Tate's HUMONGOUS christmas tree!

Tate emailed me this picture of his HUMONGOUS Christmas tree. It must have taken a long time to cover it in all those decorations!

Have you put up your tree yet?
Do you put a star or an angel on top?

Junior A team in Action!

Check out these pictures of members of our fantastic junior A team running a tennis activity for the junior children. They made posters and organised the children in to teams. I was very impressed with their organisation and leadership skills!

Tate is an iPad explorer!

Tate is one of our iPad explorers. He is learning how to use keynote and drawing pad at maths time. He is learning how to save things and how to email them to the teacher.

Here is his second go at using keynote. This time he had to add a picture as well.
Click on the picture below to view.

Daniella's favourite maths game keynote presentation

Daniella is one of our iPad explorers. She is learning how to use keynote and drawing pad at maths time. She is learning how to save things and how to email them to the teacher.

Here is her second go at using keynote. This time she had to add a picture as well.
Click on the picture below to view.

Josh D's maths iPad creation!

In maths we have been learning how to recall our Making ten facts instantly.
Josh D has made this keynote show to help you practice them.
Click on the picture below to check it out!

Daniella's Make Ten Keynote on the iPad

In maths we have been learning how to recall our Making ten facts instantly.

Daniella has made this keynote show to help you practice them.
Click on the picture below to check it out!

Graeson's Make Ten Keynote made on an iPad

In maths we have been learning how to recall our Making ten facts instantly.
Graeson has made this keynote show to help you practice them.
Click on the picture below to check it out!

Worm Woman of the West!

Adventuring and Exploring was very exciting this morning because we had another expert come to share their knowledge!

The Worm Woman from the West (Heather's Mum) came and shared her knowledge about worms.

We learned heaps of interesting things about worms!

Our visit from a Meteorologist - I hope you put your rain gauge outside!

We have been exploring weather this week in the morning and we were very lucky to have an expert come and talk to us this afternoon. Grant, who is Alex from Room 7s dad, came to talk to us about how to measure weather. He showed us how to make a barometer and taught us about how to measure wind speed and direction. He showed us his Springston Weather Station and helped us to make a Weather Station for our classes that shows today's weather.
Thank you Grant for coming and sharing your knowledge with us. We are all buzzing about how weather is measured!




Click here to have a look at the Weather Station that Grant helped us make. It will be on the site until the end of the week.

Adventuring and Exploring Through the Morning

We are running our mornings in a special way this term.
We have some must do's that we have to do each morning when we arrive at school. We do these in HQ.
We also have really exciting and hands on learning activities in The Lab. These are our can do's.
Here is a slide show of one of our exciting and fun can do's. Enjoy!

Exploring and Adventuring through the morning on PhotoPeach

How to draw a Cat in a Hat

We had a fantastic time last term reading lots of Roald Dahl books.
It was so much fun that this term we are reading and sharing stories written by Dr Seuss.
I found a blog article with step by step instructions of how to draw a Cat in a Hat.
Click here to have a look. I would love to see some adventurous Springston Explorers having a go!

Check out our AMAZING rugby supporters gear!!

We have been following the technology design process to create RWC supporters gear.

There will be more info soon about how we created our designs.

Here is a video of us wearing and cheering!

Quirky Quadramas!

Click here to go to the blog post that has instructions to show you how to make an awesome quadrama.

They look like something we could make in our class!

What do you think? What could we show if we made them?

Maya's beautiful Spring photo

Maya took up the ICT homework challenge! She sent me an email with a photo.

She said:

Hi Mrs Watson
Here is my picture of one of my favourite flower - the blossom. And now we know it's
spring time - have fun in spring
 
Thank you
Maya                       

I love the way she started it with Hi Mrs Watson and finished it off with her name.

Well done Maya!

William's funny surfing dog video!

Will emailed me with a link to this amazing video. We use the internet to learn new things but it can also be used to have a good laugh! William found this video on Youtube.

Springston News W3 T3 2011

Check out what's been happening at Springston School this week!

Spot the difference?

Charlie's cute puppy Milo and the amazing puppy snowman he made!

Charlie's Snow Adventures!

Snow is white and great,
it feels soft and nice,
it makes my heart feel nice,
to touch my fingers in ice.

Charlie wrote this fabulous poem about the snow. Thanks for emailing it to Mrs Watson!

Newsletter and Assembly

Hello Everyone,

It was great to see everyone back again today and I am loving how much action the blog is getting! Emailing me photos and stories your child creates at home so I can put them on the blog has been very successful! Let's try to keep it happening!

I sent home a newsletter today full of exciting up and coming events (you might want to check the bottom of your child's bag!)

