On Thursday Josiah brought some piglets from his house to school.

This pig was brown - a gingerbread colour. The piglets were cute.

Darrin liked the white and black piglet. They were sneaky. They kept jumping out of the box.

The piglets squealed and squealed if we were too noisy. We gave them a cuddle to keep them quiet.

Our Big Day!

 We had a day all about fun yesterday.
 

We did some activities. One was baking cupcakes with icing and marshmellows or lollies. We did tap dancing with old money taped  to our feet to make them tappy. Some of it fell off. We played golf. It was exciting and it was very very windy and our hats blew off!

We made some whales out of paper and we decorated  glasses to wear. We played touch rugby and candlesticks on the top field. We had netball on the tennis court and we drew some cool cartoons with Mr Hamilton. It was an interesting day and we all felt tired at the end!

The chickens have arrived!

 Finally the wait is over. Our chickens have arrived.

Here is the chicken run - it is very cosy inside with straw and a perch for the chickens to sit up on.

    

Room 3's chicken is brown with a red comb. It likes to run around with it's friends.

We have to think of a name for it so watch this space. There are 5 chickens and they have already started laying eggs - we have 6 eggs so far!

Welcome to Term 4

Hi everyone! We have had a lovely holiday and are now back at work.

We started the term off by reading Jack and the Beanstalk for shared reading and we planted some peas (because Mrs O'Donnell loves peas and not beans!) They are already starting to grow. We have put them in a warm sunny place on the window sill.

          

Here you can see some of the shoots and roots growing.

We also read about Maui and the Sun. The sun was going too fast across the sky and so Maui and his brothers had to find a way to slow it down. We used black vivid and dye to create a detailed picture of the sun. We tried to use some koru shapes in our picture. Then we dabbed blue and white paint onto our background to look like the sky. These pictures will make our classroom sunny and cheerful.

    The Sun by Darrin and Campbell

    The Sun by Josiah T and Rebecca

Chickens and Castles!!

What a busy week we have had! On Thursday we had Kay talking to us about some new hens that will be coming to live in our new henhouse. She showed us what they eat and we got to hold on to one. There were also some tiny chicks. They were so so cute and fluffy!

  

Room 3 has also had lots of fun making shields and swords and knight costumes. We played on the fort yesterday pretending it was a castle. It is hard to tell who is who when we are all dressed up!

 

Shields

We made some shields with Mrs Horwell. The shields were decorated so everyone knew who the knight was or who he fought for. We decorated our shields with foil to make them look like metal. We glued over our initial and sprinkled glitter over it. The letters were in fancy writing. We traced around our hands and stuck them on as well. Here we are hard at work!

       
       

Middle Ages Discovery Time

On Friday 4th September we had Discovery time based around the Middle Ages. We could dress up in costumes, build castles and role play with a model castle complete with knights and catapaults. We added some pictures of people and labels to our castle picture in the classroom.

Clothing in the Middle Ages

On Friday we explored the kinds of clothes people wore over 500 years ago. 

The rich women wore beautiful dresses made of colourful cloth decorated with jewels and gold thread. The men also wore lots of jewellery. They wore tunics made of colourful cloth with leggings and cloaks. Here is a photo of some of our rich people.

The poor people who did lots of hard work wore very plain clothes made out of wool or linen. It was a bit scratchy. The women wore long shapeless dresses called kirtles and the men wore tunics over leggings. Here is a photo of our poor people.

Book Week Dress Up Day

On Friday we had a dress up day to finish off our book week. 

In Room 3 we had witches, Mr Bumps, motorcross riders, fairy princesses and lots of others.

Can you name some of these characters?

While Mrs Horwell was teaching us we found out what kind of musical instruments people used in the Middle Ages. We listened to music that had lutes, harps and drums playing. We made some lutes. Here we are playing them.

Pyjama Day

Here we are in our pyjamas. Don't we look cosy?!  

The council decided to have a pyjama day to raise money for a wee boy who needs medical help which costs a lot of money. Everyone who came to school in their pyjamas donated a gold coin. Even Mrs Horwell, Mrs O'Donnell and Leanne were in their pyjamas. It was a fun day. Mrs Horwell brought some pillow cases to school for us to have sack races in for fitness. It was hard work jumping. 

In the afternoon we watched a show from the Keep Dunedin Beautiful Theatre group. It was so funny - we laughed and laughed.

Room 2's Dance

Last term we learned a dance called the Shearer's Skip. We performed it in assembly last week to 'entertain' the school. Here are some  short clips showing some of Room 2 practising the dance.

  

In the holidays 4 of our classmates went through to Room 4. We miss them but we see them lots at morning tea and lunchtime. Stefan turned 5 and started school and later this term some more children will start school.

We are looking forward to starting our clubs programme on a Tuesday afternoon. Some of us are in a sports club, some are making crafts, some are making jewellery, or baking and some are going to be scrapbooking. It will be great to mix up with lots of other children in the school and learn something new.

