Our very own budding author

Check this guy out!

Jonny is the ultimate book maker.  He is always dreaming up amazing story plots and making them happen on paper.  The really fabulous bit is it is all self motivated and self created.

Here is Jonny sharing one of his recent big books 'The Wildebeest', with the class.

Jonny points out and explains one of his little characters.  We should have taken a close up of the left page.  The illustration of the character had so much expression!

He added lots of expression using his voice and his body.  Unfortunately we missed getting the photo of his arms out to emphasis one of his characters saying "No, no, no" on this page.

Jonny shows the signs of a great author because...  he left the class asking for more!

Web of Kindness!

Our school value focus for Term 4 is KINDNESS!

We made a web of kindness with a ball of colourful wool.  We said something kind about someone in the class.  Then while still holding onto the wool, passed the ball to that person.  Before we knew it we had created a web of kind words, a bunch of smiles, warm hearts and a knot in the middle ;).  You can see from our photo we were all feeling pretty good by the end of it!  Kindness sure does make the world brighter.

Our challenge to ourselves is to find 100 ways to be kind.  But we can't just think of ways, we actually have to do them.  We are making a chain of all the ways we have been kind in A3.  Here is a photo of how long it is so far after Week 1!  We are REALLY keen to get it super long.  Our challenge has really made our class a nice place to be :)

We are so SMART!

Over the past 8 weeks we have been exploring the different ways of being SMART.  Here are some photo's...

BODY SMART

Playing soccer... nice foot work!

LOGIC SMART


Puzzles!

Logic Challenge: Create something out of Lego that will hold the weight of our class sellotape holder and allow a toy car to pass under.

 

Jonny was able to complete the extra for experts challenge:  Create something that will hold YOU and allow the car to pass over!  What a Logic Smart person you are Jonny!

Science Experiments! 

We made water bend, hair stand up and aluminium cans roll without touching them!

PICTURE SMART

Stu Duval

WORD SMART

Book Week!

MUSIC SMART

PEOPLE SMART

 Learning about being friends with Harold!

NATURE SMART

Worm hunt!  We found lots of other things along the way, too!

SELF SMART

Next week we each choose our top SMART and have an afternoon doing what we do best!  Can't wait!

Shadows, Sun and Scientists

We were doing a whole lot of noticing this morning being the keen scientists that we are.  Did you know that leaves have lines like our palms have lines!? (Thanks Sarah for making that link).  While we were playing shadow tag for fitness we thought, hey why don't we draw around our shadows and see what happens to them over the day!   The shadows in the photo's below are at 2pm. The blue outline was drawn at 10am.  We made sure we stood in the same place both times.

We noticed:

• The sun was on a different side of the sky at 2pm.  Everyone said the sun moved - this will be something to explore while we study space this term.
• The sun was 'behind' (on the base side of) the shadow both times.  If you are facing your shadow the sun is behind you.  
• At 10am we could see the moon.  It was shaped like a banana and was almost opposite the sun.
• Our shadows were a little bit shorter at 2pm.  They were still gigantic though compared to us!
• At 2pm we had no shadow sometimes.  This happened when there was 'no sun'.  We decided this was because the clouds covered the sun.  We are sure now the sun makes our shadows.

When we looked at this photo we noticed Aikona, Elina, Tayla and Luque's shadows are all going in the same direction.  They all look like they are standing in a line, but the four of them are not!  Hmmm...

Aikona came up with a great idea to draw an arrow showing the direction his shadow moved.  The yellow outline is at 2pm.

We wonder what happens to our shadow, between the two shadows?  Some of us think our shadows will get bigger, some of us think they will get smaller and some of us think they will disappear.  We will have to see tomorrow and have a look at 12pm!  What do you think?

Other thoughts we had were: are there shadows at night - we think yes because of the moon.  We also started to think about how Jemima (our wonderful friend who moved to England) sleeps when we are awake - in some parts of the world it is night while in others it is day.  Something to explore!!!!!

Until next time, this is A3 Mad Scientists over and out.

There's an arachnid in the class!

