Senior Swimming Sports

Yesterday we had the Senior Swimming Sports at the Makino Pool. We were very lucky with the weather. It was warm and sunny and the water was just right.

It was very exciting for us Year 4's because it was our FIRST swimming sports event in the BIG pool!
Here are some photos of our afternoon ...

Spelling Buddies

Every Friday morning, we 'buddy up' with our Learning Buddy. We test each other on the list of words we've been practising at home and school.

We feel so PROUD when we get these words right.

Special Visitors

Today we had two special visitors to Room 3 ...  Mrs Howie and her baby Jack!
We all think Jack is very cute. He is 5 weeks old now and still has a lot of  hair.
Mrs Howie is very proud of him. It was so great to finally meet the 'bump' from Mrs Howie's tummy.

Moss's Bug

Today one of our students brought a bug that he found. He wrote about it today and wanted to post it on our class blog.

This is Moss's story ...

Goodbye Harold

On Friday, all of Halcombe School kids went to the hall to say goodbye to Tim and Harold.
Tim turned on some 'Star Wars' music, and everyone laughed when Harold came out and had a pretend light saber battle with Tim. In the end, they didn't actually fight! They hugged each other!

We've learnt a lot about what makes us good learners and how the food we eat affects our learning. We are working on being good friends to each other.

Here's our last photo of Harold and Tim...

Life Education

Today we started our Life Education programme. We will be learning about what it means to be a good friend, have good self-esteem and how to relate better with others.

We met Tim and Harold in the Life Education caravan and had lots of fun learning about what things help us to come to school ready to learn ... a good sleep, a good breakfast, having had some exercise and having people who care for us and love us.

We will be seeing Tim and Harold again every Monday and Wednesday afternoon. We can't wait!

Friday Fun Day

Today was Friday Fun Day in the pool. We had loads of fun creating a whirlpool, dog paddling in it, then trying to swim against the flow!  We had noodle races and did an obstacle course where we had to dive over and swim under noodles.

These activities are great for building our water confidence, trying new skills (dolphin dives today), and just to enjoy being in the water.

Here are some photos ...

Learning Maths Games

Today in Maths, we learnt how to play a variety of different Maths games that involved addition and subtraction. Playing Maths games helps us practice basic facts and to get quicker and more accurate.
And it's fun learning with a buddy!

Welcome To Room 3

It's our second day back at school and Room 3 kids are happy to be back!
Here were are ...

We are looking forward to sharing all the exciting fun things we do this year and to show you what we're learning.

We LOVE your friendly feedback, so please feel free to leave a comment.


REMINDER ...
KIDS - BRING YOUR TOGS TO SCHOOL EVERY DAY

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Well, the day has come .... the last day of school!
We wish everyone a very merry Christmas and happy holidays.

See you all next year!

Athletics Training

Over the past week, we've been out in the crazy wind, practising athletic skills.
Today we were practising throwing the discus. Luckily the wind was helping push the discus into the air!

Room 3 Camp

Last week Room 3 kids had our school camp! We went to Te Manawa Museum to construct and battle robots. We had a sleep over at school then went to the Manawatu Gorge to do the Tawa Loop Track.
It was loads of fun. We played lots of fun games in the hall and had fish and chips for tea. For some of us, it was the first time sleeping over somewhere different, and it was exciting sleeping in the class overnight.
Here are some photos of our 2 day camp ...

Thanks so much to our wonderful parent helpers ..
Mr Iwikau, Miss Allen, Mrs Moses, Miss McLaughlin, Mr Rutherford, Mr Stace, Talk Talk, and to Mrs Newman and Miss White for helping out with our breakfast/lunch on Friday.

We really appreciate it!

Technology - Making Coasters

Room 3 have just finished their technology project - To design and create a coaster that will ..
1. Be waterproof
2. Be strong
3. Be heat resistant
4. Not scratch the table
5. Look good

First we had to work our what would be a good material to make our coasters with. After a process of elimination of bad ideas, we decided 5mm MDF would fit the criteria above.

We had to draw our designs, including what materials would be needed, what the back would be like and to show colours paints/vivids we would use.

Some Room 6 children helped us in the woodwork room to cut edges of the wood, then we had to sand the rough edges.

We had to coat the wood with special primer so that our paint colours wouldn't seep into the wood.

Finally ... we got to draw and paint our designs. Some printed pictures from the internet. We HAD to follow our plans. Sometimes we had to change our design, because we realised things didn't work out as we planned...

We glued felt circles on the back so that they wouldn't scratch or stick to the table.

At last, we sprayed our coasters with a varnish to waterproof them.
Our coasters look amazing... Here are some photos of our technology process ...

Check out our coasters!

Pet Day

Today was Pet Day!  The back field was filled with lambs, calves, goats, dogs - not to mention cats, rabbits, pigs, chooks and birds.

Room 3 children were proud of the rural-themed artwork they've been working so hard on over the past two weeks. Here are some photos of our day ...

School Disco

Friday night was our school disco. The juniors kicked the night off at 5.30pm and got straight into some serious grooves. We had lots of fun. Miss Jeynes had fun dancing with children from different classes too! Here are some photos of our night ...

