Wednesday, March 27, 2013

News flash!

Charlotte has won the First National Real Estate colouring competition.
 Look at the size of that egg!
Wow Charlotte..that is great colouring.
We hope you don't come back to school next Wednesday with a sore tummy!
Room 1 is very proud of you.

Happenings....

 Some of our wonderful Pupil Council members came to talk about how we can stop bullying from happening. They showed us some role plays to remind us that bullying is:
*Hurtful
*Repetitive and
* On purpose
 Vanessa, James and Charlotte helped us to sign the Merrin Bully Prevention Oath.
We are learning about the Power of being a Merrin Star. 
We all signed the oath to say that we will look after all our Merrin pupils.
Vladka came in to help us decorate Easter eggs.
On Wednesday we had our first buddy time. Each person in Room 1 has a Room 15 buddy. They are some of the Year 5 and 6 children.
Our buddy helped us to make an Easter bunny.
 On Thursday we had an Easter egg hunt. We had to read lots of clues. Tuscany found the eggs in one of our totetrays!
Happy Easter from all of Room 1!

Friday, March 22, 2013

Our Reading Programme

This week we thought we would tell families about what we do at Reading time.
We start each day by reading poems and a big shared book together. 
We are all in different reading groups.
Each group has activities that they have to do on the activity board. When they are finished they can choose their own activities.
Each day Mrs Bargh checks our reading notebooks.
We show her how clever we are at learning our early words.
Each group takes a book home 3 days a week as well as the weekly poem. 
We start by discussing the story and pictures.
Here is the Ladybird group reading their new book. When a group has finished with Mrs Bargh we swap around and try different activities.
Jordyn is practising using his pencil.
Here is Neela making words with the magnetic letters.
Penny is reading the weekly poem to take home to share with her family.
Tuscany has chosen a big book to read.
This is Nikau playing one of the word games using the 'caterpillar' words.
Charlotte enjoys reading books with the puppets.
Annabelle is practising the alphabet sounds.
Ethan is writing outside with water and a brush.
Look at Thomas! Here is writing on the whiteboards.
Mrs Bargh is very pleased with how well we are doing with our reading.

Remember to practise your reading book. caterpillar words and sounds notebook every night at home. 

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Week 6 March 4-8

This week we welcomed Ashlyn to our class. Her birthday was on Thursday. We hope you have a very happy time at Merrin.
 The chrysalis in our class hatched into a beautiful butterfly. We watched it fly away!
 We each made a lantern to celebrate Christchurch's Lantern Festival at Hagley Park.
 Tuscany won the lucky draw for bringing back all her chocolate money. Thanks to the P.T.A she has $10.00 to spend at Smiggles!
At cafe time we made m m m mouse traps. Mm is one of our special letters this week. Thanks for all the great work you are doing with learning the sounds in the sound notebooks.
Neela, Ethan and Nikau thought the mouse traps were delicious.
Charlotte, Ashlyn and Jordan ate theirs quickly before any mice could came visiting!
Peter helped us blow up our class globe. We are enjoying finding and labeling lots of different countries.
Aloha! On Friday we had a Syndicate 1 Beach Day.
We enjoyed dressing up and walking in a parade.
Annabelle made a crab hat with big eyes and nippers.
At Discovery Time Thomas built a ramp for his toy cars.
Neela made this boat with nails, wood and a material mast.
Mr C came and showed us some of the songs and stories he has written for ipads.
 You might like to look up the songs he showed us on http://kahunaeducation.com/
We enjoyed listening to him playing his ukelele as well. His songs are very funny with a great message!

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Elgrego

Elgrego came to visit Merrin School to talk to us about how we can work on being a 
Merrin Star.
He reminded us that we have to work on being kind and caring- just like how we have to practise our reading and writing.
Elgrego put on a 1 hour show in the hall.
He talked to us about what to do if someone is bothering us.
We listened very carefully to his idea about using our W.I.T.S
Can you remember what they are?...
W.I.T.S:
W Walk away
 I Ignore the annoying person
T Talk it out with them
S Seek help  (from a teacher, a playground Toa or Anahera or talk about it with your family when you get home!)
Elgrego would like us all to be a hero at Merrin school by practising these new ideas.
"Treat others respectfully and find ways of being kind to others. 
Be a Merrin Star!"