Our Book Week Parade

 Well done, Room 2, for your efforts in dressing up for the school's book parade. Most of our costumes were made in class during school time. It was great to share ideas and help each other out to make sure everyone had a costume.

We discussed the need to choose a character that everyone could identify, like Where's Wally, or Dr Seuss's Thing One. Some of us wanted to dress up as Bradley Chalkers from The Boy in the Girl's Bathroom by Louis Sachar. We decided that no one actually knew what Bradley would look like, so it was impossible to dress up as him.

See if you can identify all these characters...

 

Yoga Classes

WE have been working with Kumar from the Auckland University on yoga type exercises to help improve our strength, balance and flexibility.

When we first began, it was amazing how hard these simple exercises were. But after a few sessions, many of us can stretch further, and hold these poses for longer periods of time.

Kumar also leads us through some breathing techniques designed to release tension and help us to relax. These breathing techniques and thought processes help us with our mental wellbeing.

We only have two sessions left but we now know the exercise routines and understand what they do for us. So, hopefully, these yoga stretches and poses are a form of exercise we will all be able to continue to do.

Garden to Tables

 We are lucky to have a Garden to Tables programme running at our school. Half our class work in the garden while the other half prepare and cook food in the kitchen. The session culminates with us all sitting down to a delicious meal.

The gardners did chores like pulling out weeds, trimming branches, collecting seeds, cleaning out the compost bins and spreading mulch. Hard physical work but very rewarding.

The cooks in the kitchen made a pasta dish with a tomato sauce. Others cooked kumara chips or made a rhubarb muffin. Cooking is a reading and maths activity. The recipies needed to be carefully followed, and the ingredients accutrately measured.

The result after an hours dedicated work was a scrumptious healthy meal. Hopefully, we can all go home and help with the gardening and cooking around the house.

Our Pastel Portraits

 

February 2021, The Perfect, Pretty Rectangle Month

 February is the only month that can sometimes form the perfect rectangle. 

When it is not a leap year, February has 28 days. 28 is divisible by 7. Perfect for a rectangle.

To be a pretty rectangle, February 1st has to be on a Sunday. That will always make  for a Friday 13th, for those who are superstitious.

No other month can ever make the perfect pretty rectangle that February has made in 2021 because 30 and 31 days are not divisible by 7. So you will always have extra days left over even when the 1st day is on a Sunday.

Perfect, pretty rectangular February's happen every 6 or 11 years.       

A New Math's Challenge to Start 2021

 We had a new Math's challenge that we worked on this week. 

How could we equal all the numbers from one to twenty using four 4's. We could use any mathematical sign. We couldn't use three 4's, or even five 4's. We had to restrict ourselves to exactly four 4's.

We got really stuck until Mr. Waller showed us factorial 4's. Factorial 4's are recorded like this 4! 

4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1

4!= 24

Here are our answers...

1. 4 - 4 + 4 ÷ 4 = 1

2. (4 ÷4)+(4÷4)= 2

3. (4+4+4) ÷ 4 = 3

4. (4 - 4) x 4 = 0 + 4 = 4

5. (4 x 4) + 4 = 20 ÷ 4 = 5

6 (4 + 4) ÷ 4 = 2 + 4 = 6

7. (44 ÷ 4) - 4 = 7

8. (4 x 4) - (4 + 4) = 8

9. (4 ÷ 4) + (4 + 4) = 9

10. (44 - 4) ÷ 4 = 10

11. (4! + 4!) - 4 = 44 ÷ 4 = 11

12. 4! - (4 + 4 + 4) = 12

13. 4! - (44 ÷ 4) = 13

14. (4! ÷ 4) + (4 + 4) = 14

15. (44 ÷ 4) + 4 = 15

16. 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 16

17. (4 ÷ 4) + (4 x 4) = 17

18. (4.4 x 4) = 17.6 + .4 = 18

19. 4! - (4 ÷ 4) = 23 - 4 = 19

20. 4! + 4 - (4 + 4) = 20

After we completed this challenge, we had a go at doing the same thing with five 5's.

Lots of creative problem solving and collaboration took place in this Math's challenge.

Music Lab

I am not a musician by any means. I can't play an instrument and sing like a strangled cat. But, during this enforced lockdown, it is a time to try your hand at something new, or something out of your comfort zone.

Thank you Jonathan from my class, for introducing me to Music Lab.

There are many different options. Click on the smiley face and you will be taken to the songmaker option. 

Even though I'm musically challenged, I was able to use maths to keep repeating a pattern until I had created something that sounds a bit like a real piece of music.


My piece of music




Jonathan's composition.




Cortez's composition.




Have some fun, and have a go.

Garden to Tables

Our class have Garden to Tables fortnightly for the first half of this year. Garden to Tables is a programme where we can get our hands dirty in the garden. It is a programme where we can make and create delicious meals in the kitchen.

We help grow, harvest, prepare and share fresh food. Today we made a basil pesto pasta and a blueberry and apple crumble. Some of the ingredients were grown in our own school garden.

We are lucky to have parents that come in and support the programme by helping Ms Best in the kitchen and Whaea Joyce in the garden.

This is the Garden to Table's website where you can find out much more about the programme. Maybe a school in your area might like to get involved.

Microstories

We have been using Storyathon.com to have a go at writing microstories. These are stories that are exactly 100 words long- not a word more, or a word less.

WE also use the One Hundred Word Challenge, 100wc.net, to also write microstories, although their word count criteria is a little bit more flexible.

Microstories force the writer to think long and hard about which words they actually need. It is challengung to open with a hook and finish with a plot twist, in just 100 words.

Here are a few of our examples. The prompt was "IT wasn't me" ...

Drop, Cover, Hold

People throughout New Zealand participated in an earthquake drill today, the Great Shakeout Earthquake Drill. 
In an earthquake, it is safer to 

• (drop) to the floor 
• (cover)  get under a desk ot table 
• and (hold) the legs of the table to stop it crashing over

We live on the Pacific Ring of Fire. That is why we have volcanic activity. Auckland is built on 50 volcanoes. Rotorua is an active thermal area with geysers and mud pools.





Unfortunately, we also have earthquakes. The Christchurch earhquake in 2011, killed 185 people and did a lot of damage. Christchurch is still being rebuilt today.

Tessellations

We have been making tessellations, patterns that repeat and cover an area without any gaps or overlaps.

We made some by using a piece of cardboard to make a stencil block. We started with a rectangle shape and cut a piece out on one side. Translate that piece across to the opposite side and tape it on. If you want to, cut a second piece out from one of the other sides and translate that piece across.

Then use the stencil block to cover a piece of paper, repeating the pattern without any gaps or overlays.

Repeat the colours in a pattern...

We had a lot of fun on this interactive website Shodor.