, also known as Aluth Avurudda (අලුත් අවුරුද්ද in Sinhalese) in Sri Lanka and celebrated during April.   It marks the end of the harvest season and also coincides with one of two instances when the sun is directly above Sri Lanka.  

Some of the cultural traditions observed during this special time include cleaning the house (like a big spring clean), lighting of a special oil lamp and preparing and eating special foods.

Dehan's lovely mum, Dilly brought in some of these foods for our class to try today ...

Dehan tells us about the special Kokis his
Mum has made the class...

Dehan wearing his special sarong (also called a lungi)

Crispy, star-shaped Kokis...

Kokis; Kiribath (milk rice); Kavum (small oil cakes);
Mun Keum (a sweet food prepared with treacle) ...

It was wonderful to celebrate this special occasion with Dehan and embrace some of the diversity of cultures we have in our wonderful class.  Thank you so much to Dehan's family for sharing with us ...

Happy Sinhala New Year everybody from E7 ...

Shoe Laces ...

Shoe laces are hard work to learn how to tie.  Many of us wear velcroed shoes or slip-ons until we can get the hang of it, as we often have to take our shoes off and put them on again at school.

This cool, step by step guide will help you learn how to tie your laces.  Thank you to Room 6 at Clyde Street School who shared this with us.  Pull out your laced up shoes and give it a go...

H is for Hetty Hackett ...

We loved acting out our big book last week (Grumpy Bear), and the children in E7 wanted to do something special for our big book this week ... Hetty Hackett's Farm, also by Jill Eggleton (we like her books).

We decided we would read the book to you, our blog readers, and illustrate the story ourselves.  Here is our version of the story, we hope you like it ...

B is for Bubbles (and Butterflies, Bears and Bees)...

What a 'B for Busy' week...

With such 'B for Beautiful' weather we decided to have some fun after our shared reading of Bubbles, by Dot Meharry.

Earlier in the week we wrote some bubble stories...

Today we read a cool poem about bubbles.  We really liked it because we held our hands apart and pretended we were holding a bubble.  As we read the poem, our bubble got bigger and so did our voices, then "Pop" we clapped our hands together at the end.  It was fun.  We are good Letter Detectives in E7.  Check out all the B's we found in the poem...

Mrs Pescini poured some bubble mixture into cups for us to share and we used our peg people as bubble wands to blow bubbles.  Some of them popped over us and we got splashed.  The mixture tasted soapy.  Some of us found it easy to blow bubbles, and others found it a bit tricky.  We all had fun though...

Mohit blowing a bubble...

Faisal watching his bubble float off in the breeze... 

Tanishka, Kaydi and Scarlett sharing their bubble mixture...

Check out all our bubbles...

"Look there's a little one!" ~ Alex

Super-Duper E7 blowing bubbles outside our classroom...

Anvesha and Sophia - what a big bubble...

Inquiry through Discovery...

This term we've introduced shared Discovery time ... an opportunity for the children in our class to meet other students from the same year group and explore a whole range of things.

As a group we have co-constructed 'rules' and learning objectives for Discovery which include things like having fun, making a mess and taking responsibility to clean it up afterwards; sharing ideas and resources with others; taking risks and giving new things a go. 

It has been wonderful to see the children taking responsibility for their learning, adapting resources, sharing ideas, working cooperatively with others, taking turns and helping each other, and above all forging relationships with others.  I have seen these extend outside of Discovery time, with children in our class now seeking out their Discovery friends and sharing break times together. 

For the last couple of sessions we've been enjoying discovering more about our families, roles and responsibilities within them, and how we live.  The children have enjoyed making paper doll families; using big cardboard boxes to make houses/rocket ships/ice cream trucks/supermarkets; role-playing family figures - like Mum, Dad, Nana and other community roles such as shop keepers, policemen etc;  being restauranteurs  - setting up a kitchen, and tables and inviting guests (children, soft toys, dolls) to dine there; domestic chores like washing and drying dishes; and using construction material to make furniture/tools/objects for the house/rocket ships etc.

Using collage materials, pastels and glue to create our families...

"This is my Mum" ~ Hope 

"This is my whole family" ~ Georgia

"This is my Mum, Dad and me" ~ Scarlett

"I am making my sister look really good 'cause I like her" ~ Michael

Alex and Morgan bonding over the washing-up...

Jacob and Peter have prepared a big meal in their kitchen...

Tanishka helping out in the 'restaurant' and cleaning some dishes...

Yusra at the supermarket...

Scarlett and Georgia found a box...

they decided to make some wheels and lights for it and turn it into ...

a car!

Peter, Ollie, Faisal, Joshua B. and Mugundhan head off to space in their rocket...  

Luka and Nicholas sharing ideas and resources...

Luka makes a special telescopic gun out to take into space...

Nicholas makes an axe...

Cooper makes a moon telescope... 

"Who's in there?"

Sharing News ...

Every day we have the opportunity to share news with the class.  This is a wonderful opportunity to develop our oral language skills - listening, speaking and sharing ideas with others, in a safe and supportive way.  From Monday-Thursday we share our news and stories with our Talking Buddies.  On Fridays we get to bring in an object or toy from home, or share a story with the whole class.  It is great to see the children's confidence growing and all of them are happy to share their ideas with the group now.  Today Cooper brought in something really interesting to share with the class...

A New Zealand 50 cent piece, and an Australian 50 cent piece.  These coins became a real conversation piece and we ended up having a big discussion about royalty (who was on the coins), explorers (the ship on the New Zealand coin) and shapes.  The New Zealand coin is a circle, with no sides.  The Australian coin has 12 sides.  This shape is called a dodecagon.  What an interesting word!  You can find out the names for other shapes by clicking here.

We found out that on one side of the Australian coin was a picture of Queen Elizabeth.  On the other side was Prince Charles (her son) and his wife Lady Diana (the coin was from 1981).  We talked about how one of their babies is now all grown up and that he is Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, who is coming to visit New Zealand in the next two weeks with his wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge and their baby, Prince George.  We wondered if anyone from E7 or from our school will get to see them on their tour of New Zealand?  Have you met any of the royal family?  If you have we would love to hear about it.  Maybe you could leave a comment on this post for us ...