T2's Collaborative writing

T2 enjoyed the story Leap Frog by Nic Bishop. The story is told only with photographs so we decided we could work together to make some words for the story. http://youtu.be/sAlljsHwlUM

Discovery

Friday is Discovery day and this Friday we showed our skills in collaboration and interaction We played and created with the Imagination Playground, danced, made some woodwork constructions, and practiced our ball skills. 

Ahuriri Swimming

Ahuriri had a great time this week at swimming. Here are some photos of T2 at the pool. Check back soon for more swimming photos.

Welcome to T4!!!!!

T4 are all smiles as they settle into school this week!

Pukeko Stomp

Check our Ahuriri's amazing performance of Pukeko Stomp from the recent School Production Halswell Rocks.

Measuring

In maths we have been looking at measurement. We are using words such as long, longer, short, shorter, big and small. 

We particularly enjoyed making towers of different sizes and ordering them. The most fun was had when we made the longest tower we could and then compared ourselves to it:

Quaky Cat Helps Out

Halswell School had two very special visitors: Diana Noonan and Gavin Bishop - the author and illustrator of Quaky Cat. They were visiting us to launch their new book Quaky Cat Helps Out.

 

 Diana read the new story to us and explained why she wrote both books.

  Gavin Bishop told us how he makes his amazing illustrations - collage and some very nifty cutting out skills!

 Scholastic, the publishers, were very generous and gave every single pupil in Ahuriri and Hurutini their own copy of  "Quaky Cat Helps Out" Thank you !

Charlie the lamb and other animals

Max in T1 has a Nana. 

Max's Nana has a pet lamb called Charlie. 

Charlie is a girl. 

She came to visit Ahuriri and have her morning feed:

We also had a visit to our quiet room from Molly the school cat:

We also have another couple of animals in school - the delightful Cocoamo a large black piglet who is actually very small, and needs extra special care. Finally we have Larry (Larrisa the lamb) who is growing up with the year 7 /8's. We really enjoy seeing out animal friends.

Fun Friday

Today we had fun making fire engines in Discovery:

We opened "Cat's Cafe" and ate rice bubbles and milk. The best part was washing up!

At the moment we are building fantastic things with the Gears. We work well collaboratively.

The train set is very popular too.

We enjoyed show and tell too:

We hope you had a fun Friday too!

Meeting, and playing with new friends

During Discovery this week we were very skilled at interacting with all our new classmates.

Our teachers are very proud of how welcoming and caring the older children have been and how easily the new children have settled into school. 

 We are all making friends across all three T groups.

Buddies:   we have met our new buddy classes; T22 and T23 from year 3 and 4. 

We had so much fun with the older children, and look forward to our next buddy time. 

A Great Start to Term 3

We have had a wonderful start to Term 3 with 8 new friends starting in Ahuriri.

• In T1 - Max, Brody, Tom, Dexter and Annabel
• In T2 - Cobhan and Alicia
• In T3 - Eli

Thank you to the children who started earlier in the year, you have done such an amazing job looking after our new friends. Here are some the fun things we have enjoyed this week.

Harold the Giraffe comes to school.

The Life Ed classroom was a very interesting place. One thing that we really enjoyed was a constellation of stars which shone down from the ceiling when the lights were turned out!

 We met Harold and he told us all about:

• Food that makes us GROW 
• Food that makes us HEALTHY
• Food that makes us GO
• Food that is GOOD for BONES and TEETH
• That some food is a treat food which we should only eat sometimes. 
• We also learned to eat a VARIETY of food every day.

Thank you Harold we enjoyed meeting you! 

Ahuriri visits Ferrymead, Term 2 2015

It was with great excitement that day arrived for our visit to Ferrymead. We have spent a number of weeks investigating what schools were like 100 to 150 years ago. 

This is particularly special as our school has recently celebrated its 151st birthday, and of course the complete rebuild finished at the same time.

The trip over to Ferrymead was exciting as we could see lots of things from the bus that we normally don’t when traveling by car.

When we arrived we were greeted by our guide:

One of the first things to do was to transform from 21st century children to late 19th century children:

The Boys wore knickerbockers, shirts and caps. 

The girls wore dresses and aprons, They also wore bonnets.

Our teachers and helpers found it very hard to identify us when we were wearing hats!

We then took part in four experiences: 

Applying to be an apprentice in a shop:

 Mr. Hill interviewed us and we had to fill out customer's orders:  

We went to school with Mrs. Grey as our teacher, she was very strict.

The classroom was very different to Ahuriri. 

We used slate pencils and boards for writing.

We visited a home and learned how to keep it clean.

We learned how to wash, dry and iron clothes.

We scrubbed the table, swept the floors, cleaned the carpets, washed dishes and made beds. Phew! Must be time for lunch after all that hard work!

We were told all about games that children used to play, and then had a go ourselves.

We finished the visit with a tram ride.

Thank you so much to all parents who came and helped us, and to the staff at Ferrymead. We had a wonderful day!