This was a tough week for both Room 4 and 5 as many of the staff and children were sick. Here’s hoping everyone is on the mend and we will be back to full health in the week ahead.

Letter Cc was a fun one with the children discovering there are so many stories about cats. The Grumpy Cat and The Greedy Cat stories were some that we all enjoyed. The Wide-Mouth Frog was a story Helen our Speech Therapist shared with us and after her session we all made frogs.

Last week was a wet Friday so we didn’t get to go to the beach as we intended for our Community Access outing, so this week the class had a visit to Moturoa Beach and had a paddle and play. The kinetic sand we have been playing with at school was very different to how the sand felt at the beach. A big thanks to Mrs Julianne Swanepoel for stepping in for the next two weeks while I am away. I know that Room 5 will have loads of fun.

This week the ‘Letter of the Week” was Bb and we had lots of fun with this letter of the alphabet. The building table is a fun new addition to the activities for our tamariki. Learning to saw, hammer or screw the wood has been popular with the children.

Some of the children discovered you can buy meat from other places than just the supermarket this week. Our trip to The Mad Butcher was lots of fun with the children enjoying their trip. They were spoilt by the friendly butcher who gave them all a fruit smoothy before they left. The Mad Butcher gave Marfell Community School a great subsidy on the meat we purchased for next week’s school breakfasts, so I think it would be great if we can support his business sometimes too. I certainly will be.

Enjoy the B slideshow with your child and please emphasis the B sound.

This week Ruma wha has been working on P words and activities The children have painted peacocks and read about pigs especially enjoying The Three Little Pigs and huffing and puffing to blow the big bad wolf away. We have used signing with this story and lots of fun voices to capture the children’s attention.

As the week has progressed we have had lots of sick children, so we have been down in class numbers so many of the activities have not been done. If you would like to play the slideshow I created you can help your child create the p sound as this is one of the easier sounds to make as it is made at the front of the mouth.

We are transitioning Benji and Phoenix as well as Codie into Room 5 this term so our beautiful Riley has moved up to Room 4 with the older Whare Manaaki children. Chase and Maikara are both doing really well in their transitions to Ruma iwa with the support of Sean. Cooking

Creating and cooking pikelets was another fun activity this week.

Gardens and Gumboots.

This week out Letter of the Week was Gg and it was perfect timing for Gumboot Friday and visiting gardens.

The children visited the school kitchen garden and learnt about all the plants and we also went down to the Marfell Community Garden to see all the plants they have growing there.

With the Rhododendron festival about to start Tupare Garden was looking amazing and provided us with lots of discussion and a great walk. G has been a great focus with the children finding g words all over the classroom and outdoors.

Our story this week was The Three Billy Goats Gruff and the children enjoyed making masks to hold up as we read the story. Other favourite G stories were Greedy Cat and the Great Big Hamburger.

See and share our slideshow as a family.

This week we continued to look at the letter f and with the extra focus on the fl blend. We took a close look at the life cycle of a fly and what they look like. We created flies from play dough and enjoyed facts about flies – yuck. We also read our fire safety book and created some great fire pictures. Check out some of our photos from a variety of our week’s activities. Also we introduce Codie our newest Room 5 student.

Term 4

A big welcome back to the start of term 4. This week we  welcomed Codie (and his Mum Leighanne) to our Room 5 classroom and love how he has settled in so well, with his transition mornings quickly changing to full days. Well done Codie.

Our focus this week was letter F and its sound. This tied in beautifully with our book of the week  –  ‘Their was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly.’  The week revolved around lots of fun F activities and it was great to see how calm, happy and involved the children were in their tasks.

Our ‘Fun Friday’ excursion was to Pukekura Park to see the fish, The Fernery, and the fountain and have a walk and fun in the playground. Next week we continue with the Fl blends.

Check out the slideshow attached to look at some of the f activities with your child and please remember to emphasise the f-f-f-f sound it makes.

