Witherlea Performing Arts

This week at school lots of talent is on display at lunchtimes outside the hall. On Monday the talented highland fling girls showed us their amazing skills by performing the sword dance.
Kapai Deleya and Ella, you girls were so cool to watch!

Diwali

Last week we were very lucky and had a visitor to share their knowledge of Diwali with us.
Diwali is the Indian New Year celebration. This is the festival of light and is celebrated on the darkest night towards the end of October - start of November.
We learnt that when they celebrate Diwali they eat a lot of sweets. The celebration usually goes for 5 days and on the last day this is where the families celebrate wearing very special clothes and eat lots of food, a bit like our Christmas. Thank you Avi for sharing your knowledge with us!

Diya (said "deer")

Another example of diyas - oil lamps

Example of some clothes worn on Diwali

Rangoli pattern 

Ms Z wearing a sari.

Assembly

Just a wee reminder that we are..........

• competing in the Punga/Ferns Athletics Day this Thursday (kick off just after 9am, & a coffee cart will be available for the purchasing of hot drinks)
•  hosting assembly next Friday (the 17th of November).

Visitors

Last week the Punga Syndicate was lucky enough to meet Bugsy and his owner from the Christchurch SPCA. We learnt about all the things that an animal needs, and what the SPCA does.
This week we are writing poems about pets. Watch this space.... soon you will be able to read some of our awesome poetry.

Mahi Pai

Well done Kylah and Ella for producing mahi pai (excellent work).
Their illustrations to go with their pet poems were excellent.
Keep up this super effort girls!

Awesome illustrations girls!

Room 11 Readers

In Room 11 for reading our teachers read us Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl.
As a follow up activity we were asked to produce a wanted poster for Mr Fox, which included a detailed description of him.
These children produced amazing posters, with fabulously detailed descriptions of Mr Fox.

Ka pai Reshmi, Louis, Kylah, Andrew and Dylan.



Three of them even went to Mr Hewson to show him what quality work we have been producing!!

Mr Hewson was so impressed he gave them Principal award stickers. Keep up the super effort you are putting in!!

Athletics

We have started our Athletics training in preparation for Athletics Day (which is on Thursday the 9th of November)
Please come along to watch us if you can....it will be in the morning and a notice detailing exact times will come home soon.

Calendar art

Our calendar art is available in class for you to view for all of next week (they are fading displayed on the window so we've had to take them down).
Remember orders for calendars need to be in by Friday the 22nd of September - Next Friday!

Assembly song

We are going to be practicing this song lots before we sing it to the school at assembly next term.
The children really love it so we thought we would put it on the blog, so if your child would like to practice it at home they can.

Our special visitors

Today we were lucky enough to meet Snow and Dot who belong to Sophie in Room 19. Some of us even got to give them a bottle of milk. We all got to pat them, and found they were so soft!

                                    

                        

Room 11 reading task

We have been learning how to critically connect with books.
After we had read a book about someone being sick with the Moozles we were asked to create a poster to try and encourage people to stay healthy at school.
We needed to have....

• a border
• large, clear writing
• an eye catching picture
• a title to describe what our poster is about
• captions that gave some more information about how to stay healthy.

These are our posters

Eva

 After we had completed them we looked at them all and judged which ones  we felt had all of the above criteria.

 Our winners were Andrew, Eva and Taylor. Ka pai to everyone for making  such fabulous posters. If you'd like to see them, keep an eye out as every  classroom in the school is displaying one in the hope of promoting  wellness!

Andrew

Taylor

Calendar Art

You will have by now received the order form so you can purchase your child's art on either a calendar, notebook, diary or on cards.
We have our calendar art hanging in the window.
Please come and take a closer look if you'd like to see your child's masterpiece.

Scientific Questioner of the week

At the end of each week the Scientist certificate will be given out to the child that has been using their curiosity to question and wonder about what they have seen during our science experiments.

Congratulations to Deleya who has been awarded the Scientist of the week for her great "wondering questions." 

Merit winners in Room 11

Congratulations Lauren, Meg and Andrew who all received a Merit award at assembly. Keep up the awesome effort you guys are putting in as it's definitely paying off!

Science

This term we are learning about what a scientist is, and how scientists use questions to make discoveries.

We joined up with Room 19 last week to do a wee experiment and show what we already know about   using our observation skills  to record what we see.

Soon we will learn how to formulate a good question so we can ask questions about our world and use investigations and experiments to find an answer.

Room 11 Readers

In Room 11 during reading this week we have been learning to add more expression into our voices when we read. To do this we all participated in a play. We were trying to take on the voice & personality of the character we were playing. We practiced our parts all week and presented our plays to Room 3 readers today.  It was lots of fun!!

Handwriting practice

We are trying really hard in Room 11 to get all our letters formed correctly and a good size.
Today before writing in our books we had some fun practicing the letter M on the carpet. Our letter M improved so much from when we did it last week!

ROOM 11 BIRDS

As part of our environment topic this term the children wanted to learn more about birds. This week we made birds masks to help us see the world through the eyes of a bird. We went out into the school environment and thought about what food is available for them, where birds might spend their time, where their shelter is, any potential threats and interactions with people that could happen.


This is us with our wonderful masks on before setting off to be a bird at Witherlea School....