Congratulations to Ava.K, Mia and Aisa who received Duffy Books and certificates at our team Friday assembly for doing some amazing things this week in Toroa!

This week we have been working on being in the ‘Here and Now’. It started off with some meditation and we had to listen to our bodies. We learnt how to listen to our bodies and did some exercises about what our bodies could be telling us.

A few snaps from our first week back at school!

We’re enjoying the warmer weather and seeing our friends again after the holidays!

This week with Pause, Breathe, Smile we have been learning about Peace Happiness. This is a feeling when we do something that makes us happy. It could be going for a walk, patting our pet or talking with friends.

We also looked at Gratitude. This is when we pause, breathe and smile while thinking of something that we are grateful for.

What brings you Peace Happiness? What are you grateful for? Let us know in the comments.

We’ve been making Maui and the sun artworks using crayon and dye, aren’t they awesome?Check out the wall display coming soon in Toroa!

Today we read the beautiful story ‘Paper Dolls’ by Julia Donaldson. This book is very special and it helps the reader to understand how things can change over time and how things can become lost. We had a big discussion about the meaning of the story, especially what happened to the little girl. At the beginning of the story her Mum helps her to make paper doll chains and eventually they disappear. When the little girl becomes a Mum many years later she teaches her daughter how to make paper dolls and the cycle continues. We followed up this story by making our own paper doll chains. The children created their paper dolls to depict themselves and we have displayed these in our classroom.

Here are our beautiful creations:

Written by Emman

Hello everyone!

On the 4/9/24 We had an amazing performance in our school! It was about Maya’s journey and being brave. There were three characters in the story. They were really good at acting even the junior kids were laughing/ Seniors. At the start they sang a song to introduce us to them. Even at the end they had song.

Maya the character went on an adventure away from her village to explore the caves and mountains. Then she met a big giant handsome bird, I have no clue what the name is because I forgot. So then they had an adventure around the mountains. The bird told Maya that he couldn’t  fly because he has never done it and he was really scared  So then Maya believed in him and he tried to but he bumped into  a wall of the mountain.

Once they kept on going, they reached the top of the mountain! Then Maya said you can do this bird! I’ll try too! He ran he went up he was flying! Maya was soo happy that the bird could fly now!

On Friday we shared our video from the Kōtuku Olympics.

Take a look.

For the last two weeks we have been learning how to write simple instructions. This week, the children enjoyed making fairy bread in class. Everyone spread their own bread and sprinkled the hundreds and thousands on top. The final step was to write down the instructions for making fairy bread and share their writing with a buddy.

This morning we were lucky enough to have Nasda come and perform an AMAZING show for us at school.

It was based on Dr Seuss and had amazing costumes, singing, dancing, stunts and sounds.

We are very grateful for these opportunities and the children were very amazed and had a great time!

Today we learnt about different types of bridges and what makes them strong.

The children were very interested to find out about how triangles are an important feature of many bridge designs. They had to complete a number of problem-solving challenges throughout the lesson and this included making a bridge out of a single A4 piece of paper. Some of the children worked with a buddy and some chose to work alone. Once the bridge was made (by folding the paper) they tested by seeing how many rods it could hold before it fell down.

Their HW challenge this week is to build bridges out of household materials and test them to see which design is the strongest. Also, if they have time they are going to see if they can find out about some famous bridges and how they are constructed (shapes, material, design etc).

I can’t wait to hear about all of their experiments!

Mrs B

We had a busy Friday of learning and creating in Kotuku. During the morning the children enjoyed completing a number of activities based around our Big Book Story ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’ by Drew Daywalt. These are the cool activities that the children had to choose from:

*Draw what the crayons would look like if they were human.

*Use Explain Everything to draw and create voices for each crayon.

*Create a theme park for the crayons that would make them all happy.

*Take part in a play based on the story.

In the afternoon, we had Discovery and we were glad to be able to get outside in the sunshine for water play. The children enjoyed quiet drawing, construction, making word finds, playing games & puzzles, imaginary play, colouring, lego and spending time with their friends. Check out our cool photos:

This term has started beautifully! All the of the tamariki in Room 9/10 have come back to Kura well rested and ready to start a new Term! Already this term we have had a visit from I am Hope and the local Firetruck.

I am Hope spoke about all the different feelings we might be feeling and what to do if you need help. They spoke about the importance of being open and honest and leaning on trusted adults. We all got a bracelet and a book which is all about MC the truck and his best friend helping others and showing manaakitanga.

We have also had a visit from our local fire station and they bought along their firetruck! We all got a turn sitting in the truck and asked all the questions about what equipment they use in case of a emergency. Our teachers had to hold two very heavy power tools, and Whaea Megan got to be the first one to use the fire mans hose.

So far this Term has been a hoot!

Morena Everyone,

We have been learning about primary and secondary colours in Art this term. Yesterday, we watched a clip about how secondary colours are created and then we completed our own colour wheels using crayons. The next step is to use paint to mix the colours.

Check out our amazing colour wheels!

Hi Bloggers,

This week in Reading, we have been looking at different cultures in New Zealand.

The Journal story I read was called…….. and it was about …….

The WALT for this week’s learning is ………… Skim Read to locate Specific Information and to retell

After Reading my Journal story with the teacher, I was able to engage in deeper learning by reading and watching the Scaffolding, Complementary, and Challenging texts. Then, it was on to the Create Tasks.

My first Create task was a mind map, I chose two facts from each supporting text and I have highlighted the ones I found most interesting

(Insert photo)

The next Create task was a character summary, I wrote a summary about why l liked this character the most and then came up with some adjectives to describe them.

Here is my work.

(Insert Photo)

What I learnt from this week’s create tasks was …..

My favourite task was …….. I liked it the most because ………

Please leave me a comment

Hi bloggers!

This term we have been learning to write Biographies. We started by writing a class biography on Roald Dahl. We learnt about what a biography is, then we learnt about the skills we need to write one. We also learnt about the structure. After that, we got to choose a famous person we wanted to write about.

We researched our influential person and took notes about their Early life/Education, Interests/Hobbies and Work Life, and Awards and Achievements. Then, we started our biographies.

I enjoyed this Writing topic because…

Today the year 4’s made a poster on everything we know about sport. We did a brainstorm on the board and we came up with lot of ideas!

Then, we used Canva to create our own poster.  I am very excited to start doing some sport next week!

I liked this task because lots of the year 4’s learnt how to embed a Canva!

“Together and Stronger School Sport Festival 2023” by Eve Hanrahan