Friday with Ms Gain: The Flat Stanley Project

In Room 2 today we had a lovely surprise when we received our first letter about a Flat Stanley adventure. Most of us have only just sent our Flat Stanleys away this week but Eliza had made a Flat Stanley at home all by herself and posted it to her grandparents in the United States of America a few weeks ago! The letter from her grandparents came all the way from Wyoming, one of the states in America. They sent us a letter full of interesting information and photos about this state and the state capital city Cheyenne.

We learnt about and saw photos of:

• Cowboys lassoing animals in rodeos,
• Indians dressed up in traditional costumes and dancing in a parade,
• Festivals with pancake breakfasts,
• Oil refineries (where they process oil)
• Railway trains (Cheyenne was originally a railroad town, and still is)
• The golden Capitol Dome (of the capital city building)
• Snowy Range Mountain, and
• Lake Marie (which Eliza visited when she was 3 years old).

Wyoming - One of the 50 States in America

A Cowboy in a Rodeo


Lake Marie and the Snowy Mountains


We then did some investigating about the United States of America. We learnt that this country is made up of 50 states (each state is like its own little country). We all found the state of Wyoming on our own maps of the United States of America using atlases and google maps on the data projector to help us. Some of us in Room 2 had heard of President Obama, the president of the United States of America. Lots of us were also curious to find out about what kinds of animals lived in the North American continent. We visited a fantastic website from an American Zoo (Smithsonian Zoo), where we looked at a photo gallery of animals in North America including:

• Bald eagles,
• Mexican wolves,
• Flamingos,
• Beavers,
• Otters,
• Gila Monsters (poisonous lizards),
• American Alligators, and
• Hummingbirds

The photo gallery has lots of information and photos of animals in the different continents, which we will explore in class as we learn more about the different countries and continents. You can visit this website at home by clicking on the link ‘Smithsonian Zoo’ under ‘The Flat Stanley Project’ on the right hand side of this blog page.

Dancing Raisins

Some students in class told me about an experiment Room 11 did called Dancing Raisins, I was very intrigued so I looked on their blog and decided to do the experiment with Room 2. Those students who had not heard of the experiment were told we were going to put raisins in a jar of lemonade and in a jar of fanta, they had to go away and write a hypothesis. After they had written a hypothesis we did the experiment and discussed why the raisins danced! The students went away and wrote what they saw and explained why it happened.

Hypothesis:
I think the raising will dance or turn fizzy.
What I saw:
The carbon dioxide made the raisins go up and down.
Why it happened:
Because the carbon dioxide pushed the raisins up and down. It was so cool.
By Oscar

Hypothesis:
I think the raisins will go fizzy and mushy or dance.
What I saw:
They were going fizzy. There skin was going flat but they didn't look like raisins they looked like grapes.
Why it happened:
because the carbon dioxide pushed the raisins up and back down.
By Bridie

Hypothesis:
I think that the raisins will dissolve.
What I saw:
The raisins went up and down.
Why it happened:
Because the bubbles had carbon dioxide which made them go up and down.
By Rufus

Malaysia

This week we have had two student teachers from Malaysia work alongside us. Their names were Qish and Nadia. They enjoyed being in Room 2 and teaching a small group about Malaysian Culture. The group reported back to the class.

We learnt how to say some things in Malay. This is what we learnt
Good Morning in Malay - Khabar Baik
How are You - Apa Khabar?
I'm fine - Khabar Baik

We got to see what a groom and bride would wear on their wedding day. We all agreed they were beautiful and even said we would wear them if we got married!
We compared Malaysia and New Zealand Christmas on a venn diagram. Some similarities were, we both have Christmas trees, decorations and Santa Claus.

Friday with Ms Gain: More Mapping and Music

Today we read a story called ‘Possum Magic’ by Mem Fox, who is an Australian author. In this story 2 possums (Grandma Poss and Hush) travel around Australia in search of different types of food.

“They ate Anzac biscuits in Adelaide,
Mornay and minties in Melbourne,
Steak and salad in Sydney
And pumpkin scones in Brisbane….”

And in Darwin, “in the far north of Australia, […] they found a vegemite sandwhich.”

“Later in a beach in Perth, they ate a piece of pavlova” and
“In Hobart, late one night, in the kitchen of the casino, they saw a lamington on a plate. Hush close her eyes and nibbled”.

