Happy Father's Day

As a special thank you to all the dads whomake the 6sessful kids so awesome we have been busy making presents.  Here we are making cards and gift bags to wrap up....ooh that would be telling! Wait until Sunday!  Thanks to Nicki for helping out this morning.

Awesome excerpts

We have been writing descriptions that show not tell what we are writing about so our reader can have the same picture in their head as we do.

Day at the beach.

When I got out of the car I said "ouch, ouch, ouch" as I tiptoed across the burning yellowness. It felt like I was stung by a bumblebee. I poured the cold, dull, rough stuff into my tall, blue circle. Plop, plop, plop went the cold stuff as I made the base.  I patted it into shape and watched some of it crumble down the slope.  Pushing down that cool shape....Bye bye ...the bright yellow stuff, as crunchy as dry cereal blew, into my eyes.

While I gripped my fluffy drier in my teeth I squiggled and squeezed into my shiny swim skin. I cut the ocean like a knife and the cold smashed my face. Even though it was freezing I was warm immediately I splashed in the freezing salty pond like a dolphin. I bombed into the freezing liquid. SPLASH!!

The tiny, gritty dust flicked in my face as I ran for the goal. Yellow crispies stuck to my feet while I was goalie. My black and white, bouncy friend flew in the air one way and then the other.

I smelled the sweetness coming from the box of sticky, tiny goody monsters Mum had packed.

Climewords.

 Clime words.

Climes are lists of words that all mean the same thing but with varying degrees of emphasis. Here are Harriet's sentences to show the appropriate use of this clime about cold.

It was a frosty morning.

Later it cooled down.

Last night it was icy.

Today it was chilly.

Maybe tomorrow it will be cold.

Fractions

Have a look at this for practise

How do you make a bubble snake?

We wrote this explanation of the Bubble Snake experiment together.  We are trying to use good description, logical order and time indicating words to write a clear explanation.

 First you have to dip the cloth in the bubble mixture.  Then you have to blow through the hole.   The bubbles come out when you are blowing.  It was like a bubble storm exploding out of the cup.   I can see the bubbles are bouncy when they go in the bowl.  It has millions of bubbles foaming out.  The bubbles are as puffy as a fluffy cloud.  The bubble snake is as long as a python.  The bubbles are like a fluffy toy.

Now we put some red food colouring on the cloth.  I could see foamy red bubbles flowing out of the tiny holes.  The bubbles came out like red, fluffy candy floss.  It was like a long, red snake.

Cooper thinks that heaps of little bubbles come out because there are heaps of tiny holes in the cloth. Katie thinks the bubbles go through really small holes in the cloth and join together to make a big pile of bubbles. Harriet thinks it happens because hundreds of tiny holes had bubble mixture on them and Tane thinks that when you blow, it blows the bubble mixture out and that makes the bubbles. Gracie adds that when you blow in the cup it goes out through the holes and that makes the bubbles.

Then the bubbles turn red because the food colouring is spread on the bubble mixture when it comes through the holes, thought Shannon and Yassmine.  Gracie thinks the bubbles look pink not red because the colour molecules are stretched out across the bubble.

Scratchy art

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First you draw lines on white paper. Then you colour in each space a different colour with pastel. Next you paint over the top with black paint so the colour is all gone!

When the paint dries get an ice block stick and draw the picture. You aren't really drawing because you have to scrape the black off to show the pretty colours underneath.

Max said "i think it is cool becuase when you scrape it it becomes colourful!"

Katie said" i was away so when I did the drawing colourful patterns came up and i got a surprise!"

Devin found out about acid rain

Come and have a look at Devin's investigation of acid rain based on something she read. Check out this website.

www.epa.gov/acidrain/education/site_students/whatisacid.html

Matariki oops put it in the wrong place - remember this?

Jayden said "This afternoon we opened our new pou for the community. Tabitha remembered we unveiled a memorial plaque for the pou. Even Shannon who was feeling ill in the sickbay was part of things as he could hear lovely singing through the window.
For kotahitanga we went with our buddies to the hall to get some delicious soup and some maori bread. Joy and Marj and Jacqui and the mums and room 14 worked all morning to make enough for the WHOLE school and we had another 30 litres to give to a church to share with the families that come to their soup kitchen. 
We have had a great day, an amazing chance to share across the school. 

Ideas for writing

The staff have been spending a lot of time learning about teaching their children how to be better, more capable, more enthusiastic writers. One of the people whose ideas we have been studying is Ralph Fletcher. He has a wonderful website and this is a link that has lots of encouragement written for children to help think about how to be a writer, and how to put themselves into their writing.

Give it a try

http://www.ralphfletcher.com/tips.html

Lava lamp science

We have been learning how to conduct a science experiment this week.  We need to watch closely and record EVERYTHING we see. It is hard work.  We watched what happens when you pour oil into water. We saw what happened when you put slat in. Then this week we changed one thing to see what happened. We were in groups and each group got to see one thing changed. For three groups the liquid was not water. It was lemonade or vinegar or hot water. The other three groups had oil and water last week but used washing powder, sugar or baking soda instead of salt. There was so much to see and we were surprised by some of the action happening in the jar.  As us how to set it up and have a look at home!

Hub day

On Monday we had a celebration and opening party for the Hub (formerly called the library).  We all came dressed up in costumes depicting our favourite book characters. We had the pleasure of seeing the whole school's costumes when we had a parade in the hall. Have a look at the pics of us in our costumes.

After morning tea we had a visit from Renee from the More FM.  She came to read to us and tell us what it was like to work at the radio station.

What a cool day.