We had our first bug inspired art day yesterday. In home groups, the children had the opportunity to create bug or bug related sculptures. We hope to install these in the tremendous area. Here we are in action!

Art Extravaganza Movie

Kowhai News Week 6 2108

Bug Art Extravaganza Day 

Next Thursday, the Kowhai Team are having an Art Extravaganza Day. This has been inspired by our investigations into bugs, following on with a visit from Ruud Kleinpaste, 'The Bug Man'. We are looking at creating some amazing sculptures and outdoor art for everyone to enjoy. We would love some more art supplies (wool, fabric, clay, wire, beads or newspaper) so if you have anything spare you could drop into us, we would very much appreciate it.

Treemendous Makeover!

Sleep Scientist 

During week 8, we will be entering the next phase of our inquiry into sleep, which comes under the bigger umbrella of 'sustaining our well being'.  This will involve the children being sleep scientists. Being a sleep scientist will involve your child bringing home sleep slips to fill in or them to record the time they go to bed and how long they sleep for. They will also be given a small clock, which is theirs to keep. The students are required to fill out three consecutive slips in order to analyse their sleep patterns and formulate a goal to do with sleep. We would love these slips to be filled in (with your assistance, if needed) and returned to school the next day so that each child has a record of how they slept and how they felt when they woke up.

Literacy 

Tied in with our Bug Art Extravaganza Day, we are going to be focussing on learning about insects during our literacy time. We will be reading all about insects and their features and how they survive in their different habitats and then we will use this information to write reports on them. It will be bugs galore! If your child is interested in a particular bug or bugs and they have some books or interesting information about them, then please do encourage them to bring these in. We would love for them to share their enthusiasm!

ASB Financial literacy

This week we have had a special visitor in our maths groups. An educator from ASB came to teach us about money!

We learnt about notes and coins and the difference between a debit card and a credit card. Now we know that a debit card uses our own money while a credit card uses the bank's money (and charges us a fee!)

Then we played a really cool game called "Look for the best deal". We visited a virtual supermarket and made good choices about what to spend our virtual money on.

We are very grateful for these financial literacy lessons from ASB.

Winter!

We were talking in our home group about winter this week. We have all been finding it difficult to get out of bed lately! We decided that we needed to remember all the good things that winter offers us and came up with this list:

Last Friday, the children who visit our elderly residents at Thorrington Resthome were filmed for the What Now TV show. This was a super exciting experience for all involved. What Now are currently creating an item to show how people volunteer in our local community. They heard about our team visiting Thorrington Resthome to connect with our elderly friends and wanted to put us on the show.
Here are the children in action, being filmed and wearing the new High Vis vests that have been kindly donated by HRS Construction.
We hope to organise a trip to the What Now Studio for these children so they can see how the footage is edited!

Hi everyone,
What a busy two weeks we have had at swimming. It has been wonderful to see the children demonstrating the school value, ‘We love challenge' in the way they have listened carefully to the instructors and worked on improving individual swimming skills.
A huge thank you to all the parents who came along to assist us at the pool. We appreciate the time that you have given!



Sleep Sleuths
While we have been swimming, the children have been,  'Sleep Sleuths' researching facts about the importance of sleep. The children brainstormed a variety of questions (wonderings) they had about sleep. We have used a variety of methods to research the answers to our questions, including watching YouTube clips, reading books, reading websites online or articles and texts created by the teacher.
For many of the children, they have grown their understanding about the importance of sleep, the sleep cycle, dreaming, how animals sleep to name a few. Communicating and sharing this learning will be our next focus.
For most of the team, the teachers have taken an integrated approach by teaching reading and writing at the same time instead of giving the children separate reading books and writing on an unrelated topic. This has enabled us to clearly show the link between reading and writing.
Across the team, the children have been given greater agency with their learning by working in a variety of ways. This has looked liked working individually, with a buddy, in small groups, and using a variety of resources.

Next week, we will be exploring sleep spaces and how people sleep around the world. Here are some images which were taken within one literacy block this week which show how we differentiate learning.