Beans!

We have planted our beans!

First we had to work out what order our instructions went. Mrs Hitchy had muddled them up when printing them, so everyone had to sit down and decide what happened before what.

Once we had worked out what order to do things, we got stuck into getting them done!

First we had to get our cups, a bean seed, and some soil, then we named our cups so we knew whose bean was whose. Once we had done that we filled our cups with soil, and pressed our bean seeds into the soil. We neatly covered our seeds with soil so we couldn't see them, and then watered them before putting them on our bean growing table.

As well as planting our beans in soil we also have a bean seed growing in a snaplock bag. This is so we can view it growing and understand what our beans are doing underneath the soil.

Every morning we check how our beans are growing, so far none have come out from the soil, but we can see our snaplock bag bean is changing rapidly every day. We compare what stage it is on our bean chart and think that our beans will be close to coming out of the soil soon.

If you're up at school come and see our awesome beans, some of us are hoping we may have used magic bean seeds, but we'll just have to wait to see how big they get.

Fraction Fun

Room 3 tamariki have been learning about, and understanding fractions. They could identify that fractions are made up of parts/sections/pieces but furthermore each of these are equal or even, as they would say. They learnt that the top number in a fraction is the numerator and tells us how many times the unit fraction is counted. I have noticed though a lot of tamariki refer to the numerator as the number coloured or shaded in, therefore reiterating in class and at home that the numerator is the number of times the unit fraction is counted will help in their understanding of fractions. The bottom number in a fraction is known as the denominator, this number tells us how many parts/sections/pieces the whole is split into.

For example, ¼ means one of fourths/quarters.

Tamariki in our kowhai math group have been learning to equally share objects into 2 groups (identifying halves of objects). Most of the tamariki can identify and verbalise that two halves make one whole. This is evident especially with food. The tamariki told me that sometimes their sandwiches are cut into halves, or they tell the teacher on duty at lunchtime, “I can only eat half my sandwich”. Making connections with math using real life contexts is important in their learning so give it a go at home whānau, I bet the tamariki would love learning about fractions with you.

Healthy Me!

This term we are looking at "Healthy Me", and all the ways we are healthy.

We started the week by talking about the word healthy and the things we think are healthy. We wrote all our ideas about how we are healthy down on some leaves which we have put on our class beanstalks on our topic wall.

We had some pretty cool ideas about how and why we are healthy, some people drew a fire because they keep warm, which keeps them healthy. Other people wrote down all the healthy sports they play, and others listed all the healthy foods they eat.

In the mornings we have been doing some "Cosmic Kids Yoga" (have a look on youtube), which has been challenging us all, but has been a lot of fun!

We've also been looking at our little garden plants and making sure they are healthy and growing well. We are investigating what a plant needs to stay healthy and on Friday we will be planting our class beans.

Yesterday we had a look at our bean seeds and worked out how they grow and in what order.

If you're up at school come and look at our little garden and all our healthy leaves!

This week we also have two new people to welcome to Room 3, and one person to welcome back! Monica-Jean joined us in Week 9 last term, and is pretty excited to be a big school girl, as well as Paskalle who started school this week. We also say a big welcome back to Oasis.

Hope you've all had a good week 1!

Mrs Hitchy and Room 3

Cosmic Kids Yoga

Looking at our bean seeds!

Cutting out our bean growing sequence!

Ordering our Bean Growing Sequence

Ordering our Bean Growing Sequence