Our wonderful Jonathan LOVES bugs.  He delights us with them every week.  Jonathan has showcased a huge variety of local insect life for us to inspect!!!

Today he brought in the biggest spider we've ever seen with our own eyes.  It is called a Miturga in Australia, and a Uliodon in New Zealand.  It's common names are a Vagrant Spider or a Prowling Spider. 

We had to take this photo super fast because we could only open the lid for a short time... and we didn't want to get too close (they bite, but are not poisonous).  You can see how big it is compared to a lavender head!!!

Use the link below for close up photo's.
http://www.terrain.net.nz/friends-of-te-henui-group/spiders/vagrant-spider.html

Bubble, bubble, pop!

B is for Bubbles!

We had a lot of fun blowing bubbles while thinking about the sound 'b'.  We briefly brainstormed our first ideas and words about bubbles, and what we saw and experienced.  Here are just a few...

• "a floating marble"
• "slippery"
• "colourful"
• "bubbles all colours of the rainbow"
• "flying everywhere, a bubble passed Bree"
• "the bubble is like a balloon and it popped in my face"
• "heaps of bubbles everywhere"
• "I saw one in Aikona's hair.  I popped it, and he didn't notice."
• "swirly metalic colours"
• "a bubble sat at the end of my stick"
• "POP!"
• "I tried blowing on a bubble and it didn't pop!"
• "the bubble mixture is gooey"
• "bubbles pushed together"

Can you think of anymore ideas? - post a comment!

Tomorrow we will think more about how they move, what they look and feel like and what it might be like to be a bubble.  I can't wait to see what amazing stories everyone writes tomorrow.  We will post a few once we have written them.

April's Calendar Challenge

Here are the winning entries (in no particular order) for April's 'name and place that wild animal' challenge.  You all went above and beyond.

Congratulations Samuel C! We loved the photo's, and super cool to see you presenting it in your own handwriting (...and in your rather fantastic self inspired home writing book, what an inspiration!!!)

Congratulations, Luque!  The cool thing about your entry is how you asked questions and answered them, "5 facts about Orangutan's" is a really catchy title.  You alerted us to orangutan's being an endangered animal and why.  These kinds of issues are really important to talk about because God gave us all the job of looking after the earth and what he made.

Congratulations Sarah!  It is really fabulous how you brought together facts, an acrostic poem you wrote, diagrams and pictures.  A superb variety, showing creativity and a personal touch.  An AWESOME entry!

Pre-bell fun with Mrs Ah Chan!

On a soggy wet Friday what's a 5 year old to do before the bell!?  Well for the very fortunate A3, Mrs Ah Chan taught a few of us how to do some origami.  We were captivated by your talent Mrs Ah Chan :)

 

2014 Calendar - Wild Animal Research Challenge

Our classroom calendar has a photo of a different wild animal every month.  The challenge for those who choose to accept it is:  

Can you name the animal and where it lives?

Our 5 year old, ready researchers went above and beyond and provided lots of interesting facts as well.  Here are the entries for February's animal.

Our fabulous entries created a healthy hearty class debate over whether our calendar elephants were African or Asian.   Two entries thought Asian and four thought African.  

March

This week we presented our March animal entries.  They were very creative!  We had a variety of styles - posters, a book, and a story!  Our calendar is in the background on the right if you want to see the photo for yourself.

Congratulations Luque, Sarah, Jonathan, Samuel C and Jonny!

This entry is Jimin's.  She was away when we presented our entries, but isn't it a great one!

FireWise

Last Friday, we got some super fun visitors.  Firemen from our local fire stations came to check up on our FireWise knowledge.  They thought we had really learnt our stuff.  

If you know how to be FireWise tell us by making a comment at the bottom of this post!

We can answer the firefighters questions.

Get down, Get low, Get out FAST!

We walk calmly away from the 'fire'.

Check out what is in one side of the fire engine!

Check out what is on the other side of the fire engine!

There are all kinds of things in a fire engine. We thought the tools they have are pretty cool!

The best bit was getting to go INSIDE the fire engine!

Oooh, lots of buttons!

I wonder how many school children you could fit in a fire engine?