Zappo the clown

Thank you FoNS for supplying a lot of laughter and hilarity today. Zappo was funny and we all had a really great time watching him.

Our Assembly

Tomorrow, Friday 6th December, Room 4 is hosting our school assembly. It is the last normal assembly of the year.

Football skills

Today we played some little games

A fun wet lunchtime!

Cushy cushions at assembly

Our Awesome Cushions

Our Cottage Industry is underway!!

Thank you Evelyn, Ikumi, and Jean for helping us sew our cushions. They look great!






T

Pack the bus

Don't forget to bring your contribution to put on the Bus on Thursday. Let us try and make someone elses Christmas a little brighter.

Buddy Day

'It  takes a community to look after a child.'

Children can’t prevent child abuse – but adults can.
And what better way to start conversations about the wellbeing of kids, than to send thousands of life size cardboard 'children' into the community for a day with business people, politicians, Iwi and members of the public!

At Normandale School we have been busy creating buddies who will take part in Buddy Day on 15 November. In our Whanau groups, the children created profiles for their buddy and then  dressed them. They were all very creative and unique. 

We are now waiting excitedly to find out who the adult buddy is who will 'adopt' our buddy for the day.

Kids Heart Day

Today our school all wore red to support Kids Heart day. We all brought a gold coin to raise some money for them.
At our school we have 3 heart zipper kids. They all told us their stories.

Athletics Day

On Tuesday afternoon we had our school Athletics Day.
We had sprints, pony jumps, jumping, throwing beanbags and relays.

When we ran our sprints we got a card telling us where we came in the race.
We had fun.

School Photos

Today we had our school photos taken. We all brought our big smiles to school and used them when our photo was taken.

Holidays

Hello Room 4
I hope you are all having  great holiday. I am looking forward to hearing all about what you have been doing when we get back to school.

Term 4 is the term when we have to wear our sunhats again.
Remember - NO HAT - NO PLAY


now is the time to find your hat, make sure it is named and put it in your schoolbag, already for term 4

Enjoy the rest of the break.

Grandparents Day

Today was Grandparents Day at our school.  We had lunch together and the grandparents had a cup of tea while we played outside.  After lunch we sang some songs to our Grandparents  and then did some folk-dancing.  After our dancing we asked the grandparents to join us in the Birdie Dance. That was fun! Everyone enjoyed it. After that we went into our classroom and showed our Grandparents how to write on our Interactive Whiteboard. We shared some reading with them - we read to them and they read to us. We had our iPads and shared some of the apps we use to practise our skills.We showed them our displayed work on the walls. They were impressed.

Thank you to all the Grandparents who came and visited our class today.  We loved having you here and showing you some of the things we do at school.

I apologise for the quality of the photos. I will post them in a different way over the holidays.
Watch this space! (Hopefully these are better!)

 

  

  

Hi to my friends in Room 4

movie time

cake for breakfast!

cooking noodles in Singapore

dinner with the air hostess

More from Alex

Guten tag

It is still hot. I am on a train.

I am learning how to say words in different languages. I can say thank you in Russian. 

We saw pretty buildings in St Petersburg and we went inside them. It is in Russia. We learned about the Kings and Queens and there sisters and brothers. They had lots of make up things and crystals and jewellery and crowns. They had pretty dresses that drag on the floor and lots of pretty shoes. People came a long way to see them. 

I saw the Bronze Horseman statue with a horse and snake on it. Beside it was a girl with a real snake around her. It was a python, and curled around her neck. Dad held it and I touched it. 

We saw real diamonds - Romanov diamond and gold collection. 

We went on a plane to Germany. It didn't take long.  We saw the Berlin Wall and I had McDonalds. I got a new book in German from there!

Love from Alex

Rosie comes to visit

Today, Kate from Room 3, brought her pet  Rosie to show us. Rosie is a cute little black and white mouse. Kate told us Rosie loves to run around her wheel. It is very noisy.
Thank you Kate for sharing Rosie with us.

Fractions

We are using the interactive whiteboard to sort fractions.
It is a fun activity.

