Hmmm Yum!

The children in the Te Waka o Matariki group made chocolate Easter Eggs this week.  They melted the chocolate and poured it into moulds.  Then they stuck two halves together with some more chocolate so that we could have an Easter Egg.  They were delicious!

Reading Must Do/Can Do time

We are learning how to stick at our reading activities to get the most out of them.  We had some great learners using our reading phones today.  These help the children to listen to themselves reading which is a big skill to learn.  This helps you to know when you have made a mistake and encourages the learner to go back and try again.  We love how many of these children are ones who have only recently started at school.  Ka pai Joseph, Phoenix, Kristina, Fatima, Bishwaditya, 

 Alex and Tom were also fantastic at making a story board out of our felt characters.  They were talking about where to place the pieces, what was going to happen in the story and negotiating with each other through this process.  What great skills you are both showing!

Reading Together

We have had a wonderful turn out for our Reading Together Programme this term.  Today our session included the children.  It was a busy time and much noisier than our usual sessions!  This is great as it shows the enthusiasm for reading in the group.  The leaners and their whanau enjoyed sharing some books together and we could hear many different languages being used.  

Talking about the pictures with your child is so important.  It helps them to have some ideas ready when they begin to try and read the words on the page.  It helps them to link back to the experiences they have had with you and this gives them some more ideas.

Many of us worked hard today to give our children time to think for themselves before helping them out.

It is just so lovely looking through these pictures and seeing how relaxed everyone is.  It is such a nice time to spend with your children.

Numeracy learning

This week we have been learning that we don't have to count the materials, especially when we are working with the same number of items that have been separated into two group.  To check our learning, we have been trying to count on from the biggest number using tens frames in our heads.

We have also been making up number stories about frogs and tadpoles and telling our numeracy buddies.

Cyrus and Tian Xi have really enjoyed using our Morphun blocks to make some new creations this week.  They have other great shapes to use and connect using little rods that slide into groves.

Butterfly Garden

We have been working hard to get our butterfly garden ready for the butterflies and caterpillars. We worked together to fill the tires with soil and to plant the Swan plants.

We really enjoyed looking for caterpillars, eggs and other creatures in the garden!