The kiwi that spoke

We listened to the story The Papaya that spoke recited by Warminster Prep in England on their blog http://year3wps.wordpress.com/. Over the last two days we have created our own versions of the story. We had a lot of fun practising and trying to remember the story as it is quite long. We hope you enjoy Connor and Liam's version.

Reindeer or Caribou

This week we are learning all about Reindeer. Did you know that Santa Claus only started using reindeer in the 19th Century? We also learnt that Rudolf was invented in 1939 by a shop who wanted to sell more things for Christmas. Did you know Reindeer means 'snow shuffler.' We hope you enjoy reading our Reindeer reports below.

Reindeer are mammals that live in the North Pole, Asia, Russia and Europe. Males are called bulls and females are cows. A reindeer is a mammal. Some people call reindeer Caribou. 

Reindeer have four legs, two brown eyes, two big enormous antlers and a small, small tail. They can be white, brown or grey. They have very wide hooves. 

They eat mushrooms, lichen, a little bit of grass, berried and their babies drink their mummies' milk. They are born in May and June. They run away from wolves or fight with each other. All reindeer actually do is find shelter or find food or make babies. The Antlers fall off and reindeer grow new ones. By Connor

Rocking Roosters

We have been reading a book called Chicken Food by Jill Eggleton. It is about chickens who refuse to eat slugs and bugs and crickets and worms unless they are made into a burger pattie for them. Today we made Rocking Roosters. We had to colour all the feathers, cut them out, glue them on and add a beak, eyes and lastly stick some feathers on.

Venus our Pitcher Plant Pet

A Pitcher Plant is a plant. It eats flies. It is slippery and has water inside. When a fly is in the Pitcher Plant, it eats the fly. The Pitcher Plant is green and it has little red lines in the middle. It can't move. When the fly goes inside then the plant eats it. By Harshil

A Pitcher Plant is a plant that is dangerous to insects. It is a carnivourous plant. It is green inside and sometimes it can be slipper, then the insects fall inside. It needs water to grow. Inside the Pitcher Plant there is acid, liquid and mush. It makes mush from the insects. By Michelle

The Arts Festival

This week is the Arts Festival at school. We have our Art displayed in the hall and on Thursday and Friday there is a performance of various music and dances. Yesterday we watched the dress rehearsal. Amisha is doing a poi dance and dancing in BoogieBods to Justin Beiber's song 'Baby.' Keisha is dancing in Bollywood. Kawiti is in the boys Haka group. Today, we went to look at the hall today and felt very proud to have our work displayed.

Welcome to Warminster

Our teacher had trouble adding Yr 3 Warminster's blog to our page as a link. It is one of our Quadblog schools. Make sure you check out their fantastic blog : http://year3wps.wordpress.com/

Mrs Yollis' Blogging Comments Advice

Here is an excellent video made by a school in California, explaining how to make a good comment about a blog.

2MM Muscat

2MM our Quadblog buddies, asked us how to play Robbing the Nest. They followed our instructions and recorded their game. The music is quite loud so you need to turn it down after you have heard their students speaking. We think it is an awesome video and they followed our instructions very well!

Welcome Keryn

We have a new student in our Learning Zone. Keryn comes from Malaysia and speaks English and Mandarin. We hope she enjoys here five weeks with LZ4.

11am, 11th November 2011

Today we finished our Art. We have been learning about Rememberance Day. That is like ANZAC day but in Europe people commemorate the end of the First World War. We read the poem 'In Flander's Fields' and learnt about the trenches. We learnt some new words like 'allies', 'alliance', 'trench', 'front' and 'poppy.'

Grandparents' Day

Today was Grandparents' Day. We had an assembly to showcase some of the things we do at school. We bet our school is very different to when our grandparents went to school. We made certificates for our grandparents. Ben's paternal grandparents came and Niskil and Connor's Grandmas came to visit our class and share a picnic.

The Cantankerous Camel Inquiry Questions

Today we came up with some questions to research about camels.


What does a camel eat? It eats everything like a goat. It depends on the weather. They eat fish, bones, leather, cactus. Connor and Michael
What are the humps made from? Fat
How do camels survive in the desert? 
How long do camels live for? 
What does a camel feel like? They have fur on them and males have dark brown fur whilst females have light brown fur. Andre and Harold
Why do camels spit? To scare or disrupt Ms K
How many humps can a camel have? 1 or 2. Liang and Niskil
How do camels find each other? They yell loudly. Harman
How fast can camels go? 100 km/hour. Kawiti and Thaleisha

The Gunpowder Plot

2011 Class Photo

Athletics Day

Simon's cat

This is one of our favourite cartoons which we sometimes watch as a treat at the end of the day.

