Principal Award

Congratulations to Marcus on your Principals Award this week.

Term 4 Week 3 News

At last a full week, its going to seem like a long one…

We got to the library today but the computer was not co-operating so our books will be issues tomorrow. If you have a book that needs returning please send it back as soon as possible and your child can choose another one before next week.

Lucky Book Club. Orders to be in by this Friday please. Cheques to be made payable to Havelock North Primary.

We still have a few children without hats. I realise that the weather has not yet made them really necessary but it is a Term 4 rule, “No hat, no play”.

This weekend is Blast in the Park. I’m certain its going to be fine on Saturday night (I’ve got my fingers crossed) so make sure you have got your tickets. I will be there from 7pm so come and find me and say hello.

The Peak Trail Blazer is not far off either. Have you entered yet? And have you seen our entries into the Peak Trail Blazer Video Competition? They are further down on the blog if you want to take a look.

Swimming starts this week!

We will be swimming on Wednesday and Friday this week. Don’t forget your togs and a towel in a bag to carry down to the pools. Bring goggles and a hat if you want to. Girls, if you don’t wear a hat you will need to tie up your hair so bring a hair band with you.

On Thursday we have Mrs Dinah Harvey, a maths advisor from Advisors Plus working with me and some children from our class. She will be spending an hour teaching us some algebra activities which we hope to share with the rest of the class the following week.

This week we have made videos about the Peak Trail Blazer. There is a competition and the best video will go onto the Peak Trail Blazer website www.peaktrailblazer.co.nz and their Facebook page! We could be famous!

Here are the videos we have entered.

The first video is an iMovie Trailer made by Holly, Millie, Bhanu, Marcus and Kalani.

The next video is made in iMovie by Meg, Paige, Taylor, Hugh and Isabella. 

They wanted a newspaper reporter to come and interview some people who were going to take part in the Peak Trail Blazer.

This next video is an Animoto made by Alex, William, Bronson, Ethan and Hadley.

Our final video is again made in iMovie by Keira, Greta, Phoebe, Zoe and Conner.

They suggested a group of children having a conversation about the Peak Trail Blazer over lunch.

I think that you will agree that all of the children have done a fantastic job of making these videos and getting all of the important information into them.

Place Value Maths

This Tuesday we used calculators and ice-block sticks to investigate place value.

First of all we worked out how to make each digit from 0 to 9 as if it were on a calculator. We found out that the number 8 uses the most ice-block sticks, you need 7, and the number 7 and 9 have extra sticks that we didn't expect them to have.

Then we had to get 10 ice-block sticks each. We checked we had the right number by arranging our sticks into a tally chart.

Then the challenge was issued. 

Make the biggest number you can out of 10 ice-block sticks.

We learnt that to make a really big number you need to make as many digits as you can. Our biggest number was a 5-digit number. It contained all 1s. It was eleven thousand, one hundred and eleven. It was even bigger than four-digit numbers we made with a 7 in them.

Term 4 Week 2 Notices

I hope you all had a lovely long weekend. I had a great time out in the garden (nearly got blown away!) and I have almost found my vegetable patch. It has got somewhat overgrown since I tackled it last but hopefully I will get something planted before the growing season is over!

This is to be another short week, so we will be very busy cramming everything in. Please send in library books if you have them at home, we will try to make an extra quick trip this week as we missed our time on Monday.

Lucky Book Club. If you would like to place an order please send the money to the classroom by Friday 2^nd November. Cheques to be made payable to Havelock North Primary.

Although you wouldn’t think so by today’s weather, Term 4 is when we start wearing hats again. Hopefully we will need them soon. Children can keep their hats on their pegs in the corridor so they are always ready and available when needed.

Blast in the Park and the Peak Trail Blazer are coming up soon.  Keep your eye on the school website or the Tuesday Times for more details of these exciting events.

Last week we launched 160 balloons to mark the 1-year countdown to the 150^th Jubilee. Have a look at the next post - Countdown to the Jubilee - for a short video documenting the event.

Swimming starts next week. We swim Wednesdays and Fridays for the next 5 weeks. If you are able to help walk down and back – no teaching required – please let me know.

Countdown to the Jubilee

The 150th jubilee is now just 1 year away and to celebrate we released 150 balloons on the field this morning. This is how the children described the event.

Everyone waited for Mrs Duligall to announce the people to let go of the balloons. Meg

I was one of the people who got chosen to hold one of the balloons. They had one note on each balloon. Keira

In the hall we got the helium balloons. Millie

Some people took their hand off their balloon and some were sticking on the hall roof. Bhanu

I waited and waited and then I saw a remote -controlled helicopter that was taking a photo. Taylor

The helicopter looked like a spider and it was small. When the helicopter landed everyone let go of he balloons. Holly

Mr Bremer counted down and 150 people let go of balloons. Hugh

When they let go everyone clapped and cheered. Zoe

There was a big bunch of balloons rising into the clouds and when they pop and if someone is lucky enough they might find 2 or 3 balloons. Hadley

When the balloons were up in the sky they looked like 150 polka dots. Conner

Term 4 Week 1 Notices

Welcome back to Term 4. Its great to be back to warm dry weather, lets hope it lasts!

Don’t forget that this weekend is a long one – Hawkes Bay Anniversary and Labour Day.

I had a fabulous time in the holidays. I went to the uLearn conference in Auckland with Mrs Te Whaiti and learnt so much about connected classrooms, authentic learning experience in maths and copywrite issues with images on Google to name just a few things. In all we heard 4 Keynote speakers from around the world and went to 7 workshops each focusing on hands on activities to do in the classroom.

Today 5 children from our class participated in the hair-cut-a-thon. They were whisked off Milton Andrews to meet Mr Bremer and returned looking stunning. 

Everyone has brought back his or her chair bags and homework books this term. Thank you for remembering. Most children have their stationery. Everyone needs a pencil, rubber and sharpener. A 30cm ruler, glue stick, coloured pencils and whiteboard pen.

Lucky Book Club will be coming home again this week. If you would like to place an order please send the money to the classroom by Friday 2^nd November. Cheques to be made payable to Havelock North Primary.

This term we have Blast in the Park and the Peak Trail Blazer. I hope to see you all at one or other of these events. There is a competition at school to make a movie to promote the Peak Trail Blazer and we will be taking part and making movies to enter. If you took part last year and have any photos we could put into our movie please email them to me.

We have also rearranged the classroom and made a variety of learning spaces where children can go to work in groups, in pairs or individually. 

We also investigated the sort of furniture that is in other classrooms across the school. The children may be rushing home and asking you for beanbags, couches and even arm chairs. Please don’t give up your best furniture for us, but if you have any old furniture you would like to donate to the classroom it would be gratefully received.

Tomorrow (Thursday 18^th October) is the launch of the 150^th Jubilee countdown – only one year to go! We will be releasing 150 balloons. Some of our children will be chosen to release balloons and the rest of us will be watching them. Please note that school starts at 8:45 for tomorrow only, to allow us to get ready. Children need to wear blue school uniform only (no Peak Trail Blazer shirts – again that’s for tomorrow only).

Swimming starts in week 3. Thank you to everyone who has paid. We will be swimming on Wednesday and Friday mornings for 5 weeks. I will need parents to walk down and back with us and to assist with changing if necessary. You will not need to teach swimming, there are instructors at Hilton Brown to do this for us. I will send home a separate email with times so you can let me know if you would be able to help.

Our topic for the first half of this term is puppets and we hope to make sock puppets using our new sewing skills. More details to come in future newsletters.