Cross Country Practice

This week we've been putting lots of effort into our training for cross country. We have been running along the shingle road just outside of school.
Today we had a practice run of the cross country course. It was great running through the mud and working out how to get through the creek without falling into it!

We're hoping the weather will be perfect for this Friday's cross country...

School Disco next Friday

PET DAY

I hope you all had a great holiday. Now we're back into Term 4 full swing!
Pet Day is fast approaching - Week 3 - Wednesday 26th October.

Room 3 will be creating some wonderful pieces of art ... a paper flower garden and pet rocks. All materials will be provided at school. We look forward to showing off our art.

See you at Pet Day!

A Wheely Fun Day

Today the Student Council ran another Wheels Day.  Despite a few raindrops and puddles, we all got to have a zoom around the school on our scooters, drift bikes, roller blades and wheely shoes.

Then for lunch it was a sausage and a spider drink. YUM!!!! Sorry parents for the muddy clothes!

At the start of the day, the whole school went to the hall to show off our groovy dance moves that we've been practising for the past few weeks.
 Check these out ...

Thanks Student Council for this fun event.

Reminder about Wheels/Spider/Sausages

Dancing With Our Little Buddies

Today we got together with our buddy class - Room 8. They taught us a dance called The King Of Spain Goes Marching.

We each had turns dancing with  our younger buddies and had lots of fun.
Thanks Room 8 kids for showing us this dance! We're looking forward to our next buddy class session.

Wheels Day/Fun Day Coming Up

Fabric Fun

Room 3 kids are learning all about Fabric & Fibre. We have been learning to identify different fabrics, and test out and compare their properties. For example, how stretchy is the fabric? Is it absorbent? Does it fray easily? Does it bounce back after you squeeze it? etc.

We worked in small groups and had fun, ripping, cutting, squeezing fabrics.

We've learnt that fabrics are constructed in 4 main ways: weaved,(like cotton shirts)  knitted/looped (like woolen jerseys or stretchy cotton T-shirts)   or are 'non-woven' which are NOT made from thread.  (Like polar fleece)

Today we practiced weaving flax. We needed to work with a buddy because one person had to hold down the ends of the flax while the other weaved .. under, over, under, over.  Then we swapped over to give our buddy a turn.

Our flax weaving looks awesome, even though it's not quite finished.   Here are some photos ...

FRACTIONFUN

We are learning about FRACTIONS in Maths.
We have been exploring finding fractions of shapes and objects.
We've learnt how to find fractions of objects by counting one in every 3 (thirds) and one in every 4 (quarters).
Some of us are learning to apply our division knowledge to work out fractions of objects.
eg: What is one third of 15?
      I know 15 divided by 3 is 5, so 5 is the answer!

We enjoy playing fractions games like Memory and creating wholes ...

Having Fun With Geometry

This is the last week of learning about shapes, position and movement.
We've been learning about the attributes of 2 and 3D shapes (corners, faces, edges), reflecting, translating and rotating shapes, and using directional words - left, right, 1/4. 1/2 and 3/4 turns clockwise, anticlockwise.

Today we had fun finding shapes that tessellate. We cut and pasted shapes as well as tracing around shapes to create cool tessellating patterns. Here are some photos:

The Halcombe School Olympics

Today was The Halcombe School Olympics!
The Student Council organised lots of different challenging activities, obstacle courses and games for all of the school to join in with.

There was a blind-folded challenge, a water-cup-carrying challenge, a gymnastics course, a bowling cones activity and plenty more.

Here are some photos of Room 3 kids getting stuck in and having a lot of fun!

Thanks Student  and Miss Simpson for organising

NZ Players Theatre

We've been having a great week at Halcombe School. On Tuesday we had a helicopter land in our field, and yesterday we watched a show, put on by the NZ Players Theatre.

The play was called The Fairest Of Them All. It had a very important message about how we shouldn't spend lots of our time fixated on social media or the internet. It's important to have good relationships with people around you. It was a very funny show.

Special Visitors

Yesterday, the whole school were surprised and delighted to have a visit from the NZ Defense Force.
All of the children  gathered on the playground, but none of them knew exactly why!!!

After about 10 minutes, there was a noise. It sounded like quiet thumping.
Then louder .... louder...!
"Something's coming!" yelled some random child. That random child was correct. Something WAS coming... Something large and powerful.

Soon everyone saw what was making all the noise. It was a helicopter. A MASSIVE helicopter! An 11 tonne Iroquois helicopter from Ohakea.

Everyone got a chance to have a look inside and ask questions.

How cool!  Here are some photos of this exciting, unexpected event ...

Thanks Mrs Simpson and Mr Borck for organising this special surprise.

Perseverance

Our Social Studies topic is Perseverance.
In room 3, we've set ourselves some fun physical challenges. We have to PERSEVERE and practice working on our goals so we can achieve them in four weeks.

First we had to work out what we COULD achieve. Then had to set ourselves REALISTIC goals.

Here are some of our challenges.

Stay tuned, to see how we go over the next few weeks!

PJ DAY!

On Wednesday it was Pyjama and Burger Day.
We rolled on up to school in our PJs or onesies, dressing gown and slippers. Some of us got 'strange' looks as we got on the Feilding bus in the morning.

It was nice to be snuggly all day, and we tried very hard not to fall asleep!
The student council organised burgers, which made the day even more special.