BUT I forgot to mention that the Springston Explorers will be presenting the assembly next Friday.

We have started planning what we want to do and a group have been busy practicing a play. Please leave us comments with ideas of what you want to see in our assembly.

Lachlan's fantastic snow writing!

Today it was snowing really hard. The ground is white and frozen everywhere. I had a snow fight with my friends and the snow ball went flying. Today it felt like I was in Antarctica because it was -2. I was icy cold. The snow was bumpy and melting. It was really windy with snow flakes and hail. Snow day was awesome.

By Lachlan

Tate's snowman photo

Tate and his fantastic snowman and his gorgeous puppy Diesel!

School OPEN Wednesday 17th of August

We are back in business today from 10am today, 17th of August.

Please bring a change of clothes and shoes for your child.

The buses will run an hour later this morning.

Can't wait to see you all!

Kaylee's Snow Photo

It looks like you had a great time sledding around in the snow Kaylee!

Maggie's snow photo

Thank you Maggie for sending this photo of you looking like you are having a great time in the snow! I can't wait to hear what everyone else got up to on their extra days off.

The snow won't stop our Book Week!

The snow days have meant that we have missed some amazing book week action. We have decided to postpone it until next week so that we can enjoy all the fun stuff that was planned.

This means that dress up day will be NEXT Wednesday the 24th of August, not tomorrow.

I am enjoying snuggling up by the fire and reading my favourite book, Matilda. My imagination is showing me a really scary Mrs Trunchbull! We are lucky Liz is so nice!

Leave a comment telling us what book you are reading on these snow days and what you are imagining or learning.

Poetry Recital

I am crossing my fingers and toes that we will be back at school soon so children can recite the fantastic poems they have been learning. If you haven't been practicing one but would like to, go and explore this website. Kenn Nesbitt is a very funny poet. There is bound to be one that tickles your fancy!

School Closed Tuesday 16th August

School is closed today, Tuesday 16th of August. Here is a picture of what school looks like. Email your photos, stories and poems to rachelle.watson@springston.school.nz so we can have more fabulous snow stuff on our blog like Maggie's! Thanks also to Tate for leaving a comment.

Maggie's amazing snow poem

Today cold wet snow came,
We played in it,
We stayed in it,
Until our feet froze.
We loved it so much,
We didn't want it to go.

By Maggie Cahill

Khan's new house

Khan is loving his igloo! I think he will try and sleep in it tonight. Did you make anything out of snow today? Email Mrs Watson your photos and I will put them on the blog.

School Closed Monday 15th August

It is snowing again so school is closed today, Monday 15th of August.

It would be great to get some stories or poems up here on the blog about your experiences of the snow. If you write some fantastic words (or take some great photos), get an adult to email it to me so I can share them with everyone!

We will keep you updated about tomorrow.

Springston News is back!

I was watching the first episode we made and was feeling sad that we haven't been able to find time in our very busy year to make another episode. Then I had a great idea - I should offer it as an option for choice and challenge!
Here is the episode created on Friday. The children decide what they are saying and do most of the filming. I put it all together using imovie. Let us know what you would like to see on here by leaving a comment!

Reading sure did ROCK at Springston School!

We had a fantastic time at Reading Rocks on Thursday. Adrian was very funny and he told us lots about how he learned to juggle by reading a book. He told that we can learn lots of things from books and that we should keep on trying with our reading.

We were especially interested when he talked about IMAGINATION!

We went back to class and practiced it with our class novel James and the Giant Peach. We talked about what pictures we could see in our head when we were listening to the story.

It was a great way to get us buzzing about Book Week next week!

We are so excited about Book Week!

This week is book week at Springston School. The Springston Explorers love books and we are really excited about all the great activities that are planned for the week!

Some of the great things we will be doing are:

• Reciting our favourite poems on Thursday.
• Junior LitQuiz on Thursday. Get your team of 4 registered with Mrs Winter and head to the library to read the books the questions will be about.
• We will be finishing our posters that share why we love our favourite book so much.
• The teachers will be moving around the classrooms reading their favourite picture book to different classes.
• We can enter our rockets or space ships into a competition too.
• We will be having our dress up like your favourite character day on Wednesday.
  

There is lots more too!

I hope you are busy getting your favourite character costume ready for Wednesday!

Cleo the cat is ready for the Rugby World Cup!

Fantastic game tonight! Cleo (Mrs Watson's cat) was loving the game too. Dan Carter is her favourite we think! Check out our countdown to the World Cup on the right hand side of our blog.

Our Electricity Wiki

Our inquiry this term is all about Electricity.

We have been exploring lots of great electricity websites to find information and learn about how electricity works and what makes it.

