Christmas is here!!!

We know Christmas has arrived at HPS when Mrs Savidan decorates the office and the staffroom! This year she had a very special surprise for us all - a giant Santa for the front entrance! Room 14 loves him and had a good look at all the beautiful decorations in the office area - feel free to come up and have a look before next Thursday as Mrs Savidan has really made everything look fantastic.

Christmas Decorations

Christmas decorations

The class are sharing their favourite Christmas ornament, decoration, or item that is special to them. We hope you enjoy these Fotobabbles about them!

Butterfly hatches

Today our butterfly finally hatched from its chrysalis! We have watched the whole life cycle of the our butterfly from a tiny white egg, to a tiny caterpillar we could hardly see, to a huge fat caterpillar who ate all day, to a chrysalis, and now to a beautiful butterfly. We will hopefully see out butterfly lay eggs on our swan plant and the whole life cycle will start again!

Monkey Bars

Our poem this week is Monkey Bars and the children noticed all the 'doing words' in it, so after we had read it we went outside and they showed me all the things they could do on the Monkey Bars. Some of them are very brave!!!

Monkey Bars on PhotoPeach

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! First up we made Pumpkin Pies - thanks to Mrs Jones for buying the right sort of pumpkin from the American shop! The pies were fun to make and while we waited for them to cook we read a story called 'A Turkey for Thanksgiving' about how Mr and Mrs Moose want to have a turkey for their Thanksgiving meal - but not to eat him, just so that he can share in their lovely meal! The children enjoyed it, and we were then able to get the pies out of the oven and smell the spicy cinnamon and ginger we had put in. We sat in a circle and before we ate we went around and said one thing we were thankful for. The pies were delicious!

Happy Thanksgiving on PhotoPeach

Junior Athletics Day

We have had a lovely sunny day for athletics and it has been so much fun on the field all morning. Have a look at the photos of the children doing their best and having fun!

Junior Athletics day on PhotoPeach

Thanksgiving

Tomorrow will be Thanksgiving day in the USA. We have learnt a little bit about what the festival is about, and yesterday we wrote about what we were thankful for. Mrs Gosnell moved our desks so that we were all sitting at a big table like they do for the special Thanksgiving meal. We wrote bout what we ware thankful for in our lives, then we read our writing out to the class. We have lots of things to be thankful for!

Rangoli patterns for Diwali

Rangoli patterns on PhotoPeach

Mad Hatter's Day

Mad Hatter's Mufti Day on PhotoPeach

It is Wacky Hat day as well as Mufti Day and Room 14 is looking awesome! It looks like there were lots of busy parents last night!!

Our Beehive Trip

We were so fortunate to visit Hannah's beehives this afternoon! We walked up the road to her house and her Mum Debbie and friend Paul showed us all the bees in the hive. We saw the lavae, drones, worker bees and the Queen Bee as well. The hives were amazing and we had lots of bees flying around us. Debbie told us how the bees collect nectar from flowers and take it back to the hive where it turns into honey to feed the larvae. She also showed us how she collects the honey carefully and drains it off the honeycomb, then heats it gently and pours it into jars. The wax is also heated and we saw the beautiful-smelling slabs of beeswax she has made. What an amazing process of change!

Before we left we went and visited her back garden where she keeps hens and grows lots of vegetables. We learnt so much from Debbie - thank you for letting us come and visit!

Our Beehive Trip

Our Visit to Hannah's Beehives on PhotoPeach

Fireworks art and writing

It has been great to hear all about what the children have been doing over the weekend and last night on Guy Fawkes night. They have done some really good writing about fireworks and I would like to share it with you here:

Guy Fawkes Night - Bang! Pow! Zoom! "That's big!" Sparklers sparkle in the night. Fireworks zoom in the sky. Displays celebrate too. Bonfires crackle and the night is lit. Jamie

Last night I let off my skyrocket. It went so so fast that it blew up the others. the fireworks shot up then they sprinkled down, pop bang in the sky. Flynt

Last night I lit some fireworks. Some went whoosh! and some went Pop! Bang! and exploded. They are bright and wonderful. My favourite was the sparklers. Wow! Louis

I lit lots of fireworks on the weekend. Some went Bang! and some went Boom! They sparkled in the air. My favourite firework was the ones that made coloured smoke. We saw ones that exploded in the air. I did sparklers too. I wrote my name. Joshua

My favourite firework is the one that looks like a tornado. It goes Whoosh! Bang! pop! Fizz! They were really really loud. I used a sparkler to write my name in the dark dark sky. At the end it was really smokey. The 5th of November is awesome. I love it when it sparkles and lights up the sky. Cody

On the weekend I let off a bonfire. The flames were bursting. It was very hot. We threw cat tails in. It was very loud. Rhyan

Pumpkin art

What a busy morning we have had in Room 14! Cody bought in a very cool Jack O'Lantern for news so we decided to make our own. We poured orange paint onto the table then painted pumpkin lanterns with our fingers - lots of fun!!! Quinn even made a pumpkin cat! Then we laid a piece of white paper over our design and 'printed' our picture. They look great! Mrs Ashley took photos and then we put them into Photo Peach and tried two different ways of viewing them - in a slideshow or a spiral. Both look wonderful! We also made our Photobabbles about our animal pictures - thank you for all the comments you have sent back to class, we love hearing from you!

