The final Homework Challenge 'Z'

This week was the final EVER Homework Challenge!!

With the letter Z we only had a few topics to choose from... but the winner brought his usual humour to his work.

Jai did a great challenge on ZOMBIES. Well done Jai!!

White Ribbon Day

Huia Range School were lucky enough to be visited again this year by the White Ribbon Day boys on their bikes.

This is now a yearly favourite for our kids, with a very important message:  "to treat our girls and women with the respect they deserve, and that violence is NOT OK!"

Here are some pics from the afternoon...

The bikes looked mean as!!

We sat up nicely so we could get chosen to have a ride!!

Ben

Sally

Rico

Jasmine

Jahdae

"Hey, You got my apple!?"

(how to deal with confrontation...)

We had FUN!!

The Homework Challenge Winner 'Y'

Now, this was a tough letter!!

The winner though turned the idea on it's head with an entry called "YOU, Mr Evans"

So for the first time ever we have a Homework Challenge about the teacher, gosh!!

Thank you Sally, our winner this week.

Digi-Awards Winners!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow!!!!

What a night last night for the 5 lucky boys and their whanau who went over to the Regent Theatre in PN to support their efforts in the Digi-Awards.

For the first time a Huia Range School entry won a title!! We won the Year 1 - 3 Animation title. Awesome work Rico, Jake, Jai, Santana, Robert, Ben and Jahdae!!!

We found out that there were 34 school enter this year and over 720+ entries, so that shows what an amazing effort they put into their animation movie!!

Below are some pics from the night.

Well Done Boys!!!!!

We love "Zippy Shake"

From this term we have been using a new online learning tool called 'Skoolbo'. It is a bit like our other online learning tool, Studyladder. It has a range of Maths and Literacy games for the kids to do to engage them and advance their skills.

From this week Skoolbo released a range of jump Jam videos. They are really cool because the Jump Jam instructors are actually the kids 'avatars' from the Skoolbo game!!

Watch us Zippy Shake' up a storm on our first ever try!!!

We love singing!!!

Today we have been singing our hearts out!!

Check out our efforts below. And get all your friends and whanau to check out our blog too!! (We went to get to 2,000 hits by the end of the year!!)

...and here we are learning a new song "I can see clearly now".

The Homework Challenge Winner "W"

This week we had some really creative ideas. It seems that the 'tricky' letters draw out the creativity in the students, well done!!!

To give you a taste, we had witches, whales, wellingtons (the gumboots),watermelon and even wild pigs...

But the winner was Bridie's creation on 'windows' in which she created her kitchen windows and drew and listed all the things that can be seen from her windows... a really cool idea!!

"Chain Story"

Welcome to the Homework Challenge for Term 4, Week 5. Yes, you have found the right place to add to the chain story. This time around feel free to add as much as you like to the story!!! Our writing goal is to stretch our vocabulary, so get out that dictionary and thesaurus and get to work!! ... so here goes...

"There I was, frantically building, crafting, exploring and surviving. I was in the middle of my grandest attempt at the Minecraft game so far. But I could hear my brother wailing in the background 'Hey, It's my turn on the computer now!" So I logged out and glared at the clock beside me.. it was blurry but as my eyes focussed the numbers 10:30 came into view. Oh no, it was way past bedtime!!

Healthy Snack 'Sushi

Today was a really fun and action packed day for Rooms 1 & 3.

We joined together for a morning of making sushi and learning a bit about Japanese culture along the way. This was thanks to 3 Japanese friends of Huia Range School, Naoko, Kimino and Yukimi. Thanks for all your hard work today, we all really appreciate it!!

So how did we make our sushi??

1) We made some fillings. We had healthy fillings with vegetables like carrots, avocado, and cucumber and also egg, tuna and chicken for protein.

awesome work, it was hard but you never gave up trying!!!

2) Next we cooked some rice. For sushi rice we used short grain rice and added some vinegar mixed with brown sugar. It was hot so we used Japanese fans to cool the rice down.

we were puffed from all that fanning and mixing!

While some kids were busy cooking we kept busy learning some things from Japan. We tried to improve our fine motor skills by using chopsticks in the 'chopstick challenge' and had fun making origami too!!

3) Next we all had a turn to fill and roll our own sushi roll. We put the seaweed (nori) on a rolling mat and covered it with rice. Then we lined up our favourite fillings and rolled it up!! 

this was the best bit of all!!

4) Last we came back at lunchtime ans we all got to try the sushi we made and also some miso soup, tofu and sour plums for the brave (umeboshi).

good on you for trying a sour plum!!

we love sushi!!!

The Homework Challenge "FOOD"

This weeks Homework Challenge was about food. This was to help the kids make connections to our learning on Hauora and Well Being.

I was amazed that so many of the kids were able to show what they have learnt regarding healthy food options. Well done everyone.

This weeks winner though, was Jahdae. It was great to see Jahdae take risks and try a Homework Challenge. Keep it up, that's what it's all about!!!

