Royal Visit

Today many Halcombe children went to Feilding to try and catch a glimpse of Prince Charles and Camilla. Azi from Room 3 was one of the lucky children who was waiting in Manchester Square to see the Royal couple and she was dressed in her finest hoping to meet them.

This snap was taken by the Manawatu Standard: Princesses in Waiting

Kitchen Chemistry: Experiment One

Experiment One: The Lunchbox

Imagine if you left your lunchbox, with left over food in it, somewhere for a whole week!! Imagine in your lunchbox there was a sandwich, some strawberries and a half eaten apple! They look yummy to start with, but how would they look after 2 days, 5 days, 7 days - how about after 2 weeks!?

To investigate changes in food Room 3 left a sandwich, some strawberries and a bitten apple out for 2 weeks. We predicted what we thought would happen, then we observed the changes and took notes and then researched to explain the changes.

Have a look at what happened....

Halcombe School Disco

Thank you to the Student Council for putting on such an awesome disco for us on Friday! We had a great time dancing and doing the limbo, and the glow sticks we such an epic idea! THANK YOU!!

It's Disco time...

Cross-Country 2012

After many weeks of hard training, Halcombe School ran the cross-country on Friday. Everyone did a great job running up and down the hills, through the creek, as well as the bog and the prickle patch! Congratulations to everyone who competed and a special well done to all those who placed in their race. Good luck to those children who are competing in the inter-school cross-country at Hunterville on Friday.

Pet Day 2012

Halcombe School's Pet Day was held on Tuesday 22 October and it was a day filled with wonderful pets, competition and creativity.

Room 3 either bought a champion pet or decorated a farmer's hat as part of the indoor exhibits. Congratulations to everyone that either competed in the pet day or made a farmer's hat.

Have a look at some of the photos from the day below:

Inventions update!

Room 3 is now well into the second week of inventing their wet lunchtime activity, things are ticking along nicely and most groups are now into the modification and testing stages.

The Problem:

During spring there are many wet lunchtimes and in Room 3 there is not enough activities that can be played by a group inside.

The Brief:

Design a wet lunchtime activity that can be played by a group. It needs to be portable and be easily unpacked and packed away.

The Groups:

Group One is inventing two race tracks where cars have to speed past obstacles to reach the finish line first.

Group Two is inventing an Angry Birds inspired game where you must blast your Angry Bird out of a volcano to hit stars, and collect points, avoiding the dangerous dragons!

Group Three is inventing the 'Tigers and Monkeys' board game where tigers and monkeys have to race through the jungle to get away from the evil poachers!

Group Four is inventing the 'Army Training' game where players practice their aim shooting stars for points.

Group Five is inventing a dance mat where dancers can practice their moves to the latest hits!

Hotdog lunches!

Student Council donation

The Halcombe School Student Council has been looking for a worthy cause to make a donation to and decided to donate to the Palmerston North Rescue Helicopter.

The Team really appreciated the donation and wrote us this lovely note!

Room 3's Tech Challenge

Over the last week Room 3 have been spending their afternoons completing a tech challenge! The instructions seemed simple....

But this task was anything but simple! We needed to plan, design, build, test and evaluate, rebuild, test and evaluate and then share.

It was a big job but we all create a unique and creative chair that fit the needs of Baby Bear!

Tech Challenge: Baby Bear's Birthday Chair on PhotoPeach

 

Daffodil Day

On Friday, Room 3 and all of Halcombe School got into the spirit of Daffodil Day by wearing yellow and donating to the Cancer Society.

Our bright yellow outfits and a beautiful sunny day made for a perfect parade  and we also raised a record amount for the Cancer Society!!

Inventions

Room 3 has had a great time working on our inventions inquiry over the last two weeks! So far we have learnt about who can be inventor, what amazing inventions have been created over time and have started thinking about what processes an inventor goes through.

For writing this week we have been designing and building Technics car and then writing a procedure on how to build the car for a buddy. We have really had to think carefully about how much detail we add to our procedure and have had to make so many changes so that our instructions were simple, but still really clear!

Check out the photos of us making our car and writing our procedures.

Daffodil Day 2012

Maths Trail for Maths Week

To celebrate Maths Week on Monday Room 3 and Room 4 joined forces to complete a maths trail. We had a blast finding the answers around the school to the problems that clever Miss Campbell wrote for us! 

