Busy Bees!

What a busy few weeks we have had in Room 5.  We have worked so hard, with the help of many parents, towards our annual Ag Day.  A huge thank you to all the parents who sent along supplies and pitched in to help out not only with our ag day art, but on the day as well.  What a success it was!

Here is some of our art in progress:

 Super Snails

Totally Tea Cups (mini succulent gardens)

Our air-dry clay 'carvings' drying out

The finished product all painted.

We were also lucky enough to have a number of visitors to the school, including The NZ Playhouse performing Jack Flash and the Jumping Beanstalk:

http://newzealandplayhouse.co.nz/tours/

We also had the The Minstrel visit, who is always so much fun:

And we got a chance to learn some cricket skills with Matt Good courtesy of NZ Cricket:

We are now looking forward to the last few weeks of school and all the learning and fun that will bring!

Playing on our playground markings

From chalk to walk - Room 5's Inquiry in Term 3

After all our hard work, doing surveys, and research, and trials, and then more surveys - Room 5 came up with their final choices for new playground markings for our School.  After presenting our ideas to our Board of Trustees, and getting their approval (Yay! Yippee! Yahoo!), Mr Staples then got to work with our plans during the holidays so we came back to...

... and during last week, Mr Staples worked hard to finish making our plans a reality, including our fabulous Te Reo counting Taniwha.

Thanks Mr Staples for your painting work.  Thank you also to all of the children of Ohau who also supported us, trying our chalk drawings out and then giving us feedback during our surveys.  Thanks also to our BOT for their support and approval to make our Inquiry findings a reality. Ka pai!

Run Ragged

Our Run Ragged fundraiser last Thursday saw us showing our skills of participation, motivation and determination.  We joined in, cheered each other on, and kept going even when it was tough!  Thanks again to the whanau and friends who supported us.

Sarah, Eilidh and J.C. with their can-do attitude

 

Cooper and Peter showing that competetive spirit!

Maioha and Kaiaawhaa clocking the laps up together

Team Newton getting the job done too!

Bella-Maree in flying form

A Busy Time!

It has been a busy couple of weeks for Room 5. We have been working hard on our inquiry about how new playground markings could improve our school environment.  We've been testing our ideas and surveying classes, and putting our heads together to justify why new playground markings would be great. Here are some action shots from test day, of us creating and everyone enjoying our chalk playground markings:

 Drawing on the markings

 Thanks to our Parent Helper!

Double Dip Hopscotch

 Mirror Me

Piggy in the Middle

 Bean Bag Target

 Twister

Plotting and Planning, Scheming and Dreaming

Room 5 have been getting creative and thinking about types of games for playground markings.  We have been doing research on types of games, surveying other classes to see what they think of what we already have and planning and designing using the spaces we play in.

We used the Thinkers Keys to figure out ways we could find out how to go about this - all ideas accepted, out-of-the-box thinking encouraged!  We narrowed this down to 4 or so ideas to get us going.

We thought of questions and then carried out a survey of the classes at Ohau School, to see what people thought of the playground markings we already have.  Our questions we thought of together were:

1. How many people in your class play with our playground markings?

2. How often do those people use the playground markings?

Never	Once a month	Once a week	Every day

3. How many people play hopscotch?

4. How many people play 4 square or 8 square?

5. How many people would use them more if they were more exciting? For      example – different games or new paint.

We got some great results - including twice as many people saying they would use the markings if they were more exciting!

We then used ideas we thought of ourselves, found in books and researched on the internet to help us plan and design some ideas ready to test.  He we are, hard at work as designers:

 Thank you, Google Maps!

Care, Nurture, Grow

It's week 4 already and our Inquiry for this term is well underway.  Our focus this term is how we Care for, Nurture and Grow our environment. Room 5 are looking at how we can care for and improve our school playground environment through playground markings (painted games on the concrete).  We have been wondering and discovering what we already know, and asking some great questions that we'd like to find out.  

Check out the pictures below for a taste of what we have been up to: