Scratch

Today Mr Crowhurst came and taught us how to use Scratch which is a coding programme. Coding is like learning how to write a good book. We all know how to play computer games but we don't know what goes into making those games. Coding teaches us that.  We are learning how to programme our 'sprite' to make a rectangle and a triangle. It's harder than you'd think!!

Salute!

Our class enjoys playing a fun game called Salute. Two players receive a card which they put on their foreheads without looking at. A third player decides if the round will be addition, subtraction, multiplication or division and says the answer to what the two cards total. The player who guesses what their card is first wins.

PPPs

Thank you to everyone who came to our class PPPs - Pupil Progress Presentations.  The children truly enjoyed sharing their learning with their parents and even a couple of grandparents came along.  It was wonderful hearing the children talking about their goals, successes, achievements and everyday classroom work. Using our Chromebooks was a great way to share their learning at our PPPs and now to be able to show it to those who were unable to attend.

Michelangelo Art

Today we joined our buddy class to learn about Michelangelo and how he painted the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican City.  We talked about how he spent approximately 5 years laying on his back painting scenes onto the ceiling of the church in the 1500's.  After our discussion, we joined our buddies under their tables to try creating our own art while lying on our backs!  It was a lot of fun but our arms definitely got tired quickly.

Here are a few pictures of us creating our masterpieces and here is a short movie about our afternoon.

Buddy Science

Milky way experiment.  We filled a small tray with milk.  Then we added a few drops of food colouring into the milk in separate places.  After we added a drop of dishwashing liquid, we used a toothpick to swirl the colours in the milk.  It made beautiful patterns.

Our next experiment was to make paperclip helicopters.  We had to follow directions to fold and cut the paper and add a paper clip to make our helicopters work.  We had fun letting them go from as high as we could reach and watching them spin to the ground.

Kakapo Art

Today we began working on the backgrounds for our kakapo sketches. We had practised sketching native New Zealand plants and then we drew them onto our background. When we were happy with our plan we used pastels to colour in our sketches. 

Our Fabulous First Week!

What a super week we have had starting our learning journey together in this, our penultimate year at Cockle Bay School!  One of the first things we've done this week is learn what 'penultimate' means.  Ask us to see if we can remember and use it in a sentence.

We spent time this week talking about what is important to take along with us on our learning journey this year.  We talked about how everywhere we go on our journey we leave footprints.  We are making our own learning journey pathway display in our classroom.

Here we are working together brainstorming what we know about the Cockle Bay 4Cs


Our Ready Steady Go learning wall is off to a great start filled with our shared ideas.

One of the definite highlights of our week was the welcoming of our class pets - 17 tadpoles!  One has already turned into a frog and we are having fun feeding him with a record of 9 flies given to him in one day!  This is a picture of our first frog and his first fly.  They sat like this for about an hour before the frog zipped out his tongue and ate the fly!  Juliet was the lucky one who saw it happen.

Our class writing wall has our first quick write activity on display.  Make sure to stop by often to read what we've been working on.