Making pumpkin lanterns

Making pumpkin lanterns on PhotoPeach

Making pumpkin lanterns

Making pumpkin lanterns on PhotoPeach

Symmetrical paintings

On Friday we drew and painted some Winnie the Witch shoes and legs using symmetry to help us. Jamie said "It is like making a mirror image." We began by folding our paper in half, drawing the back of one boot, then the back of the other boot. We tried to keep both sides of our picture the same.

We added in a spider as Winnie the Witch likes spiders, then we dyed our painting, trying hard to keep the stripes on her stockings the same!

We are so proud of our symmetrical paintings - they look amazing!

Making masks in reading

This week the Sharks reading group read a book all about different kinds of Masks. They followed up their reading by making a mask and decorating it with colouful things. What fantastic masks! Scroll down and listen to their Fotobabbles about their masks....

Flynt's Mask

Samuel's Mask

Finn's Blog

Louis's Mask

Rhyan's Mask

Cody's Mask

At 9:26am Mrs Callister rang the handbell around the school and we knew it was the New Zealand ShakeOut. Mrs Ashley called 'Earthquake!" and we did what we have been learning about: Drop, Cover, Hold. We dropped to our knees, got under cover of our desks and put one arm over our head, and held on tight to the table leg with other other arm. We didn't scream, and everyone was safe. It is great to practice our earthquake drill just in case we ever need to use it. Have a look at our photos below!

New Zealand ShakeOut on PhotoPeach

Bubble Day photos

Bubble Day on PhotoPeach

Bubble day

It was a beautiful afternoon for blowing bubbles and throwing Sky balls on the field on Friday. All the children had a great time, and we took many great photos. A huge Thank You to the PTA for organising the day. I have discovered Photo Peach is a terrific way of sharing lots of photos so look forward to seeing the Bubble day photos soon!

Greetings Dance on PhotoPeach

Charlotte's Counting in 10s

Gloria's Counting in 10s

Joshua's Counting in 10s

Quinn's Counting in 10s

Cody Counting in 10s

Louis Counting in 10s

Charley's Counting in 10s

Myla's Counting in 10s

Emma Counting in 10s

Jamal's Counting in 10s

Boss's Counting in 10s

Rhyan's counting in 10s

Jamie's Counting in 10s

Finn's Counting in 10s

Creative Arts Afternoon

Today we loved having our parents join us for our arts afternoon. What a great time of dancing, sharing and fun. Rhyan greeted our parents.

Then we danced our greeting dance, Jibidi. We also asked our parents to dance with us!

Fijian Dance

We have been so lucky that Gloria's Mum has been able to help us create a Fijian Dance with  a Pasifika influence. We have children from Fiji and Samoa in our class.

 Fipe has brought us all sulus to wear and we alos have leis for around our neck. We will look lovely for our parents.

Creative Dance

We began our Creative Dance unit by learning about touching and non-touching greetings, which we used in a dance we made up with our partners.

 It was lots of fun and we can now greet people in many ways.

Sparrows at school...

Last night some sparrows fell out of a tree. We fed them honey and bird seed. We have a lamp in there to keep them warm. They snuggle up in their nest.

Joshua

Yesterday Mrs Ashley's daughter Caroline found some baby sparrows. We fed them cat food, honey, boiled egg and bird seeds.

Finn

Last night Caroline found baby sparrows. there were three little sparrows fell out of its' nest on the ground at night time. I saw it was so cute when i saw it. I went "Wow! You are so cute and cuddly too."

Charlotte

Last night Caroline found three baby sparrows and one died and Mrs Ashley bought them in a cage. We fed them cat food and honey and boiled egg.

Quinn

Last night Caroline found some baby sparrows that fell out of a tree because the nest blew out of the tree.

Louis

Caroline found two baby sparrows. One of the baby birds were dead but lucky the rest were OK. We took care of them. We looked after them. We put a heat lamp in so they can get cosy.

Flynt

Bird's need a cage and cat food and they need honey. They need hard boiled egg and they are called sparrows. Caroline found them.

Jamal

I like the sparrows.

Charley

Last night Caroline was walking with Rusty and she found baby sparrows.

Rhyan

Last night Caroline found some baby sparrows on the ground. We fed them boiled egg and cat food and bird seeds. We put in something to warm them up.

Jamie

Last night Caroline found some baby sparrows and fed then honey mixed up with cat food. They have a heat lamp to keep them warm. The baby sparrows are very clever. When they need to go toilet they go to the side of the nest and go toilet.

Cody

The baby sparrows fell off a tree. Caroline got the baby sparrows and put them in a cage. the baby sparrows were so cute. They eat cat food, honey, boiled egg, bird seed. They also need a cage, heat lamp. They are clever. The sparrows have to keep warm and clean.

Myla

Caroline found baby sparrows. One died, it was sad. There were only two. They fell out of the tree. They were cute. They fed them cat food  and boiled egg and bird seed.

Emma

We feed the birds boiled eggs and cat food. Last night  Caroline found baby sparrows that had fallen out of the tree.

Boss

Yesterday we found somebody's sparrows. They fell out of a tree. One died. That was very sad. We brought them to school. They opened their beaks out wide when they are hungry.

Samuel

Caroline found baby sparrows last night. She found them when they fell down.

Ingrid

Counting in tens

Today we bought our boxes of 100 things from home and made up sets of 10 of each thing. Then we counted our sets up to 100. We all had lots of fun and made a Show Me to show how we can count in tens.

Creativity in science

We had a lot of fun with Mr Ashley when he bought in dry ice. We saw what happens to it when it is mixed with hot water - wow! We also put mentos in coke and watched it shoot up into the air!