An Invitation to Families of Five-Year-Olds Who Have Started This Year

"Are You The Wolf?"

Every time Miss Ewen goes past Room Two the children ask her excitedly "Are you the wolf?". That's because they love one of the games we've been playing in P.E. It's a bit like "What's the time Mr. Wolf?" except the children have to creep silently behind Miss Ewen and then freeze when she turns around and ask her "Are you the wolf?" If she says no and turns around the children continue to creep quietly after her. When she turns around again they repeat the question, "Are you the wolf?" Eventually she says yes and chases them all back to the start - and if they're not quick enough (or they've crept too close to her and can't get away quickly enough) they might be caught - like Deevon in the photo below!

This week in P.E. we focused on tennis skills (holding a racket correctly with two hands and practising hitting a ball while moving). The children had fun with this and there were some great hits made - we might have some budding future tennis stars in Rooms One and Two! Here are a few photos:

Aden about to make contact with the ball.

Joseph keeping his eye on the ball and about to make a hit.

Valentino after a great shot.

Cyprus aiming carefully for the ball.

Ceazah-Blue giving it a go.

We also continued to work on our throwing and catching skills. This week our focus was on underarm throwing. We had to make our arm like an elephant's trunk and swing our beanbag into the coloured hoop that was called out. The hoops were actually 'battleships' and if we got four beanbags in the targeted hoop we sunk it - this game was lots of fun and we are getting better with our aim and throwing. Well done Rooms One and Two!

 

Growing Resilience and a Growth Mindset

Congratulations to Tevita and Ashleigh who are the Room Two certificate recipients this week. Tevita gets his certificate for always taking care with the presentation of his work. Tevita works hard to produce lovely artwork. He always makes an effort to produce his best work when he is drawing - and if he thinks he can do better he tries again and makes improvements. Well done Tevita - you are showing resilience because you keep trying!

Ashleigh gets her certificate for reading aloud with enthusiasm and expression. She is using punctuation and other clues in the story (such as exclamation marks and bold text) to read with expression.

Reading with expression means Ashleigh is making her voice interesting when she reads. She is reading the text with feeling that matches what it means. This really helps with understanding a text because it instantly increases a child's access to meaning as they read.

When Ashleigh realises she hasn't read part of the story with the expression it needed she goes back and re-reads the text again - this time with expression. Mahi pai Ashleigh - you are showing a growth mindset because you know you can try again and do better!

P.E. with Room One and Miss Ewen

From this week on, every Monday, Thursday and Friday afternoon (apart from those weeks we are going swimming) we will be joining Room One to do P.E. with Miss Ratumaibuca and Miss Ewen. "Why do we do P.E.?" asked Miss Ewen. "Cos we can get healthy," replied Trelia. "And strong", said Joseph. That's two great reasons - and there's lots more. (Comment below to add to our list of why P.E. is important for our tamariki.)

This term our focus is on small ball skills. We will look at skills associated with different sports which use small balls (such as tennis and hockey). This week we focused on learning to catch and throw. We played some really fun games to help us learn these skills.

One of the games we played was called 'Bombs Away'. The children had to drop (not throw) a ball down and then scoop it up again with their hands to catch it after it had bounced. One of the important things the children had to remember was to 'glue' their pinkies together when they caught the ball so it didn't slip through. Some of us are really good at catching and we all had lots of fun practicing.

When we were practicing overarm throwing we had to hold the ball by our ear, make sure our elbows were up and aim with our other arm. Keanu thought we looked like archers with a bow and arrow - he's right!

Each lesson we end with a fun game. 'Pirate Treasure' was a fun game where we had to steal Miss Ewen's treasure while she wasn't looking and freeze when she turned around. It was lots of fun being active and practicing skills. Don't forget to comment below as to why you think P.E. is an important part of learning for our tamariki!

Congratulations Aden and Ayla!

A big congratulations to brother and sister Aden and Ayla who have both been working hard in Room Two and each received a certificate this week.

Aden's certificate is for always putting in a good effort at writing time by settling to work fast and trying his best. Aden has been learning to make sure he always puts a capital letter at the beginning of sentences, and punctuation (such as a full stop or exclamation mark) at the end of sentences. Aden has been concentrating hard on this and editing his work if he forgot to include capital letters or other punctuation when he was drafting.

Ayla was so excited to receive her certificate. It is for participating well at mat-time by sharing ideas and listening to others. Ayla always has an interesting contribution to make to discussions but she also listens well to the ideas of others which is just as important.

Mahi pai Aden and Ayla - keep up the great work!

Helping Each Other With Our Learning

In Room Two we are building learning relationships by helping each other with our learning. Knowing how to access resources to help us (in this case the teacher and other children) is a very important skill. And giving help to others displays our school values of love and service.

Today in class Trelia curiously brought her sound card to Miss McKenna and asked "Where is my?". Ceazah-Blue, who was sitting next to Miss McKenna, jumped up and said "Here, I'll find it!" and showed Trelia where it was.

Well done Trelia for asking questions to help your learning and thank you Ceazah-Blue for showing love and service by helping your classmate. What great learning relationships we are building!

The Gingerbread Man

On Friday, Miss McKenna and the Room 2 children read The Gingerbread Man.  The children loved the story and also loved the idea of making gingerbread men like The Little Old Woman and The Little Old Man in the story.  So today, Ms Chan, Ms C and the Room 2 children made gingerbread men together . . .

Cooking together is always a rich learning experience for young children.  It involves the senses, leading to descriptive oral language from the children.

This activity was also a meaningful opportunity to practice counting, with the children passing the bowl around the table for stirring, counting to 10 for each child to have their turn.  We also had to measure out the ingredients, which was another opportunity to explore maths.

And of course, making gingerbread was lots of fun!  The children loved the process of transforming the raw ingredients into something yummy that they could eat!