Random Acts of Kindness

In Room 8 from the 1st -16th December are going to be doing a random act of kindness every day. 

The children have their own calendars to complete for homework but we also have a whole class calendar. Here are what the children came up with for their random acts to do at school.. even offered to clean Mr Reed's car! 

Magpies Raffle

HNPS won a HB Magpies signed jersey during the 'We love it here' promotion. 

What can a school do with 1 jersey and over 500 students? Raffle it off to help provide new playing uniforms for our Rex Graham cup rugby team. 

The challenge is that the class that sells the most tickets wins a pizza lunch with up to 10 pizzas on Monday 14th December. 

Here is the jersey and what an excellent christmas prezzie it would make. 

Christmas

Well Christmas is fast approaching and Room 8 have started the ball rolling with putting up our Christmas Tree. 

Christmas activities will start by the end of next week which fits in nicely with swimming and the many other events that tend to pop up during the busy end of term 4. 

Coconut!

There were some coconuts left over from Blast in The Park and how often can a child say they have seen a real coconut let alone open and taste one. 

The challenge came and Room 8 thought the best way to open the coconut was to smash it on the ground outside the classroom. 

Then it was taste testing time... there was a mixed response. 

Here are some photos of our adventure. 

Save the Whales

Today we read a book from The Magic School Bus all about a Wild Whale Watch. 

The last chapter in the book is all about how Miss Friz telling the students about the different reasons why whales are hunted or harmed and how they can help save them. 

Room 4 students then came and joined us to help us use iMovie. 

Check out our TV adverts to promote saving the whales. 

Taking action while exploring our drains.

Everyone learnt this morning that all our rubbish or waste travels down the drains and out to the ocean. So after morning tea we went out and looked in all the drains around the school. 

We finally found the drain down in an out-of-bounds area that was blocked with stones and rubbish.

Room 8 children thought it would be a good idea to see how much rubbish we could collect while we were out exploring the school grounds.

This is what we found from 2 minutes of picking up rubbish.

Save the sea!

Today was the beginning of our classroom being an 'ocean' and what a successful day! 

We even had two little visitors- much to the delight of the children. 

We are starting a new writing unit all about persuasive letters. 

In our letters we are going to explain why people should not pollute the ocean and the effect this has on the animals we have learnt so much about! 

First was first- we had to find out what persuasive letters where and how to write them. 

Once we had brainstormed some interesting facts and statistics to use in our writing we continued with our must do tasks for the week until....

Mr Kinsey came into our ocean (classroom) and dumped the contents of his rubbish bin! The was not a very popular person in Room 8. The children are writing their letters to him and are going to persuade him to never pollute again. 

Imagine what would happen if the turtles ate this plastic Miss Newton!

The children are loving this inquiry and the amount they are learning is fantastic. 

We will share our finished writing as soon as it is complete. 

Print making

In room 8 so far this term we have been researching the meaning behind different Maori symbols.

 From our research we then designed printing templates using a Maori pattern and shapes. 

Then came the fun part! PRINTING! The children had to print their image onto white paper, white paper with tissue paper, white paper with newspaper and a coloured piece of paper. 

Big thank you to Mya for her photography skills.