We have a new boat at school

This week we were bubbled out

Our shared big book this week was Bubbles.

We wrote stories about floating in a bubble.

Then we decorated our published stories by blowing bubbles out of water, paint and hand soap and pressing them onto our paper. We were all lucky we knew how to blow through the straw instead of sucking.

We have hung up our bubble stories in the class to share them with others.

We finished off our bubble week by reading our big book together all by ourselves.

Happy Mother's Day to all our wonderful Weka Tēina mums

Happy Mother's Day. I hope all the little Weka's could wait until today to give you the cards they worked so hard on making. They were very proud of themselves.

We also wrote stories for our mum's.

I hope you all have a great day and all have wonderful little 5 year olds that do everything they are asked!!

Weka Tēina loves handwriting

In Weka Tēina handwriting is very enjoyable for all of us. We rotate around 3 different stations each handwriting session. These are handwriting in our books where we use the language of Casey Caterpillar to form our sounds for the week and practise those we have already covered, fine motor skill activities and different letter formation activities. Maisy really enjoyed used the tennis ball to strengthen the muscles in the hand she writes with by making the tennis ball gobble some different sized pom poms.

Here are some photos of us completing our handwriting on Thursday.

Emma, Maisy and Cooper all focussing really well on their handwriting and the formation of the /h/ sound. Casey Caterpillar has taught us that h is formed by a tall stick, tunnel.

Angus and Logan show us their fantastic work.

The yellow highlighter shows us which letter we thought was best on each line. We highlight our own work in yellow on a Tuesday and a Thursday.

Sienna was our 'Handwriter of the day' and her work is proudly displayed. Mrs Scott asked us what we thought about handwriting when we were writing this blog post and this is what we said.... Logan said "I love handwriting." Cooper said "I like handwriting writing and reading letters." Sienna said "I like highlighting my own work and choosing the one I think is best." Maisy said "I like doing the activities at handwriting time." Emma said "I liked using the tennis ball." Angus said "I like writing the Harry hippotamus sound." Well done Weka Teina, you are awesome handwriters.

Andy Warhol Art

Have a look at our work

Our Taste Sense

We focussed on the sense of taste.

We were all very excited and waited patiently while Joy looked in her bag and we wondered what she was going to pull out.

First up were the sour patch kids. We held on to them first, some of us couldn't resist having just one little lick. Out of 7, 4 of us thought they made our engines run just right and 3 students thought they slowed down their engine. We showed on our dial how the sour ptch kids made us feel.

Next up was the potato chips. We held onto them until we all had some. And then we tasted them. We described them as salty and crunchy and all 7 of us agreed that they made our engines feel just right. In fact we enjoyed them so much that we even asked Joy if we could have some more!!

Our next taste was peppermint.

We described the peppermint in different ways. We said, "it smells like adult toothpaste", "it's so hot", "it's too hard", "it's too strong" and "fire came out of my mouth". Out of 7, 4 of us thought it made our engine slow down and we were in the blue zone and 3 of us thought it made our engine feel just right in the green zone. Some of us even had to spit it out.

Poor Emma held on to her tongue for a while after and she showed us what this did to her engine.

Next up were the minties. Somne of us showed excitement when we saw them.

The chewing action that happens when we eat a mintie was calming for most of us, especially for Jasper and Cooper and made our engines feel just right. This was broken down as 5 out of 7 in the green zone and 2 in the blue zone.

Then ww tried the sweet jellybeans.

We all really liked the jellybeans. For 5/7 of us it made our engine feel just right and for 2 of us, it sped our engines up and Cooper shows us this on his dial.

We finished off our lesson with Joy by eating an m&m mindfully. We looked at the m&m, felt it, popped it into our mouths and sucked it. Someone said "It's falling apart because it's wet". The m&m varied our engines from green to yellow and when we got to the nut some of our engines began to slow down. Thanks Joy for another great lesson on the sense of taste. It was an insight watching to see how taste can change the way our engine runs. We learnt that we all enjoy the crunchy and chewing motion so maybe we need to make sure we have things in our lunchbox that support this. We then wrote about our experiences. Have a read......