Welcome back!

We have had a great week. We started with some very excited Kindergarteners arriving at school on Monday sharing all sorts of amazing adventures from their week holiday. Many travelled to different countries and experienced new and exciting things. Our Journal writing was amazing with some children writing two and three pages all by themselves! 

We also started our final Unit of Inquiry for this year 'Shelters' We have been tuning into what homes/shelters are and how they can look similar or different around the world. We brainstormed what we thought a shelter was and wasn't. The children did a great job and already knew a lot about this.

We then got into groups and had to sort out a range of photos under the categories of 'Shelter and Not a Shelter'. This led to some very interesting discussions and debates on what really can be classed as a shelter and not.

The children have already been talking about why we have different kinds of houses in different parts of the world and why they need to be different to deal with the weather and use different materials to build them. In groups the children classified the photos into what they thought.

Next week I will be introducing my house in New Zealand to the children. This I hope will encourage the children to then want to share what their house looks like in different parts of the world. If you have a home in a different country please send me in the pictures of the house and I will have your child explain the different materials the house is made of and various other aspects that make your home, your home. Plus why it is good for the climate you live in.

In groups of 4/5 the children were given the task of creating a house of their own. We talked about when working as group it is important to listen to each others ideas and to work together to create a final product. All the groups did an amazing job and the houses they designed were fantastic. They were great at using all the resources in the classroom to help - unit books, iPads, photos and prior knowledge.

Please ask your child about the house they designed with their group.

Brick House - Cool climate

Tent - Warm climate

Igloo - Very cold climate

Stilt House - Warm Climate

                                 Mystery Reader

A very big THANK YOU to Brigit Strube (Carla's Mum) for coming in and sharing a brilliant story with us today. The children had been trying to guess all day who the mystery reader was but no one was as surprised as Carla when she came in from lunch to see her Mum sitting on the chair with a book to read. I think it made her day :-)

Brigit read - Zilly, die Zauberin (Zilly, the sorceress) written by Korky Paul and Valerie Thomas. It was a great book about a witch who lived in a black house with everything black even her cat. After always falling over her cat because she could never see him she decided to decorate with wonderful colours. It was a great book that worked well with our current unit of inquiry. The children really enjoyed the story and LOVED the illustrations.

Maths

This week in Maths we have been learning about 3D shapes. We can recognise these shapes:
Sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, triangular prism, retangular prism, hemisphere, pyramid.

All photos were taken by the children :-)

We are all really looking forward to the trip next Wednesday. Thank you to everyone for getting the forms back to me straight away. The whole class is going :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!