Some of the questions we had a answer were:

• Which classroom is closer to the flagpole? Room 3 or Room 5?
• How many number sentences can you make out of Mrs Lynch's number plate?
• Who has more windows for Mr Martin to wash? The senior team or the junior team?

Check out some of the photos from our maths trail below!

NZ Maths Week

Congratulations Team NZ

Well the Olympics are all over but New Zealand has a lot to celebrate with an impressive haul of 13 medals!! Of course 6 of those are gold!

In Room 3 we think that our New Zealand Olympians are epic and we are very proud! GO TEAM NZ!!

Team New Zealand update

Congratulations Team New Zealand on two Bronze medals - one in the Equestrian 3 Day Event and the other in the Women's Double Sculls.

Check out the photos below showing our proud Olympians with their medals.

Wheels Day

Halcombe School Quiz Night

Olympics: London 2012

In the lead up to and during the 30th Olympic Games in London, Room 3 will be learning about everything Olympics!

Key ideas for us will be about:

• the history and importance of the Olympic Games
• how to support and encourage our New Olympians
• about persistence, motivation, passion and achievement
• about great New Zealand sports people and role models

Before we get back to school and get stuck into our learning, I have a little thinking challenge for you all...

What sports do you know of that are in the Olympics?

Post all your ideas as a comment below, but make sure you read the other comments and post something new!

Lets see how many sports we can think of!

ABCya! literacy and maths games

ABCya! is a fantastic website powered by Disney with games and activities designed for children at certain ages. The literacy and maths games are especially great and very relevant to our learning here at school. We are going to be using this site as part of our maths and literacy program in Room 3 so have a look at home too and see what great things you can find!

Burger Day!

World Wildlife Foundation

In Room 3 we were curious about the other endangered animals from other parts of the world so, we did a bit of searching on the internet to find out more. We came across a great website from the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) that has lists of the different animals, as well as fun facts and games. We would love you to check it out, we think it's pretty fantastic!

Click here to visit the WWF website.

Our learning about deforestation

Yesterday Room 3 talked about deforestation. Deforestation is where a large forest is cleared by bulldozers. People clear forests to make room for cities and for timber. To find this out we brainstormed our ideas. The poor animals that live in the forests don't stand a chance against the bulldozers! 12 million hectares of forest get cut down every year. This causes the extinction of 50,000 species of plants, animals and insects each year. Learning this made us feel extremely upset and angry! We are glad that in New Zealand we protect our native bush and animals.

 We watched this You Tube clip to learn more.

   

Thank you for watching, if you have an idea about how we could take action, post your comment below.

Wall Wisher

Symmetry

Over the last few weeks Room 3 have been learning all about geometry including everything to do with 2D and 3D shapes and symmetry. As part part of our learning about symmetry we learnt about how a line of symmetry can run horizontally, vertically or be oblique. To test out our new knowledge we took some crazy symmetrical photos of ourselves - check them out!!

Crazy Day!

On Friday, 25 May Halcombe School had a Crazy Day! It was super fun, we all came in our CRAZIEST outfits, we had a parade and even a dance-off!! William and Azi won prizes for the craziest outfits in Room 3 and Emma won the dance-off with her smooth moves!

Have a look at our slideshow of photos from the day!

How can we help endangered animals?

Do you know of some endangered animals?

What do you think could cause an animal to become endangered?

What do you think people could do to stop these animals from becoming endangered?

Do you think people should try and save endangered animals?

Funky Captions for Frankenstein the Frog

Yesterday morning Room 3 wrote captions to go with a photo of Frankenstein our frog. Miss McCartin snuck up on Frankenstein while he was hanging out on top of his food bowl, and she took some great photos. We thought it would be fun to write some witty captions to describe what Frankenstein might be up to.

Here are some of the great captions we wrote.

Independent Reading with Mrs Kane.

On Friday morning, Mrs Kane came to Room 3 to help us with our independent reading or Read To Self.

We had so much fun reading our own choice of books and sitting and reading anywhere we liked in our classroom. She taught us some new skills we can practice during independent reading. One new thing she taught us was about stamina, which is about building up our skills in reading so we can read for longer and become pro-readers!

Thank you Mrs Kane for coming to Room 3 to help us with our independent reading! We look forward to seeing you again in two weeks time!

 

Hairy Maclary's creative frogs

This term our class has been learning about frogs! Miss Cameron decided that the Hairy Maclary's reading group could draw our own frogs. We read about frogs in our Junior Journal and we read a story about a class who were learning about dinosaurs and how long they were. We thought it could be fun to measure and draw our own creative frogs with chalk on the concrete.

