Our blog is now closed for the 2014 school year and there will be no new posts. You will still be able to access our blog though the Halcombe School website. Thank you for your support throughout the year, we have loved sharing our learning with you.

Have a fun and relaxing holiday!

What a fantastic end to the year! Thank you parents and children for another wonderful year! Have a safe and happy holiday!

 

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Class Trip

We had a fantastic 4km walk along the ‘Manawatu Riverside Pathway’. We really enjoyed walking along the riverside and through the bush ending up at the ‘Esplanade’. After a well-deserved morning tea we played in the awesome playground. Our next activity was a competitive quiz through the bird aviary and rose garden. We had such a fun day! Thank you so much to the parents who came with us, we couldn’t have gone without you!

To finish off our science unit we make SHERBET! After mixing all the ingredients together we felt it fizz and foam up in our mouths, YUM!

 

We have had a fantastic pet day! The children made awesome indoor exhibits and it was wonderful to have all the children’s pets at school! We had lambs, calves, rabbits, chickens, birds, horses, dogs, cats and goats! It was such a fun day and we really enjoyed having all the animals at school!

Today in science we mixed baking soda and vinegar in a bottle. We pressed a cork in the top and watched as it shot out. This happened because the two ingredients, an acid and a carbonate, mixed together to form carbon dioxide gas. The gas had to escape, causing the cork to go flying! It was an awesome experiment!

 

We have started our science unit, ‘Fizzing and Foaming’. We are learning how to be a scientist by Predicting, Observing and Explaining. Today we did an experiment mixing carbonates, such as baking soda and washing powder, with acids, such as lime juice and vinegar and watched the reactions unfold!

We have finished our Bath Salts! We have had lots of fun going through the technology process of designing and making a product. We have enjoyed testing different recipes, choosing the scents,  (lavender, vanilla or sandalwood) and designing the jars for the salts to go in. Each of us will be giving our bath salts to our clients to enjoy!

 

Today we had our first go at making our product ‘bath salts’. It was lots of fun putting all the ingredients together, trying out the different scents we could use, and testing different colours. We discovered what we liked, didn’t like and what we would like to change!

PRINTS

We have had lots of fun making prints of spring flowers. First, we cut a flower out of cardboard. After that, we made a design on our flower, making sure we had three layers. We left our templates overnight so the glue set. The next day we rolled the ink on to the templates and pressed hard. We carefully removed the paper to reveal our awesome prints!

 

On Friday we had a visit from the Halcombe Fire Brigade. The Student Council and Tyler presented them with the money we fundraised on 'Red Day' for the Blood and Leukaemia foundation.

 

Every day we have a ‘Thinking Challenge’. Today we used the Commonality Key (looking at two very different things and thinking about what they could have in common).

We thought about what Scissors and Books have in common:

·      You can buy them

·      Both can cut you (paper cut)

·      Straight

·      Strong

·      Can be similar colours

·      Both are in our classroom

·      Both open

·      Have pointy parts

RED DAY

We had heaps of fun dressing up for RED DAY! We raised $164 for the NZ Blood and Leukaemia Foundation. Thanks to the Student Council who organised another fun day for us!

 

We had a fantastic time at the ‘Halcombe School Mini Commonwealth Games’! It was lots of fun doing all the different activities! A huge thank you to the student council and Miss Simpson for organising such a great event! Well done to our Gold, Silver and Bronze medal winners!  

 

We went to a fantastic show performed by ‘New Zealand Play House’ theatre group, “Rap-unzel”! It was very funny and they were very talented. We got to sing along and had lots of laughs!

 

We are really enjoying learning about the Commonwealth Games at the moment. We were lucky enough to have Graeme come and play the bagpipes for us. He talked about how they work, his traditional Scottish outfit and then played a few songs for us. He was fantastic!

 

We had yummy chicken burgers for lunch today! Thanks student council for organising a delicious lunch!

 

On Wednesday we saw an AWESOME show by the Kahurangi Dance Theatre. This group travels around New Zealand (and the world!) sharing Maori taonga (treasures) through waiata and dance. They were very talented and we loved the show.  Our favourite part was when Cody, Reuben and Mr Ricketts had to get on stage, be a Maori warrior and show their taiaha technique! It was a fantastic show!

 

Te Reo

 

We had a great Buddy Class on Friday! We did a ‘trust walk’ through a very tricky course! Our big buddies lead us through the course first…blindfolded!! It was then our turn to lead them. We had to give them very good instructions so they didn’t bump their heads!

We have been using the ‘Thinking Hats’ to help us organise our thinking. Today we used the Red Hat for feelings, Yellow Hat for good points, Black Hat for bad points, Green Hat for new ideas. We were discussing what we thought about people throwing their rubbish out of car windows.

 

What an awesome day we had on Friday for Wheels Day! It was such a fun afternoon scootering around the school. The course went all the way around the school and into the carpark. Thank you Student Council for organising this wonderful day!

 

 

Garden

Oh no!! We went to go and water and weed our garden and we noticed something had got in and was eating our plants! We decided to put up a net to keep it out!

 

This term we are learning about our environment. We are asking the big question of “How can we help our Environment?” After watching a short video clip of ‘The Great Garbage Patch’ we felt mad, sad and angry that there is so much rubbish in the ocean, more than on land! We made Tellagami’s on the Ipad’s to express ourselves. Here are a few!

 

Class Garden

We re - planted our garden today with broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. We are looking forward to watching it grow and eating it at the end of the term!