Celebration Friday

It was another fantastic week in Te Pihinga! All of the children in TP are showing attributes for being Enthusiastic Learners towards their learning. 

As this week was New Zealand Sign Language Week we were lucky enough to have two very special visitors from the Senior School, Jorja and Nikita visit us in TP on Friday, we were taught new signs and how to sign our names. We even had two of our own in TP sharing their wonderful knowledge of Sign Language- Ka pai Alexis G and Emma W. 

On Friday, we began our Junior Sport Rotations with four sports to explore- Soccer (Football) with Mrs White, Hockey with Mrs T,  Netball with Mrs Spragg and Rippa Rugby with Miss Sutherland. We all saw fantastic team work, what a great way to learn some new skills and develop some skills we may already know.  

Fridays are always a celebration of the week where we are able to share our wonderful hard work with our friends. We even got to celebrate as a whole school in the Wharehui for the HERO Awards. 

We had many amazing TP children up the front receiving their awards, and many more to come, keep working hard towards your goal team, you are all doing very well. 

From Miss Sutherland and Mrs Spragg. 

First Day Back For Term 2!

Welcome back everybody from Te Pihinga! A special welcome to our lovely Te Kakano students who are now apart of our Te Pihinga family- we are very pleased to have you with us on our journey.  

We have all settled in very well, Mrs Spragg and Miss Sutherland are very impressed with your flexible and resilient attitudes to all of the new and previous changes. We have already noticed that our readers, mathematicians and writers have improved over the holidays and in Term 1, thank you TP families and TP children, we are looking forward to seeing how we all improve this term. 

We have taken a few images from throughout the first day and the teachers have seen some enthusiastic learners especially in Geometry and other learning areas. Enjoy! 

Celebration Friday!

In Te Pihinga we are very creative and busy children, we love sharing our fantastic work with everyone. Lately we have been working in groups, pairs and as individuals to achieve our goals in literacy. Working together is helping us with our participation and co-operation skills. 

Celebration Friday is a time where we are able to share a piece of our work from the week, we are super proud of all of our work in Te Pihinga. Below are a few images during Celebration Friday, Ka pai team! 

Come check out our work from last week in TP! 

Some fabulous explanations 

The Loraxs sharing their diorama's to the class

K's diorama based on a journal text 

The Foxes sharing their work based on a text 

The Hortons sharing their restaurant menus

A pair sharing their fabulous menus 

The Sam-I-Ams performing their puppet show

                  

Hand made props based on a story from their guided reading session 

               

Creating our Solar System

We have been learning about the Solar System over the past few weeks. We have started working on a visual art creation of the Solar System. We are working in groups of three - four on each individual planet within the Solar System. We are creating the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and our dwarf planet Pluto. 

On Friday, we began using newspaper and paste by covering a balloon/planet in our groups, we created one layer. Once we had finished our first layer, we went off and lent a helping hand to other groups in Te Pihinga. We had a super morning exploring and working co-operatively. 

Below are a few images of our Fun Day Friday morning Solar System Space art. Watch this space for our next update on the Te Pihinga Solar System.   

To Infinity and Beyond

In Te Pihinga this week we are looking into space because on Friday we are having SPACE CAMP. Mrs S is reading the class The Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System and we are all enjoying asking questions and sharing our knowledge about the planets, moon and space.

Here are the questions we have been asking:

Tayla - What is a solar system?

Corbin - Why has no-one been through the milky way ever?

Kynzie - Why is the sun so hot? It is 15 million degrees hot.

Chloe - Why has the sun always been the hottest planet? We found out the sun is a star, which is why it is hot.

Hana - Does space end?

Laura - Why is one of the planets away from the sun?

Tayla - What year was space made?

Kynzie - Why is there rings around a planet?

Liam - Why do planets spin?

Chloe - How is space made?

Angus - Is the smallest planet in the universe earth?

Connor - How can the sun change from one side of the world to the other?

Kynzie - What is the biggest planet?

Corbin - Why is the milky way the biggest thing in space?

Chloe - What was the first planet ever made

Xavier - what was the last planet ever made?

Sam- When was the first planet discovered?

Toby - How was the milky way made?

Hana - Why do planets spin very slowly?

Aren't we great thinkers?!

We also have shared some of our space knowledge. Some of us know lots about space and some of us a little bit. Our learning is going to help us answer our questions and maybe change some of our thinking.

Here are our knowings:

Corbin - Planets move around the sun.

Chloe - All the planets that are in space

Xavier - MVEMJSNP an acronym for the planets (Pluto is the coldest)

Angus - The hottest planet is the sun

Xavier - The sun isn’t a planet its a star

Shjon - Some planets make a circle around the sun. Some planets move different ways around the sun.

Xavier - There is more than just one moon. Jupiter has 6 moons.

Thom - The milky way is the biggest thing in space.

Laura - Also a planet is really cold because its far away from the sun.

Lara - The sun moves to the other side of town. It’s moveable

Hana - there isn’t only one sun.

Chloe - In outer space there is more than a lot of planets. One of the planets is really hot.

Sam - There isn’t only one moon.

Aliz’e - Pluto is now a dwarf planet. Not a planet.

Shjon - thinks that Mercury is the biggest planet.

We have worked on some great activities. On Monday we spent some time working on the orbits of the Sun, Earth and Moon. Here are some photos of our work.

Ronaldo's Sun

Cutting the holes are tricky

The finished product

We have also done some writing. 

Here are a couple of space stories:

Dear diary, 

I jumped onto the pillows. Bang! The pillows exploded and I landed on the rocket. I went up and down. And I was in the sky and I finally was on the sun.

By Amelia

Dear diary,

It's space time class! 

It was time to go. We pushed the buttons. It went like, three two one Blast off! "Wow!" said the class. So this the moon class. "Wow!" said the class. It's so big, we jumped out. Bang! We landed on the moon. We saw heaps of craters. "Why is the moon grey?" said the class. "Wow!" I can jump so high. 

By Thom

We really do love to explore space ... even if it is just in our classroom.