Room 25 2018

This was the 'work' area- these boys set up their chairs, their computers (keyboards and boxes for the screen), and set to work. The tens frames were their money which they looked at carefully to count how much money each note was worth. Here, the mum is reading to her baby inside the hut. Preparations are being made, as apparently there's a thunderstorm coming!  The windows must be washed. The tent must be fixed so it is watertight. And the food must be stockpiled and stored.

Look at our swords and shields! 

Potion making has continued to be popular. It has evolved into making different sorts of food- describing what to put in, how to create it, making recipes and sharing it with our friends. This was the 'oven' We had to push a button and count down from 20 till it beeped. This was another oven, created with the wooden planks.

After a discussion about acorns,we decided to plant one and see if we could watch it grow. We also planted a few other seeds (beans and grass) just in case... Then we waited... And look what has started happening!!  The seeds have soaked up the water, swollen up and sent out roots and a shoot. We will be watching them carefully to see what happens next.

We have been thinking of ways to cheer up our frog, so we brainstormed what we knew about where frogs live to decide whether we needed to find a new home for our frog.  Then we watched a video to learn more about what frogs need to stay healthy and happy.  Then we decided our frog needed a nicer home. So we all helped to clean out the frog's house.  It was pretty exciting because we got to have a (gentle) hold of the frog in its temporary home.  And then, Yuto's dad kindly brought us a fern to go inside our frog's cage. The fern will help to keep the air clean and will give the frog a nice place to hide.  What a lucky frog we have! Our frog has been living on a diet of cockroaches lately, but if you have any (live) insects at home, please bring them in to share :)

Today we shared our classroom with Room 26 and we got to have a look at Room 26's dress up clothes. Arya and Nyahrose went straight for the Cat in the Hat costume- they knew exactly who they wanted to be! Then we read the story again- it is becoming a favourite. It is great to see these girls are so familiar with a story character and remembered what he looked like!

We can count backwards and forwards to 10 and match the tens frames too!

We had a look at our frog and decided that he is looking a bit sad. We did a brainstorm and decided that he might be sad because he was lonely, he was scared, he didn't like his cage, he was hungry, or he wanted to go back home. Then we thought about where frogs live and what they needed to survive. Here are some of our ideas: We then wrote about ways we could cheer him up, and next we will decide what we are going to do for him- looking at perhaps releasing him back into the wild. 

Sione, Atu and Rishav have been using the big pieces of wood to create things- here we have a star, a ladder and slide, and a 'K'- we are using our imaginations to create new things with abstract objects. This is an important skill to develop to encourage creativity and resourcefulness. 

Leah and Mwanjiwa made a book about monsters- they decided to add some of our classmates. Miss Hintz wrote the words as Mwanjiwa dictated. We read it to the class and we all thought it was very funny. Later on Petros decided to make his own book. He even wrote the words and put it together himself. Miss Hintz wrote the words again as Petros dictated, it was a story about the 3 Billy goats and the terrible troll. We put our stories on the library shelf and up on the wall so we could all read them again and again. The next day we decided to create an animal story with the words from a book we read during reading time. We brainstormed our favourite animals, found them on the computer and printed them out. Then we stuck them into the book, added the words, and practised reading it. We even read it to Room 26! And next reading time we ran to the book, all wanting to read it again. 

We are learning to count forwards and backwards to 10, 20 and even 100. We are also learning to say the number before and after  each number in this range.

Some maths groups have been having fun learning how to play snakes and ladders this week. There is a lot of learning involved- counting moves, recognising numbers, following instructions, taking turns and explaining rules.

We have been playing an Osmo game which asks us to add two dice patterns together to pop the bubbles and free the fish. It is very exciting and we are doing addition without even noticing! We have also started using the Osmo coding game- it's fun and requires a lot of thinking about directions, movements and numbers (moves).