Money Maths

Well done to Andre who found out who is on all the notes of the new zealand currency. Today we had to solve sums involving how to add money together. It is hard to remember to put the dollar sign in front and the decimal place. We found that there are not many places on the web to find out about NZ money, so if you know of any please could you post a link in the comments. We tried www.sorted.org but it was a bit hard.

Scary Stories

Whenever I go to the amusement park my little brother makes me go to the Haunted House. It was dark and scary. There was a car. In the car, there was a flashlight and I picked it up and I pushed the button. The light went on. The car started to move very fast! I screamed. Then we came back. I thought it was a dream and my brother was crying. By Liam

Whenever I go to the amusement park I make my sister go in the freaky deadly haunted house. Suddenly there was a boney skeleton glowing in the darkness. Next my sister needed to go to the toilet but there were no toilets. We heard a ghoul noise. It was a scary ghost. Then we went into a guardian palace. Next it was all over. By Michael

Whenever I go to the amusement park my brother makes me go to the Haunted House. We sit in a little carriage. We went through a big massive gigantic door which had a big deadly Australian spider on it. There was a little skeleton drawing with vampire's blood. We looked the other way and saw a bat carrying a person's head! There was a silver ghost which was singing “IF YOU DARE GO TO THAT ROOM WITH THAT BIG BROOM, YOU WILL HAVE YOUR HEAD CUT TO PIECES.” Suddenly the cart raced so fast because zombies were chasing us. Next we came to a dead end. We ran a bit. Suddenly we fell into a hole and landed on something soft. It went forwards a bit into the sunlight and the ride was finally over! By Connor

We bearnapped Walker Bear!

Ms K bearnapped Walker Bear from the staff room. He said he wanted to see what goes on in LZ4 and was a bit bored of sitting in a display cabinet. Each house in our school has a bear mascot. Here is what Walker Bear got up to today at Reading time.

Wk 1 Term 4 Excellence Award

Well done to Thaleisha who received an excellence Award for her effort to master new maths strategies in ACE and in class.

A Soul Cake

A Soul cake is a small round cake which is traditionally made for All Saints Day or All Souls' Day (1st November) to celebrate the dead. The cakes, often simply referred to as souls, were given out to soulers (mainly consisting of children and the poor) who would go from door to door on Hallowmass (31st October, now known as Halloween) singing and saying prayers for the dead. Each cake eaten would represent a soul being freed from Purgatory. The practice of giving and eating soul cakes is often seen as the origin of modern Trick or Treating. Ms K baked us some Soul Cakes on Sunday and we are learning about the real reasons for Halloween this week.

Our Term 3 Holidays

Diwali

Today we celebrated Diwali, the Hindu festival, at school. We were allowed to wear our cultural saris and jewellery. Some of the teachers dressed up in saris and looked beautiful. We tried some Indian sweets and the teachers had a feast in the staff room. We read a big book about Diwali and learnt about what happens on each of the five days. We made flower garlands out of paper to give to our Mums and to some of the teachers.

LZ4's Memories Patchwork Quilt

Last term, we made a patchwork quilt to show our memories of the year in LZ4 so far. We have learnt about soccer, dragons, the Rugby World Cup, been on a tram which broke down, had a Cross Country race, made Spider drinks, learnt about insects like butterflies and spiders, met Jack Frost, had a Teddy Bears' picnic, and saw a big steam train at MOTAT.

Diwali

Click on the link below to go to an awesome website explaining all about Diwali! We will be having a Costumes and Cultures Mufti Day on Friday to celebrate, and perhaps on Wednesday some of the teachers will wear saris! We are reading a big book about Diwali and will be doing lots of art using Diwali as a theme. Amisha, Keisha, Thaleisha, Tanisha, Harman, Harshil are all celebrating Diwali! Happy Diwali.

All About Diwali

Rugby World Cup 2011 Champions!!

Last night the All Blacks beat France in a very close game 8-7. After a long 24 year wait, this has made the All Blacks the World Champions at Rugby for the next four years. They won every match they played in the tournament. Tony Woodcock scored the only try. 

We are proud to be New Zealanders and Kiwi kids no matter of our creed, colour, origins, language or religion.

Go the All Blacks!!!

Yay we are nearly at the end of the Rugby World Cup and the All Blacks will be playing France next weekend. Ms K is wearing her All Blacks jersey in Poland and England to show her support. We will have lots to write about when we come back to school after Labour Weekend. GO THE ALL BLACKS!!!!

Freestyle Drumming

Today, in music, we had a go on a drum machine. Ms K wants one for her Christmas present! Watch the video until the end to see our skills!

