This week in room 5 we have been learning about flora and fauna again. It has been our last week for information saturation.

We found out that there is a petrified forest at the bottom of the South Island. It is about 180 million years old that was when the dinosaurs were alive. There might be dinosaurs buried in the mud too. It was caused by a huge flood which turned into a mudslide and knocked down and covered a whole forest in mud.

We have been skip counting in 2, 5 and 10 for maths. We are learning really quickly.

We have just started to learn about phonics with Room 6. We got to learn by playing games.

This week we have been learning about native flora and fauna. That means plants and animals that were living in New Zealand before people came. We have learnt about different native animals like Morepork, fantail (piwakawaka), tui, kiwi, giant weta, red back spider. Some of the plants we learnt about are pingao, ferns, ponga/punga, pohutukawa, kowhai and flax.

We looked around the school to find as many of the native things that we could. We found lots.

Welcome back to the first week of Term 2.

This week we celebrated ANZAC Day.

We read a poem called ‘In Flanders Field,’  and that is where the idea of celebrating the memory of soldiers with poppies came from.

We made poppies with red and black crepe paper. We stuck the paper to a stick or pipe cleaner using glue and cellotape. When we were looking at the poppies we felt sad because they reminded us of all the people who died in all the wars. We also wrote on some other poppies the names of some people and why we thought  they were brave people. There are all different types of poppies. The Anzac ones are called Flanders Red but there are other coloured ones and we got to plant them in our class garden.

Right now we are reading a book called Caesar the Anzac Dog. It is about a Bull Dog who was the mascot of the Fourth Battalion in the First World War.

This week there are two bits of important news. We have got a new girl in our class called Ruby. The other news is a bit sad because Harry is moving to Hawera and so he will be leaving our class.

Over the last 2 weeks, Mr Stoddart has been teaching us to draw one of Van Goughs’ paintings. It was a painting of weeping willows dripping into a pond. The painting was about being sad for all of the people who died in the war.

we had to use different colours and smudge them together to make new cool colours like in  a water painting.

On Friday we had a visit from a very special person. She was an author called Diana Neild. She writes books about Piggety-Wiggety Jiggity-Jig and his family. She read the story called ‘Piggety-Wiggety Jiggity-Jig and the Christmas Baby’. We got to ask her some questions about her writing. Did you know that it takes her 3 months to write the 70 lines for her book then she goes back to read it and change bits for another 3 months before sending it to her publisher to be made into a book. We dressed up  in pig costumes and we became characters from the book. Even Mr Whalley joined in. He got to dress up as a Pig Judge. Everyone who did not get to be a character got to put on a pig hat and be the audience.

It was also the last day for Ms Jury to teach us on Fridays. We made her a card to show her how much we would miss seeing her all the time. She really liked the card and the chocolates we gave her too.

This week we have learnt about the Monarch Butterfly life cycle. They start as an egg then they hatch into a caterpillar. After lots of eating and getting fat the caterpillar turns into a chrysalis. 2 weeks later the butterfly hatches into a butterfly. Later the butterfly lays some more eggs. This happens again and again because this is a cycle. Did you know that you can tell if a butterfly is a boy or a girl because boys have a black dot on their wings and a girl does not.

Yesterday we used paints to discover new colours. We could use red, blue and yellow paints. Some of the colours we made were orange (red and yellow), purple (red and blue), green (yellow and blue), black (lots of all of the colours), sick calf poo yellow (lots of yellow, a little red and a little blue), gold (calfpoo yellow and purple) and brown (equal amounts of red, yellow and blue).

Then we used these colours to paint a picture of anything we wanted. Thank-you Room 1 for lending us your paintbrushes.

On Wednesday we had Swimming Sports. We did lots of fun stuff like noodle race, flutter board race, clothing race, teacher vs. kids vs. parents relay, and class activities. The water was warm but then when you got out of the pool we nearly  froze. We had to listen carefully so we knew what to do.

Our Caterpillars turned into chrysalises on Wednesday when we were at the pool having our Swimming sports.

On Thursday the whole school went to Kaponga for Athletics Day. It was cold, cloudy and windy. Matapu children were well behaved and they enjoyed themselves.

We have been learning about chrysalises, caterpillars and monarch butterflies. we have got two monarch caterpillars and some branches from a San Plant in our class that we are watching.

We made fireworks  pictures and then we dyed over them with blue and purple Dye. Ms Jury looked at our pictures and she thinks they are super dooper.

This week we only had a real short week.

We had Parent interviews on Tuesday so we got to go home at lunchtime then on Wednesday, we had athletics. We got to do discus, shotput, standing jump and sprinting. Katie hurt herself when she was running backwards and fell over.

We had fun. Red house won the relay.

Welcome to a new year in Room 5. We have almost a whole new bunch of students in our classroom and we are learning to work well together. We like doing things like story writing, maths, reading in the reading corner, fitness, handwriting, computers, topic and Harry really likes Lunchtime because he can play lots of games. We make nice colourful work which is hung up all over the calss and in our books.

This week, we have been learning about being water safe in different places.

We have talked about how to be safe around water when we are on the farm. First we talked about all of the different places on the farm where there is water that we should be careful around. Some of these places are drains, broken pipes, effluent ponds, high pressure hoses, rivers, troughs and wells. We have decided that some ways to keep ourselves safe around these places is to always have an adult around us when we are near water, to keep away from the edges and “If in doubt, stay out!”

Our blend of the week this week is ‘cl.’

We have learnt a new poem called Clackety Clack! And we have looked at words which start with ‘cl’ like clown, clock, clever, clothes, cliff, cloak, cloud, clue and club.

This week in Room 5 we wrote make believe stories about aliens. We had to start our story with the words “Yesterday I was abducted by Aliens.”  Our story had to have the date, a title, a picture showing what will happen, and a beginning, middle and end. We need to put in full stops and capital letters. To help us think of ideas we listened to a song called “Never Hitch a Ride with a Martian” the people were abducted and taken for a trip around earth. Martian’s always drive so fast so no time goes past.

We practiced swimming too.