We used atlases to find all these Australian cities and put them on blank maps of Australia. We are becoming good at describing where cities are using the directions North, South, East, and West. We then drew some pictures of Australian animals that were mentioned in the book including: possums, koala bears, dingoes, wombats, emus, echindnas, kookaburras, kangaroos, and snakes.

Next we learnt about 2 important canals: The Panama Canal and the Suez Canal. The Panama Canal is between North and South America and allows a ship get from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to go right around the bottom of South America. Then we looked at the Suez Canal, which is in Egypt and lets ships get from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and down to the Indian Ocean – what useful water passages!

After morning tea we went to the hall and did some music. We sat in a circle and everyone had percussion instruments. We had drums, castanets, claves, woodblocks, triangles, and bells. We then learnt a song about catching a turkey that has escaped from the barn. We used our instruments to help us sing along and at the end of the chorus we put our instruments down and ran around the circle singing “shoo turkey shoo shoo!”. When we stopped we picked up a new percussion instrument to play and did it again. It was a fun way to play lots of different instruments.

We also learnt a dance game called ‘Gold’ and ‘Silver’ where we held hands and danced in a line singing ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’. Two people were the bridge and the line of dancers danced through the gates until someone was caught as the bridge came down. When a dancer was caught they had to whisper to Ms Gain if they wanted to be ‘Gold’ or ‘Silver’ and she told them which of the two bridge holders to line up behind (no one knew till then which person was gold and which person was silver). It was lots of fun and ‘gold’ got the most people. In the olden days the two teams would have had a tug of war at the end but we just decided the team with the most people would win!

Junior Cross Country

This morning, the junior syndicate walked down to Bishops Park to have our cross country race.
Mr Skilton and two very helpful Year 8 boys, Harry and Isaac did a superb job of setting up the course for us.
The teachers were very proud of all the students enthusiastic, positive attitudes they displayed.
Our place getters were:
Year 1 Boys
1st Oliver (Room 2)
2nd Ryan (Room 2)
3rd Kai Matthew (Room 4)

Year 1 Girls
1st Chelsea (Room 4)
2nd Evie (Room 4)
3rd Holly (Room 4)

Year 2 Boys
1st Patrick (Room 6)
2nd Theo Jones (Room 6)
3rd Chevron (Room 5)

Year 2 Girls
1st Ruby (Room 6)
2nd Samantha (Room 5)
3rd Leah (Room 6)

Friday: Geography and the Football World Cup

BOB TALKING TO US


Today we had Leon’s dad Bob visit our class to talk to us about the Football World Cup, which starts this Sunday. We learnt a lot of interesting things from listening to Bob and asking him some questions. Here are some of the things we learned:

• Countries in each continent played many games of football (soccer) and the winning teams from each continent were chosen to go to the World Cup. Continents with more countries were allowed to send more teams. There are 32 different countries playing in the world cup.

• New Zealand is playing in the World Cup this year. The last time New Zealand qualified to play in the World Cup was in 1982 (28 years ago!).

• The New Zealand team is called the All Whites and the captain is Ryan Nelson.

• The names of the 32 countries were put into a hat and 4 pulled out at a time to decide which group they would be in. There are 8 groups all together (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H) and each country will play games against the countries in their own group first.

• New Zealand will play games against Slovakia, Italy, and Paraguay first. Italy won the world cup 4 years ago!

• The world cup is from June 12th to July 12th and there will be many games of football to decide who the best team is and who will get to play in the final.

• The world cup is a trophy made of solid gold (and very heavy!) and it is won by the best team, the team that wins in the final.

• The team that wins the cup get to keep it for 4 years.

We have put a chart on our classroom wall (on the PE display) to track who wins the different games and who will get to the final.

We then got into small groups and each group was given one of the World Cup groups of countries (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H). Each group had to find the four countries in their group on continent maps and then make the flag for each of the countries. We then put the flags on the class world map. We had to work together in our small groups, and as a whole class, to complete this activity, lots of careful listening, communicating, and co-operation!

MAPWORK







OUR FLAGS






GEOGRAPHY GAMES

Today we also played some geography games using our own continent maps that we made. We played ‘Around the World’ with geography questions and ‘Continent and Ocean Bingo’. Some teachers who came through our classroom were really impressed at the geography questions we knew the answers to!


Geography Bingo: We chose 5 places to put our counters on and then Ms Gain called out the names of different continents and oceans. If a continent or ocean was called out that we had a counter on we could take it off. The first person to remove all 5 counters won "BINGO!".