Some of us have decided we wanted to share what we have learned on the internet.

So we are learning how to create a wiki to share out learning.

We have been talking about what makes a site useful and interesting and we will now decide what information we want to share with people.

Click here to visit our Electricity Wiki

We have only just begun making them. Keep checking back to see our progress. If you have any feedback or tips please leave a comment.

Space Week!

This week in Room 1 we will be reading about Space.

We will do this quiz about space. Space Quiz

How much do you know about Space? Take the quiz and leave us a comment letting us know how you went and what you think was the most interesting fact.

Maths is awesome!

Over the holidays we got new maths games for our class. Today was our first day playing with them. At the end we talked about how fun they were to play.

Sum Swamp

It was fun - Brodie

It was good because we followed the rules - Chloe

It was good because we got to play with other people - Taylah

Bus Stop

It fun because you get to collect people and lose them - Lucy

It was fun because you get use cool buses - Daniella

It was cool because we get to choose a bus - George

Auntie Pasta

It was fun because you get to make pizza and when you spin the thing you might have to give one back - Jess

I was about to win but I had to keep getting boxes - Isabella K

Hop: The Alternative!

Last week Angus brought Hop to school. Hop is the main character in a movie coming out these school holidays. We decided that we would write stories with Hop as our main character. We talked about what he might be able to do. Some children said that when we goes to the toilet jelly beans come out! Crazy!

Here is Joshua's story. He got his story finished and recorded on the Flip before the holidays started. Enjoy!

Due to popular demand! The Springston Explorers News!

This video was a real hit at Friday's assembly. We decided to make it when we were planning what we wanted to do in assembly on Monday. We knew we wanted to make a video and that we wanted Nanas to be in it. Some how we came up with the awesome idea to interview him. We then raced around the school to find the other classes mascots too and got writing interview questions.
We talked about what makes a good question and got writing!
We then interviewed the mascots. We made up answers where we could and asked the teachers from their classes the questions we couldn't answer.
Then it was time to get filming!
The credits at the end of the video show who did what parts and there are some people who didn't get the chance to be involved this time but I am sure they will be keen next time!

I am really proud of how the children went and you should know that I only did the editing using imovie at the end of the process.

I hope this is the start of regular news broadcasting from the Springston Explorers!
Watch our Hilary and Mike!

What an assembly!

Our class was in charge of running this weeks assembly.
We tried really hard to be self managing and to help Mrs Watson set up the hall.
We all had special things to remember to take over to the hall.
Mrs Watson was the one who forgot an important cord! Whoops! Luckily another teacher came to the rescue to make the speakers work!
After our hick up at the start everything went really well. The children who spoke did a really good job and we were really self managing about sitting the right way.
Our singing was beautiful and everyone loved our video!

Thank you to the parents who helped pack away the seats at the end.

Springston Explorers in action!

This weekend I found a cool website for publishing photos. We will be using it to share photos and learning more often because it looks pretty cool!

Canterbury Earthquake

To all our blogging friends who are worried about us here in Canterbury,

We are fortunate out here in Springston to have suffered minimal damage this time round.
We will be returning to school Tuesday 1st of March because our classrooms are safe and we have water and power.

We realise how lucky we are and that there are people much less fortunate.

We encourage you to support schools and the people of Christchurch that have suffered damage and loss.

Rachelle Watson and the Springston Explorers.

It's Zoo Week for the Springston Explorers!

At reading time this week we will be exploring videos of animals that live in Zoo's.

These videos are of giraffes from Youtube. The children will be watching these at reading time to help them get inspired in their reading, writing and creating.
We will share our awesome work with you soon!

Video One

Video Two

Zookeeper info: What does a Zookeeper do?

Click on the links to go to the site.

Olivia's Breakfast News

Olivia wrote a fantastic news report about our breakfast at school. She included lots of details.
She did a great job of reading her writing to the camera.

Ineka's News Report

Ineka wrote a great news report about our breakfast at school. She did a great job of including lots of details in her writing.

Eli's News Report

Eli wrote a news report about what we did at school to start our inquiry. This is his first time recording one of his stories for our blog.

Super Suzy shared her Super Hero secrets with us!

Last week we had a super visitor! She came bursting into our classrooms to share some exciting learning tips with us. During the week, children will add captions and information about our Super Hero visitor. Stay tuned for more info!

Breakfast at school - What?!

We will be having a shared breakfast on Tuesday to kick start our 'Power Up' inquiry. Click on the poster to view a larger copy.

Check out this great website!

I was busy scouring the internet for awesome junior chapter books and I came across a great children's book review website. Click on the picture to go to the site.

I think it will be useful to other teachers and parents when looking for books for children.

Enjoy!