Yatton Park

Yatton Park is just up the road so once we got all our work done we went up to fly kites, roll down hills and play in the 'pool.' It was freezing but the kids didn't mind! The photo's show them with a few kids that they met at the park incase your wondering who the 'extras ' are!

Tui got her plastic bag kite stuck in the water...and learnt quickly that it won't fly when it's full of water!

Rotorua

Yesterday we all went to Rotorua. Jake was really impressed with the sea planes and was really pleased when one came in close to us.

Georges Marvellous Medicine

We've been reading Roald Dahl again, this time Georges Marvellous Medicine. We've done characters descriptions (Grandma's a grizzly old grunion...) and vocab extension (marvellous: fantastic, tremendous, amazing....) Roald Dahl's descriptions such as "will she pop? will she explode? will she go flying down the road?will she go poof in a puff of smoke?Start fizzing like a can of coke? " has given us plenty to work with! We made up a recipe for our own marvellous medicine too which requires liberal amounts of nit cream and food colouring....

Worms for tea...

The Twits once again provided the basis of our school work but by using them (a book everyone was interested in) we managed to cover English, Te Reo, Math, Science and Art. I downloaded a fantastic teachers resource from the official Roald Dahl website www.roalddahl.com and used it as a spring board for the kids to bounce there own ideas from. First off we described the Twits (ugly, maggoty, dirty, smelly, tricky....) then Jacob described our 'sausage shaped, ginger and white, cute, furry Guniea Pigs' Tui described our 'Tear drop shaped, velvety black and shiny Rat...that has teeth with triangle points' and Pearl described our
' lazy, blob shaped, stretchy, furry cat.'
The Tui checked out the Roald Dahl site while Jacob and Pearl made "worm spagetti" using coloured and shread paper and LOADS of PVA while I made the fingerpaint....3 cups boiling water 1 c cornflour, food colouring....to much hot water for kids to make with me. It was just like playcentre! Kids happily 'squelching, squishing, squashing' the fingerpaint and describing how it felt "gooey, gross, warm, squidgey, soft ' and what the sounds it made (it took Jacob all of 2 seconds to suggest it sounded like a fart....lol)
We used the Pink worm Fingerpaint to contribute to the days Te reo and math ( what colour in Maori is the finger paint? How many people in Maori are at the table? How people are not?....etc) the kids asked loads of their own questions too and came up with some fantastic describing words and had HEAPS OF FUN!

Twits

We read the classic Roald Dahl book "THE TWITS" over two days....the kids loved the book (it was a favourtie of mine too!) For those of you who havn't read the story it goes something like this....Mr and Mrs Twit are 'beastly' people who are beastly to children, animals and each other. They spend their days playing tricks on each other and having ugly thoughts ( that's why they look so ugly.) Mrs Twit put live worms in her husbands spaghetti and tricked him into eating them...then he tricked her into thinking that she was shrinking! The Twits love Bird pie and they glue the branches of the "big dead tree" with the worlds strongest glue so that when they land on the branches at night they stick to it! They also keep a family of monkeys, the muggle wumps in their back yard...and make them do everything upside down! The story has a happy ending though (well not for the Twits, but what can the bad guys expect??) when all of the monkeys and birds come up with a cunning plan.....but you will have to read the book to find out what it is!

We made our own story board up with points from the story but Jacob didn't want to be in the photo!

Thought for the day....

If a person has ugly thoughts it begins to show on the face.
And when that person has ugly thoughts
every day, every week of every year
the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly
you can hardly bear to look at it.
A person who has good thoughts can not ever be ugly.
You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick -out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face
like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
By Roald Dahl, Typed byTui

Jacob's book

All of the kids love the Simpsons so we made the most of it and did 'Simpson' stories. The kids wrote and illustrated their own books. Jacobs story goes like this...

Bart wanted to go on his skateboard.

He wanted to skate fast.

Very fast!

He went so fast he crashed into a car.

Oh No!

Jacob really wanted me to post a photo of his Bart coverpage to show Grandpa and Stig!

Lego Maths

Jacob is right into Lego so I designed a math worksheet around Lego for him. His goal is to count higher than 14 (with out getting confused!) and we are doing pattern work as well do help develope observation and memory skills. The yellow, white, orange pattern is Pearl's ( she decided to join in) and Jacob did the green, yellow, red, blue pattern. He also had to make a lego creation that used 5 each of red, green, yellow and blue blocks although they could be any size and he could use other pieces such as the wheels. He was pretty pleased to see his maths was about Lego today!