Changing Colours

Today we experimented with colours. Mrs Anthony started with yellow, and then mixed this with blue and red.

The children learnt what colours were created and could identify a change.

Fun Friday Experiments on Change

Today we revisited the "volcano" concept. We used baking soda and vinegar in a bottle/jar. today we put a glove on top of the jar and a balloon on top of the bottle. Watch what happens in the video.

Making butter - showing a change

As part of our Friday afternoon developmental we are doing experiments showing change. Today we changed cream into butter.

Here is our video.

Ronald McDonald

We had a surprise visitor at school on Friday! Ronald McDonald came to see us in the school hall. He needed lots of help because he had lost his stripy sock. He told us lots of things about road safety when he went for a walk to find it. Like STOP, LOOK and LISTEN before you cross the street. We also learnt to watch out at sneaky driveways when walking on the footpath.

Fun Friday Experiments on Change

Each Friday children from Harakeke, Kopukapuka, and Kaponga will be participating in some experiments to explore the world of CHANGE!!

Today's experiment was mixing baking soda and vinegar together. We firstly did this inside discussing what we thought might happen, observing the process, and finished with some reflections.

Then we moved into the sandpit, repeated the experiment (added dye and a sand mountain) and had heaps of fun.

Here is our video.

Swimming!!

We love swimming!! Here are some pictures from Harakeke (Room 1) and Kaponga (Room 3). The emphasis is on water confidence and safety....and most importantly...HAVING FUN!!

Harakeke

Welcome to all from the Harakeke Room!!

We are the New Entrants at Welcome Bay School. We have only just turned 5. We can already write some words on our own. We love learning about the computer and the programmes and activities that we can play on them. We especially love swimming!!!

Check out our own blog.

Welcome to 2010

The new school year is about to start....wow the holidays have gone fast!!

This year it is hoped that each class will have their own blog which will be linked to this collaborative team blog. The digital era is upon us, and as teachers we are trying hard to embed this technology into our everyday teaching....watch this space!!

We are all looking forward to this year - lots of exciting things are going to be happening.

Term 1 is all about team building, relationships, setting the class climate....and lots of swimming!!!

Make sure you keep checking out our blog.

Junior School Athletic Sports

Friday the 27th of December was a lovely sunny day thankfully as it was the day chosen for the junior school athletics.

The children participated in a variety of events including: sprints, long jump, throwing, high jump, novelty events and games.

The children all participated with enthusiasm and had a great day. Here are the photos:

Junior School Athletics on PhotoPeach

Cross Country

Our school cross country took place in Term 2. All children trained hard around our school field. On the actual cross country day, the whole school walked up to Waipuna Park, where the school cross country was to take place. There was a pre-schoolers race before each year group had their race. All children did very well. Here are some photos of our children running:

Welcome Bay School's Cross Country Term 2 2009 on PhotoPeach

Junior Block Upgrade

During Term 3, the junior classes moved out and the builders moved in.

The entire block was gutted and 3 new classes, a shared office, 2 utility rooms and a resource room were created.

We have been in the new block for about 1/2 a term, and have really enjoyed working in our new spaces. We created 3 very different classrooms through colour - a green room, a blue room and a red room. We wanted to use bright primary colours in these rooms as they are children's rooms. We linked the rooms by using the same blue in each room. The office is a different colour - octane, as we wanted a "grown up" feeling in our workspace. We think they look great!! Have a look below:

Junior Block After the Renovations on PhotoPeach

Art Week - Term 3 2009

Our whole school was involved in an art week. We had an Environmental focus for this. The juniors decided that we would liven up our sandpit area and our fence behind the Junior Playground. Here are some before views of this area:

We invited parents and whanau to help the teachers and children with the enormous task that we had set ourselves. We thought of this week as a starting point....we were realistic.....we probably wouldn't finish this project in a week!!

Well, the week came, and we had fantastic support. We were able to get a huge amount of work done. Here are some pictures of this work:

During Art Week on PhotoPeach

After this huge effort, a few parents continued to help out - on a daily basis!! We have finally finished the sandpit fence and the fence behind the junior playground. The children also worked on cutout butterflies, bees, dragonflies and fish. These will be displayed behind gardens, the bag bays, and the junior shed. All children also painted a rock to put around our gardens. Look out for them in the photos below:

Post Art Week - Getting our art up on PhotoPeach

Using ICT in Maths

Room 1 have been using the Kidpix programme to create repeating patterns (algebra). We used the stickers to make the patterns, the paintpot to colour in the background, and typed in our name using the text tool. Most of us needed help to write our name.

Look at our cool pictures.

Firewise!!

During Week 9 of Term 2, we had a visit from our local firemen. The children had been learning about being Firewise, and to finish it off, we had a visit by the firemen to our school. The firemen were most impressed by the children's knowledge of fire safety!!

• The children know that matches and lighters are tools and NOT TOYS. If they find any of these, they will give them to an adult.
  
• The children know in a fire to: GET DOWN, KEEP LOW, GET OUT, CALL 111!!
  
• The children know safe ways in which fire can be used: a screen in front of an open fire, a wide based candle holder, keeping away from barbeques.
  

We loved having the firemen at our school. We practiced crawling under "smoke" to get out of the classroom.

Enjoy our pictures.

Wacky Hair and Sock Day

On Friday 22nd May Welcome Bay School held a Wacky Hair and Sock day to raise money for Te Puke High School. Te Puke High School had lost several classrooms and lots of work and equipment in the school holidays to a big fire. We know how hard it is to lose classrooms in a fire and how long it takes to recover so we wanted to help!

Children brought along a gold coin and had the chance to wear wacky hair and socks. There were mohawks, plaits, pony tails and all sorts of colours, there was even a hair washing line! Socks were multi-coloured and stripy, some even had glitter and pom-poms.

PMP

Each Tuesday and Wednesday the three Junior Classes participate in our PMP programme. We have fantastic parent helpers assisting with this programme. This programme consists of 5 activity stations. Eye tracking, hand/eye/foot co-ordination, fitness, balance and locomotion. We have found this programme very beneficial for our children. It helps with concentration, fine and gross motor skills and all round school readiness. Most of all, the children LOVE IT!!

Room 3 Assembly

On May 8th, Room 3 shared a slide show we had created in Kidpix. It is one of our favourite stories "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. Our copy of this book is very small so we decided to make our own one for the class library. We hope you like our beautiful pictures.

Hail at school

The hail came down and covered our playground on Monday.

Grace took this photo.

Buried Treasure

On Wednesday 27 April Room 7 joined the children in Room 10 for a "rubbish" experiment. We formed groups and each group was given a piece of litter to bury. After a week we went back and dug up our piece of rubbish to see what had happened to it. We will do this again for the next month and observe what happens.

Visit by Selwyn Ridge Children

On Wednesday 8^th April, 2 Year 1 classes came to visit us from our other local school Selwyn Ridge. We sang songs, did lots of fun activities, and some Selwyn Ridge children even did a play for us. It was a fun morning that was finished by a shared morning tea.