The Homework Challenge 'V'

This week we moved onto letter 'V'.

We had a lot of entries on volcanoes and Valerie Adams. This promoted some good discussions around how volcanoes work and why they are around. We may revisit these questions later in the term.

But the winner this week was Chimari, who did a interesting little challenge on Vegetables. It was great to hear that she loves eating veges and tries hard to eat all the veges on her plate at home.

Well done Chimari!!!

Hauora, Health & Well Being

As part of our learning on Hauora (well being) we are looking carefully at food for the next 2 weeks.

We started today with an empty food pyramid...

Then we looked at the food groups: Vegetables, Fruits, Dairy, Protein and Grains.

We cut out the foods and coloured them in. Then we discussed what they were. Some were new foods for us. We talked about what are in them and if we think they are 'healthy' and which food group they are from.

Finally, we placed the foods on the food pyramid. Great work Room 3!!

Show & Tell. Term 4 Week 2

Hi,

This week we had some really interesting and important things to share...

Emma had a really cute pet, scamp. Jasmine shared her interest in Minecraft with a minecraft book. Tenessy shared her cool as pink watch and Shannon had a special doll from her grandparents.

Ava showed us a ultrasound scan image of her new sister or brother!! It was cool for everyone to see this and discuss how the image can be 'seen' in her mum's tummy. Many of the kids had seen one before and even some had been to the doctor's to see the scan being done too.

Congratulations to our Manawatu Digi Awards Finalists!!!!!!!!!

Wow!!!

Yes, from our animation movies on Fairy Tales, Myths and Nursery Rhymes we have one group that were selected as finalists for the Manawatu Digi Awards. (Only 3 from all schools across the Manawatu make the final list!!!)

The entry was "The Hare and the Tortoise" done by Jai, Jake, Jahdae, Ben, Santana, Rico and Robert. Well Done boys!!!

The awards ceremony is at the Regent on Broadway on Monday the 24th of November starting at 6:30pm. Below is the winning entry again... enjoy!!

The Homework Challenge (back up and running!!) Winner 'U'

Yes, welcome back to the Homework Challenge!! After a break for the end of last term, we are starting the Homework Challenge again.

This week was the letter 'U' and the winner was Ben with an entry on the Universe.

Well done Ben!!!

Our first learning venture on kidsedchatnz and Twitter

Today was an exciting day for 4 lucky Room 3 students. 

From this term we have joined an online learning community of primary students from schools around the country via an award winning blog "kidsedchatnz". 

Each week on the blog is a topic or theme with some challenges or tasks relating to that theme. We then work through the challenges during the week. We also have 10 questions to read to prepare for our discussion.

Then on Thursday from 2pm to 3pm the exciting part happens!! That's when we get on twitter and connect with the other kids to discuss our work!

So that we can 'see' all the other kids and their tweets etc we need to use an App called Tweetdeck. It lets us sort twitter into columns and have multiple user/private conversations with other kidsedchatnz users. It kind of looks like this...

Yes, it looks busy!! And it is, the messages column constantly scrolls through as kids from all over NZ tweet their ideas. We have to use all our reading and writing skills to keep up with the conversation.

To control the flow and direction of the discussion, the kidsedchatnz creator posts up the 10 questions one at a time during the online chat. 

So what learning is involved in this sort of activity? Well, reading, writing and spelling for a start!! Also a lot of general computer and keyboard skills too. But the real deep learning and skills go way beyond that. The kids are learning to share ideas with their peers, build on others ideas and work in a creative and collaborative way. They are also reflecting on their learning that they have done during the week.  Here are a couple of clips I took of the tweetdeck chat session today!

Thanks for watching.

Mr Evans.

P.S. Just a note on internet safety. As we are online live, I am working closely and monitoring the twitter chat with the 4 students at all times. Also the chat is only accessible to those who have been approved by the kidsedchatnz administrators. No other twitter users can join our conversations. Nor can we or chat with the general twitter public during these sessions.

Using all our Maths skills to make Chocolate Brownies!!!

Today was the last day of Term 3. To celebrate we made some chocolate brownies. We had to use a lot of Maths to get the job done.

First we had to double the recipe to make enough for everyone. We used our doubles, 2x tables, fractions and place value knowledge to work this out.

Then we looked at the equipment and discussed the names and shapes of things, we found geometry and measurement helped us here. We also compared the weight of the brown sugar and the butter, most of us agreed the brown sugar was heavier!!

After than we had to measure out the ingredients and mix it all together, our reading helped us to know what to do, Janelle helped us when we used the stove top.

After it was all mixed we put it in the oven. To know when it would be ready we skip counted in 5's around the clock. It was the end of Morning Tea when it was ready. Great!!!

But our next problem was to work out how to cut the slices. We used Arrays and our Multiplication strategies to plan this before we cut the slices. We planned to cut one into 5x5=25 and the other into 4x6=24. We hoped we might get enough for 2 slices each!!

Mr Evans then cut it cause that was a bit tricky and dangerous... and the results are....