First Post for 2011

Today was our first day at Wairakei School. I think most of the children were pleased to be back, and they did seem to enjoy their day.

Here are the gorgeous Room 10!

Yellow Dots!!!

Wow! We are so impressed with the attention our blog is getting around the world!

So today we are learning to use an atlas to find some of the countries where our blog is being viewed.

Thanks everyone!

Brave men...

Yesterday at 2pm, the whole nation stood still for two minutes so we could remember the brave men who died at the Pike River Mining Tradegy recently.

We discussed what this means, and the children now know that there are 13 children in Greymouth who now do not have a 'daddy', and that those men were somebody's uncle, nephew, son, father, brother, grandson, grandfather, nieghbour and friend.

At 2pm, Room 10 stopped their writing, put their pencils down and stood...to think about those families who have lost a loved one.

Well done, Room 10! You make me proud!

Our new classmates!!!

We have some new classmates!!!

A big welcome to Cecil, the water snail, six wee minnow fish, and a stick insect!!

Thank you to Carla Choi (Miss O'Neill's friend) for giving us Cecil and the fish (we haven't named them as they are too small at the moment). We are taking turns each day to feed the fish. We really like them because they have a bright blue stripe on them. Cecil spends the day eating oxygen weed!

The other day Hunter was writing a thank you letter to Carla and he noticed something crawling up his arm! It looked like a worm...we think he is a stick insect because most of the time he looks like a twig!

The day after...

On Friday we had a relatively 'easy going; day, as the night before was our last performance of Panto Pandemonium. We were all quite tired from 2 late nights and 4 performances...so the expectations were lowered a little that day.

Three girls, Emily, Piper and Olivia, learn Highland Dancing after school, and they had arranged to bring a CD into class for Friday News. Here they are performing a jig:



Here is Piper performing the Sword Dance (Miss O'Neill managed to find two long sticks to act as swords):


The weather was awful on this day. As the rain pelted down, the children had to stay inside to eat and play. Hunter has become quite the KING of the game Connect 4. I had 5 games with him and LOST each game!!! I thought he was so good that I arranged Caitlin to video us on our 6th game...unfortunately for Hunter I won that game. Hunter said I could put the video of him losing...as long as I wrote that he actually had won the 5 games beforehand...deal! You are a terrific player, Hunter!


Is it ok that I was so gleeful in front of a 6 year old???

Circuit Class

For our Inquiry this term we are developing a Circuits Programme for the Otakaro Team to participate in. We are at the 'Immersion' stage, where we need to find out what exactly circuits involves.

So today Miss O'Neill took us to Jellie Park where we met Shelley. She is a gym instructor, and she took us for a class of circuits. We got to do various exercises which specially work just our legs, our hearts and our tummies (abdomen)...it was hard work! Some of us even started to sweat!

We thought the best part was being able to use some special gym equipment.

Thanks, Jellie Park for letting us come and visit.

Welcome to Miss Pricolo

A big welcome to our student teacher, Sam Pricolo. We hope you love teaching Room 10...we are certain you will!

A wee while ago our school received a parcel from another Wairakei School! I know! There is another Wairakei School in the North Island. They heard about our big earthquake, and know we are having lots of aftershocks, and wanted to let us know that they care. Wow! Thanks Wairakei North...it is great to know we are being thought of. Here is a picture of some of Room 10 reading some books made by the wonderful children of Wairakei North School...thanks!