Friends, fruit and fun at the Whare Manaaki and the Pukekura Fernery and playground.

A major aspect of our Whare Manaaki programme in both rooms is always the health and well-being of our students. There is always a big focus on their core strength, gross motor skills and student fitness. This term along with the gross motor skills Paula and Stella focus on, in their intervention programmes, we have worked hard at Moveables, swimming, Kidz Korner and with daily walks or runs. The runs were in preparation for our Marfell Community School Cross Country and Whanau afternoon. All that training culminated in a lovely inclusive afternoon on Wednesday this week.

All the children in the Whare Manaaki featured in the first race of the afternoon and it was heart warming to hear the cheers of encouragement that the rest of the school and their whanau gave as our children ran around the field to finish in front of the crowd. We all had fun and for those who wanted it, there was a delicious sausage in bread with sauce for their great effort.

The sausage sizzle was run by our fantastic community police and other volunteers. This was a great way to share a special afternoon with our school community.

The weeks keep rolling by and and this week we have been focussing on the letter Y, its sound, and some words and ideas associated with it. The children have been singing songs, making craft, doing tracking activities and forming their own Y letters.

This term we have been focussing on geometry in mathematics, so identifying, sorting, grouping and making patterns with the shapes have been just some of our great activities. We have been counting how many sides and corners the different shapes have and counting how many different colours and shapes we can name. Lots of simple adding factored into these tasks, and more than, and less than, concepts have all been part of our tasks.

Why not reshare the activities on our class slideshow with your child for lots of work and fun with letter Y. This gives them a chance to show you what we have done.

The letter Vv  was a fun focus over the last couple of weeks. A fun focus on the words vet and volcanoes was enjoyed by the children of Room 5. Attached below is the Letter Vv slideshow I made for the children which Mums and dads may enjoy sharing with them again. It was lovely to have Julianne step in for me, while I was on leave. A big thank you to her from me.

This week we made our outing  to Puke Ariki a little different as we caught the bus to and back from town. Wasn’t that enjoyed by everyone and apart from one unscheduled stop when someone pushed the red button “oops” the children were amazing. We could point out so many things as we travelled that the high seats allow the children to see so clearly, and great excitement was shown by everyone.

Once in town we went for a walk where we practised staying to one side of the path, stopping to wait for the green walking signal before crossing and waiting for cars to stop before walking out onto the crossings with no lights. We next went for our visit to the Library to choose our books for the week. Next it was on to the Museum for a happy visit looking at all the different exhibitions. The Megalodon was a special favourite with everyone.

As a final surprise we went to the food hall at Centre City for a morning tea snack and drink to show others what great manners we all have. The bus was still ten minutes away so we made a quick visit to the Huatoki Stream across from the bus stop. To everyone’s amazement we saw a huge swarm of eels. We couldn’t believe just how many fat healthy eels we saw swimming. It was a wonderful experience.

This outing was crammed full of life skill learning and I can proudly say the children stepped up to every challenge 100%.

“Ka Pai tō mahi” Room 5 you make me proud each and every day.

We had so much to do with our letter k activities it has taken almost two weeks to finish them.

The letter Jj is the focus for next week. Rohan came in to share his juggling skills with both Room 4 and Room 5 and the children just loved watching him juggle, as well as having the chance to try and juggle themselves. Both children and adults alike had mixed success, but all had lots of fun.

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We also had a visit from an old friend and how appropriate her name begins with K. Kayla was back from Melbourne for a few days and the students and staff had a lovely catch up with her.

One of our K tasks was making fruit kebabs, which was lots of fun with much of the fruit not making its way to the stick, but was popped into mouths. Yum!

As  I am on leave for two weeks from Friday. Mrs Julianne Swanepoel will be teaching in Room 5 during this time. I have included the last of our K slides as well as inserting next week’s slide show on letter J for you to enjoy, with your child.