Hi from Alex

Dear Mrs Morgan and Room 4

We found the temperature hot too.  Our hotel was new Chinatown too.  I was so hot, at China town I got a new cotton dress to wear!  We went went on the Singapore Flyer too, it was fun. We saw over 40 boats in the harbour - it was a great view. We went on a double decker bus to sightsee. 

We slept at the airport for a little bit then flew to Moscow at 2am in the morning. I only slept a little bit on the plane. I watched Garfield, Smurfs, Little Einsteins, the Epic movie on my own tv screen.

In Moscow there are lots of old buildings. We saw inside cathedrals, and I stood in the Red Square. We saw St Basil's cathedral, it was beautiful. We went inside it, and I will send a postcard of it. I chose a Russian doll with 10 dolls to buy. It is purple and has glitter on it.  We have had a nice lady show us places, and walked by ourselves too. A nice air hostess called Weinshan, from Singapore who looked after us on a flight, joined us for tea last night. She is really nice and always has a smile. She is learning to speak more English, and is very good at speaking Mandarin. 

Tomorrow we are catching a train to St Petersburg.  It is 5pm here right now. It is 1am in New Zealand, so you will be in bed right now!  I have tried lots of new foods here. It is fun travelling with Grandma.  I am watching TV and people are speaking Russian. I don't understand it but it is still fun to see. 

From Alex :) 

Bring and Buy

Waiting for Customers!!!

Bring and Buy

Our wonderful School Council (made up of senior children) are organising a Bring and Buy stall on Wednesday. The proceeds will go towards supporting children who don't have a lot, have a special Christmas party.

We ask that our children look through their toys and recycle some things they don't need any more, then bring them to school to go on the sales table.

On Wednesday, the items for sale will be sold for either 50c or $1.

We will get to view earlier in the day before buying.

As in all sales, when it is our turn to buy, we may not get the item we want as someone else has already bought it.

Have you sorted out something to bring to school yet for this good cause? It is not too late.

Invitation to our Grandparents

We would like to invite you to our Grandparents afternoon at Normandale School.  It is on Wednesday 25 September, starting at 1p.m with a cup of tea however if you would like to have lunch with me at school please come with your sandwiches at 12.40p.m.

We would like to show you our classrooms and what we do at school. We will sing you some songs and dance for you.

Please let me know if you can come so I can tell my teacher.

We hope you will come

Homework

We would like to make a list of all the different names we call our Grandparents and Great Grandparents. Please write them down and bring them to school tomorrow.

Also, we would love to have photos of you with your grandparents. Can you please bring one to school. You could email Mrs Morgan and attach a copy if it was easier.
smorgan@normandale.school.nz 

grandparents questionnaire

Congratulations to Eva Marie's grandparents in South Africa, and to Abby's grandparents. They have sent us back the questionnaire responses.

We would love the rest of you to send the questions to your grandparents so we can see what differences there are between the things they did and the things we do.

Thank you Grace for your responses from your 2 grandmas, and Tess from Nonna.

It is interesting to read how things were different. 

Graham Braddock Art Workshop

Today we had an art workshop. Jane came and taught us how to draw really well. We drew a penguin and a bucket. It was fun. Our pictures look amazing.

the picture we were drawing

Jane telling us what to draw next

listening and watching

Jane's finished picture

our amazing pictures

Our resident ducks

These ducks visit us often when it rains.

Daffodil Day

Today we all wore something yellow for Daffodil Day. We also brought a gold coin to help the Cancer Society try and find a cure for people with cancer.

Questions for our Grandparents

This term our topic is about “How things have changed for kids over time”

How are the things we do different to what our grandparents / great grandparents had to do.

(these questions are on our class blogs, so you could copy and paste them into an email and send them to Grandparents. Thank you)

Questions we would like to ask our Grandparents

·       We have interactive whiteboards, computers, iPads, and projectors at our school.

How was your school different to ours?

·     

           For lunch we eat sandwiches, yoghurt, fruit and chippies.

What did you eat for your lunch at school?

·      We play tag, hide and seek, soccer, ice and fire, horsies (with hoops and ropes), and swing on the bars.

What games did you play at school? 