Discovery Time

We had another great morning today with everyone thinking creatively. Some were at the box construction table where they were making furniture for the dollshouse. Some were at the wood work table making racing cars and sheds. Some were at the car track table where they were creating ramps and tunnels out of plastic guttering. We have put on this clip to show you how the track worked.

Wakari Kindergarten Came To Visit

On Friday Wakari Kindy came to Bradford School to have a look around our school.

First we met them in the foyer. Ms Dillon-Roberts welcomed them. 

Then we had 3 activities. One was making a cat. One was reading a story in the library and going around the school. One was watching "Stars on Stage'.

Last, we had morning tea in the foyer. We had oranges, apples, pears, cake and juice.

We felt happy, excited and surprised during the visit.

A Special Visitor for Room 3 and 4!

Last Monday we had a special visit from Ronald McDonald. He was so funny. We laughed and laughed!

Here he is showing us how to cross the road. We have to stop, look and listen to see if it is safe to cross. It's good to take one step back from the kerb to be extra safe.

When we walk on the footpath we have to watch out for sneaky driveways. Sometimes cars are backing out of driveways and we have to look before we walk across.

We sang the seatbelt song - "Make it click" 

We know all about how to be safe when walking to school. 

Thanks Ronald for coming to Bradford School!

Our Performance of the Three Little Pigs

We have been practicing our version of the 'Three Little Pigs' to share at assembly. We had to think about lots of different roles - stage/ prop hands, musicians and actors. We had to think about how to make it look and sound exciting for our audience. Here are some pictures from our assembly. 

Here are the three little pigs with Mother Pig.

Here are the little pigs hiding in the brick house.

The wolf will be coming - watch out little pigs!

 Here you can see all three houses.

We had a lot of fun putting on our performance. We hope our audience enjoyed it too!

Discovery Time

We had our second Discovery Time last Friday. We had more exciting creations from the wood work table. It was inside this week because of the weather and the banging was a bit loud but we didn't mind. Everyone had a go at flipping pikelets - most of them landed in the pan! They were warm and yummy- with or without jam. Callum even made more at home over the wet weekend. Way to go, Chef Callum. We are on the lookout for some easy (and cheap!) recipes. Let us know if you can think of any.

Discovery Time

On Friday we started an exciting time called Discovery Time. There were lots of different activities to choose from. There was wood work, fruit salad making, a 'cafe', leaf art activities, box construction, music making and lots more. We had a chat at the start about self management. We had to think about what we wanted to do and complete our tasks. We had lots of fun. Here are some photos of our morning.

Here are some customers at the "Bradford Cafe". 

What a lovely cup of tea!

The wood working table was very popular.

We have a hard working bunch of children  in Room 3.

Yum, yum! The fresh fruit salad was a hit and we all

enjoyed a lovely morning tea.

We Love Our Mums!

Today we made some cool handbag cards and decorated some biscuits to give to our mums on Sunday. 

We also created some pictures of our mums using kidpix on the latops. It can be pretty tricky drawing with a mouse. 

Here are some of our super mums! They all lovely big smiles on their faces - they must have eaten some of our yummy biscuits.

This is Grace's mum.

This is Josiah's mum.

This is Paolo's mum.

This is Darrin's mum.

We took a photo of Room 3 under the

 trees in our playground. The leaves are

 yellow and green and gold. The leaves are 

changing colour because it is autumn. 

We love autumn because...

we can play in the leaves - Briana

I run in the leaves - Jayden

the leaves fall off the trees - Josiah

it's fun and it's cool - Campbell

the leaves go round and round - Antonia

the leaves fall onto the ground and they make circles - Jack

you can chuck the leaves all over  - Callum

Our Butterfly Has Emerged!

On Friday morning Callum noticed our butterfly was coming out of the chrysalis. What excitement! Our school work was forgotten as we watched the butterfly unfurl its wings and then climb up to the top of the swan plant.

After morning tea we joined the rest of the school for a bush walk to celebrate the end of Walk and Wheels week. We started at the top of Fraser's Gully and tramped down to the park at the bottom to play lots of fun games and had a bbq lunch. Mrs Tobin had a lovely surprise for us when we got back to school - iceblocks!!!

After school we took the swan plant outside so the butterfly could fly away when it was ready. We are planting the swan plant in the school garden so hopefully it might come back to lay eggs so we can watch the whole process again!

It's a Bug's Life

Welcome to Room 3 for 2009. Mrs O'Donnell is our teacher and at the moment we have 11 children.

Our first topic is all about bugs and insects. We have a monarch caterpillar's chrysalis in our room and we are hoping it will change into a butterfly very soon.

It has been a bit cold so the butterfly is taking a long time!

We looked closely at the caterpillar and saw his yellow, black and white stripes. We made some for our wall and wrote some true statements about caterpillars on the leaves.

We also looked at the different parts of the butterfly and what jobs they did. Did you know that butterflies taste with their feet?

Here are some of our creations - can you see the head, thorax, abdomen, 6 legs, 4 wings, proboscis and antennae?