On a tall, tall cliff by Andrew Murray

We read On a Tall, Tall Cliff and were inspired to create some masterpieces. The story was about a friend who asked his friend to move his whole house so that they could be neighbours. It was very cunning. We hope you enjoy our Art. We based out drawings on Alan Snow's illustrations from the book.

Games for the New Entrants

Today we designed matching games for LZ14, the New Entrant class. We thought about what they might need to know and decided to make matching cards with the world flags, capital cities of countries, the maori colours and numbers, homonyms, compound words and animal families. See if you can match them!

Andre's Polar Bear Poem

Comparing Bears

Bears are large mammals. Some bears are alike, some are different. Bears look wild and scary. Don't you dare think bears are cute! They are wild. They will hurt you. Black bears eat honey, insects, fruit and fish. Polar bears eat fish and seals. They both have sharp teeth. Polar bears have naps and black bears hibernate. By Harman

Bears are furry animals. Cubs are little cute bears. They look like mammals. They hunt for food but Polar Bears hunt for fish in the sea and Black Bears hunt for insects.  Everyone thinks bears are cute, but they're not and they are dangerous. When there is no food for the bears they have to hunt everywhere. If they don't have food for a long time they won't survive. By Liang

Bears are big dangerous animal that can scratch your back. They look cute but they have huge teeth. Polar Bears hunt for food in the water. They eat fish and seals. Polar bears have webbed claws to help them swim. Black Bears hibernate, but Polar Bears just have little naps. All the bears are mammals. Baby bears are called cubs. Cubs stay with their mother for 2 years. By Keisha

Polar Bears

On Thursday we created some polar bear art. First we made glaciers out of newspaper. Then we used blue bits from magazines to collage the sky. Then we stuck some paper towel down and dyed it blue for the water. We also stuck some glitter paper on to make the water look shimmery. Next we practised drawing polar bears on newsprint before drawing the final bear on blue paper. We then used silver, white and yellow pastel to make it look like the polar bear's fur.

Did you know:

polar bears have black skin

polar bears are left handed

polar bears like eating seals and walruses

polar bear babies are called cubs

Halves

Today we learnt about halves. First we had to find half of a circle, square, rectangle, hexagon and a triangle, then we had to work out a half of some numbers. Ms K had a bonus question which was finding half of 462. Harold got the answer correct! We are practising halving big numbers which have even numbers in them like 682, 448.

Walk on Wednesdays

This week three people from our Learning Zone were rewarded for walking to school by Mrs Hishey from the Travelwise campaign. Well done Harshil, Mellisa and Kawiti!

Teddy Bears' Picnic

Today we had 20 visitors come to our Learning Zone! It was so exciting. We learnt about where the name 'teddy' came from. Apparently in 1902 the USA President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear when bear hunting and a newspaper wrote about it. Then a toy maker started making bears and they have been popular ever since!

We had a shared morning tea with Tiny Teddy biscuits, fairy bread which was cut into the shape of teddies made by Andre's Mum, fried bread from Harshil's Mum, some sandwiches and a cookie from Michael's Mum and biscuits from Ben and Tanisha. We all made a sandwich with our toys and could choose from three fillings; vegemite, strawberry jam or runny honey. Then we met with all the other classes and went to the hall for a picnic. We sat on blankets and ate our sandwiches. The New Entrants had made teddy shaped biscuits for every single student in the Junior Learning Community! What a treat. We finished the day off with a rotation of Robbing the Nest, Rugby Skills and playing Musical statues and chairs. 

Michael's News

On Friday Michael went to Hamilton with his Dad and his Dad's boss to watch the All Blacks play Japan. He brought the tickets in to class to show us. They cost $ 194 each! But it was worth seeing the All Blacks. Michael's favourite player is Richie McCaw. The All Blacks won the game. Michael brought in a magazine to share with the class. 

Connor is Player of the Year 2010 and 2011!

Connor plays soccer on Sundays at Howick Soccer Club. His team is called United Fencibles. His shirt is black and orange. He went to prize-giving and was awarded a medal for being the Player of the Year for 2011! Well done Connor.

Fractions

Over the next two weeks we are going to be working on fractions. We will not only be looking at a half and a quarter of shapes, but also of numbers. If you have any links to great fraction games please leave a link in the comments!

Click on the link here ----> Fractions

Wohooo Alaska! Blog goal.

We have now had a post from Alaska, Russia, South Africa and South America. We are still hoping to get a star on our map from Greenland and Antarctica. Ms K has decided to extend the timeline from end of Term 3, to December 2011. Next term we will write to the Antarctic centre in Christchurch to see if they can help us with our mission. Seeing as we have already had hot chips this term, Ms K thinks a shared lunch of food from around the world in the last week of the school year would be more appropriate.