Have a look at all the frogs we created below...

By the Hairy Maclary's reading group (Toby, Tahu, Sophie, William, Sinead, Logan and Hannah).

Search Engines

Hi Room 3!

We have a new feature on our blog called search engines. A search engine is a way you can search the internet and ask questions.

I have suggested a great search engine for you to use that is designed especially for kids! It's called Kid Rex and its a great way for you search away safely - of course Mum and Dad always enjoy helping you on the computer so ask them to come and sit with you while you find the answers to all those questions you have! 

We will all be using Kid Rex over the next few weeks to help us with our science topic as well so you will be search engine experts before you know it!

Miss Cameron

Easter Note Generator

Friday Fun Day photos

Friday Fun Day! on PhotoPeach

Friday Fun Day!

Last Friday, 30 March, Room 3 and the whole of Halcombe School had two special surprises in the afternoon after the Sausage Sizzle. We guessed and guessed all morning about what the surprises could be, but no one had any idea until we saw the fire trucks turn up at the end of lunch time! There were four fire fighters that came to see us and to tell us all about the special race they are doing up the Sky Tower in Auckland.

We learnt all about how to stay safe at home and found out the most important thing you can do if there is a fire is to have a plan of how to get out of your house safely. Then Toby and Azi were allowed to try on the fire fighters' gear to understand how hard it will be to run up the stairs of the Sky Tower. It was SO heavy!

Before they left the fire fighters wanted to see if we could guess how far the water in the big hose could go. Georjia, Logan, Tyler, Will and Jakob had a go at guessing, but soon realised that if they guessed right that they were going to get wet!

The second part of our surprise was all about Easter! We got to hang out with our buddy class and wish each other Easter messages, before giving each other an Easter Egg!It was a really fun way of spending the last Friday of the term!

Senior Swimming Sports

A reminder that tomorrow, Wednesday, 7 March, is the Senior Swimming Sports. Most of our Year 4 students are involved and we will be heading to the Makino at 12noon. Room 3 children don't forget that you need TWO towels, a hat, a snack and of course your TOGS!!

Spelling Lists

Lady Bug Note Generators

Explanation Writing - How to wash you hands

This is how you wash your hands, you have to wash your hands to keep yourself healthy and stop the spread of germs.

First you turn on the tap. Secondly you wet your hands under the water and rub them together. Then you push the lever on the soap container on the wall. After, quickly put your hand under the container. Now there is soap in the middle of your hand.

Next you rub your hands together under the water and then you rub between your fingers. After that you rub the back of one hand with the palm of the other hand, then you swap over your hands.

Now you re-rinse your hands to double check there is no more soap left on your hands. Remember to turn off the tap before you dry your hands. Lastly, you pull a paper towel out of the paper towel machine on the wall, but not too many! Then with the paper towel you rub it against your hands to dry them. Next you put the towel in the rubbish bin.

Now you have finished the job of washing your hands. Your hands are now germ free and clean!

BY ROOM 3

Buddy Class February 2012 on PhotoPeach

Buddy Class 2012

Last Friday Room 3 had Buddy Class with Room 6. It was a very special Buddy Class this week because we got to go swimming! First Room 6 taught us how to do side stroke, they were very kind and patient when they were teaching us and we learnt heaps!! After learning side stroke we got to have a free swim. We made a whirlpool, but it wasn't a normal whirlpool, we got to sit on our buddy's shoulders while they did all the hard work!

THANKS ROOM 6!!

PTA 'Meet the teacher BBQ'

A reminder that the meet the PTA meet the teacher family BBQ is tomorrow night (Wednesday, 15 February) from 5.30pm. This is a great opportunity to come along and meet me, the other room 3 parents and the wonderful Room 3 children.

I will be speaking about Room 3 and our class programme from 6 - 6.15pm and we will be having dinner from 6.30pm.

The PTA are very kindly providing sausages, bread and salad so all you need to bring are plates and cutlery for your family. The pool will also be open if you and your children would like to have a swim!

Look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Miss Cameron

Lady Bug Note Generators

Lady Bug Note Generators

Welcome

Welcome back to all the children in Room 3. I hope you all had a fun holiday and are all refreshed ready for learning. We have a very exciting and busy term ahead of us which is going to be fantastic!