·      We have a sandpit, an adventure playground, a field, courts, trees to climb, and slides at school.

·      What kind of playground did you have?

·      We don’t wear a uniform to school – we can wear whatever we like. Sometimes the seniors wear a sports uniform for special occasions. Did you wear uniforms at primary school?

·      We walk, get driven to school and sometimes we scoot to school.

How did you get to school?

·      After school we have swimming lessons, dance lessons, gym lessons, have playdates, go to after school care, watch TV, play on our play stations or Xboxes, look at our class blogs on the computer, do our homework.

What did you do when you got home from school?

·      If we were having a treat for dinner it could be fish and chips, Chinese, McDonald’s, Subway, Pizza, or KFC.

If you were having a treat, what would it have been?

·      We have polar fleeces, hoodies and tights.

Were your clothes different?

·      We use a stove, microwave or barbecue to cook with.

What did you cook with?

Chameleons

We read Mr Haste's zoo blog about chameleons. We looked at some pictures of them and saw a video about them catching food.  Chameleon Tongue

We wrote stories about chameleons.

I like the chameleons tail. It is green. It has a curly tail.

Bailey

Chameleons have long tails and tongues. When they touch yellow, they change yellow. They love eating flies. They are fun to watch.

Alex S

A chameleon’s tail curls.

Matilda

The chameleon curls up her tail so she can protect herself, so no other animal eats them up. It changes colour. Chameleons are awesome.

Abby

I like the chameleons tail. Their colour  is whatever they touch so they can hide. I think chameleons are awesome. I like the chameleons.

Charlie

I like the colour of the chameleons. It curls up its tail when they get scared of people. The can change colour. They can stretch their tongue out a lot so it can get a fly and eat up the fly for dinner.

Theo

Chameleons change colour when they touch something.

Nadia

The chameleons change colour. It is cool.

Kelly

I like the colour of them. Chameleons are beautiful. I like that they can change colour.

Romy

Chameleons have a sort of spiral tail. It’s tail is bluey purple. It can change colours like purple and blue and green and grey. If its tail was stretched it would be very long.

Eva-Marie

A chameleon changes colour. It changes colour to any colour it sees to hide from his enemies. It curls up its tail so nobody pulls on it.

Calista  

I like chameleons because they are rainbow colour and I like the rainbow on them. I like the tail.

Grace

The chameleon can change colour when it touches something. It is chasing a fly with its tongue and it is sticky.

Alex D

Chameleons have very long tongues. It is longer than his body. It’s tail is like a koru.

Max

A chameleon has a very long tongue. It eats flies. His tongue is purple. It has a little round bit that catches its food. Chameleons are cool.

Sam

Pataka Trip Reflections

"I liked it when we dressed up," said Abby
Charlie liked writing with the slate pencil on the slate
Megan liked it when she listened to the music while she was watching Joseph Michael's pictures
"I liked it when I was drawing a picture in the gallery," said Ben
"I liked the story Bea read to us in the library," said Matilda
Max liked using the washing board and sunlight soap to do the washing
Nadia loved chatting on the bus while we were travelling to Pataka. Dressing up was fun too.
Sam dressed up in olden days clothes and shoes. The kids wore hats to school.
Tess liked doing the washing because it was fun putting clothes through the wringer to get the water out.
Alex S loved listening to the stories in the library.
Grace loved going to the library because it was fun reading the books.
Alex D dressed up in Dad's shoes and everyone laughed at him when he put on his costume.
Eva-Marie loved ironing the clothes with the old fashioned iron which they used to heat on the stove.
Bailey liked washing the clothes.
Hannah liked sorting out the things that were new and old.
Calista liked dressing up in a dress, a pinafore, and a hat.

Pataka Trip

Today we went on a school trip to Porirua. We went to Pataka, where we looked at how things have changed over time. We also went to the Porirua Library, where we had a story time. Last we went to the Gallery and saw an exhibition by Joseph Michael.

A very special BIG thank you to all the parents who came with us today and helped us have fun. 

It was a fun day.

writing on slates

Bea is reading us a story

washing using sunlight soap and a wash board

matching old and new items