Around the World: We took turns to walk around the class and stand behind each person. At each person Ms Gain asked us a geography question, whoever got the right answer first got to keep moving 'around the world'. Some of us were hard to get out!

Painting

The weather has been really cold so we decided to warm up Room 2 with some suns! We brainstormed all the things we knew about the sun, some of our ideas were:
It is a star
It has sun rays
It is hot
It is made up of hot rock
It is only seen in day time
It looks yellow and orange
It is very hot
It is a long way away
If we could touch it we would burn!
It keeps us warm

We used warm colours, yellow red and orange to paint a sun. We had to mix a small amount of red and yellow to make orange paint. Next week we will go around our sun rays with red pastel so it looks like our suns are shining down on us!

Being Brave!

We are learning to (W.A.L.T.)
write a recount about a time we were brave


I was at Taupo. It all happened when I was on my scooter. I fell off my scooter, “ow”, I shouted. My blood was pouring down my knee. My Mum put a plaster on my knee. It hurt a little bit but it was a little bit better but in the morning it was all better. The next day I could take it off.
By Bridie

I went on a boat and I went on an island. I went up on a cliff and I jumped off it. I felt scared. I got to the bottom. I swam up on the boat and I didn’t cry. We went back in the boat. I was brave.
By Henry



I was with my Mum, Dad, Jazze and Maisie. I went up the stairs. Next I fell back down the stairs. Scratch, scratch, scratch, and scratch, bang, bang. I had loads of scratches. I cried only for a little while. I got no plasters. I was really brave.
By Noah



I was across the road. My brother was with me. He accidentally tripped my bike on me. I went to my Mum. I was very, very brave.
By Eliza



At the choir I tripped over in the mud. “Ow”, it hurt and it was bleeding. Someone picked me up. It was Brook. I went to Chilton Medical Room. After choir I told my Mum about it.
By Alice


When I was on the big playground I was playing with my fingers. Then there was a big gate. It fell on my leg. It fell on my right leg. I was with some girls and boys. I was in a wheel chair. I was brave.
By Kahu




I was in Christchurch and….”ow”, “ow”, “ow”. My knee, head and elbow were bleeding red blood. Mum had to pick me up. I was brave.
By Holly


I was at Leon's house playing inside. Then we thought we would play out side. We played on the tramp. Then Leon fell on the grass. Bang! Then I fell on Leon.
By Jasper


I was in McDonalds. I went in to the playground. Scratch! A nail hurt my back. Mum had to call an ambulance.
By Edward


When I was at home I was playing in the henhouse. I broke my arm. My Mum came running up. She was crying. She took me to the hospital. My arm was colourful because it had bruises.
By Georgie

Friday with Ms Gain

Jasper's World Map Showing the Continents and Major Oceans.


Today we read a story called ‘Where’s Julius’ by John Birmingham. In this story a little boy called Julius is always too busy to come and eat meals with the family because he is off exploring in imagined places including ‘riding camels in Egypt’, ‘cooling hippos in Central Africa’, ‘watching the sun rise in Tibet’, and ‘throwing snowballs with wolves in Russia’. We used our atlases to find all these places and put them on our world map of the continents.

We then each got a different map, depending on what continent our Flat Stanley is going to, and highlighted the country where our Flat Stanley is going. We looked at the names of some of the other countries on our continent maps and talked about countries we had heard of before and ones which were new to us. Ms Gain also taught us how to play ‘Around the World’ with geography questions. Some of us are becoming real geography experts!

We now all have our own maps of the world, which we have coloured and labeled with the names of the continents and the major oceans. We are using these as part of our Flat Stanley project and mapping work. Next week we are going to use our maps to play geography bingo.

Music

Today we learnt some rhymes and tapped the rhythms on our fingers and danced them with our feet. We then tried out some of the rhythms we had tapped on our fingers using percussion instruments in pairs. We also tried clapping and playing rhythms of the names of some fruit and vegetables. We also learnt a song called ‘Good Day to You’ and imagined singing the song to ourselves in the mirror.



Singing to ourselves in our mirrors.


Mapping

Using percussion instruments







In the afternoon we went to the hall to watch a stage show called 'Jungle Bungle'. Some of us got to go up on stage and perform and we all got to join in with some of the songs in the show that we have been learning in class.