Beth's Monarch Butterfy hatches!

We have been watching Beth's chrysalis for over a week now. Yesterday we noticed that it had turned black and we could see orange wings inside the chrysalis. Today at about 10.00am we suddenly noticed the butterfly had hatched and was pumping blood into its wings, ready to fly away! Beth and her friends put the butterfly on a swan plant in the junior courtyard, and just before lunchtime it flew away.

This movie was contributed by Stuart Stock who is one of our parents. We had a great time last Friday holding the Y3-4 swimming sports. It was a bit cloudy and cold- who would have thought after such an amazingly warm sunny week? Never mind- it was a wonderful morning filled with children trying their very best. The house relay was a big highlight... go Cook!

Using digital objects to learn new things

In Room 7 we have a digital data projector that is used (pretty much) every day in different ways. Sometimes we use it to look at and interact with digital learning objects. This week as part of our Body Science study, we have been exploring how the digestive system works, and today we used a digital learning object that helped us learn the names of the different parts of the digestive tract. Tomorrow we plan to use another digital learning object, to help us learn what certain organs along the digestive tract actually do with food after we've swallowed.

You can see these digital learning objects by clicking the appropriate links below the "How WE Learn" sidebar to the right.

Sea Week

This week is "Sea Week" across New Zealand. Seaweek is an annual event run by the NZ Association for Environmental Education that allows New Zealanders to come together and celebrate the sea. Since we live in Eastbourne, the sea is a big part of our daily life. It only seems right we celebrate Sea Week!




For maths we looked at scale drawings of different sea animals, then we used estimation skills to calculate how big these sea animals would be in real life. We then went outside and drew them! Did you know that some jellyfish can grow to be over 10 metres long?

We've been practising our mihimihi...

Last week we were practising our mihimihi (greetings) and we were able to record them. This week we will look at our recordings and see what we need to do to improve them!