Piwakawaka have been learning about length

Dear family and whānau,

For the last two weeks in Piwakawaka we have been exploring activities which develop an awareness of length and area. We have been using words like: long, short, tall, big and small to describe objects.

Longs and Shorts

Ask your child to look around at home and find objects that are short and long. Once they have a collection, you could ask them to put them in order from shortest to longest to reinforce their learning :-)

We compared the length of some Tuna and gingerbread people we made and arranged them from the shortest to the longest

Counting and proportion Christmas decorations

Today we created some beautiful wreaths. We practiced our counting while we waited for the hot glue to dry. We had to consider what decorations would look good on our wreaths and where to put them.

Good cat or bad cat mystery.

We had a mystery to solve in Rūma Piwakawaka on Thursday. Whaea Maria's cat had been catching skinks and bringing them into the garage. Whaea Maria had collected and frozen the skinks so we could study them.

There are 2 types of skinks in New Zealand which look almost exactly the same but one in native to Aotearoa (good) and one that is a pest called a Rainbow Skink which came from Australia (bad). Leo said "The native has 2 scales in the head."

We got out our magnifying glasses to see if the cat was killing good or bad skinks.

Whaea Michelle also showed us that some skinks had short tails and some long tails and some no tails. Whaea Michelle taught us that skinks loose there tails so they can escape cats trying to eat them.

We also looked at the skinks under the microscope and took photos. Quinn said "There is no scales on the tail. Oh that rhymes!" Their feet are a bit like our hands

Some of the tamariki were brave and touched the skinks. "It feels like a soft blanket." said Talisa, Jessie said "It felt weird!" Vann said "It felt scaly." Maddy agreed and said "It felt a bit like a snake because the scales look similar."

Unfortunately we think from our investigation that Missy is a bad cat as she has been catching native skinks.

Fractions tea party

 We have been learning about fractions. We are learning what is a half and a quarter of a whole like our playdough cake and cups of tea.

 We have also been learning what a quarter and a half of of number of objects is like our wooden biscuits.

We had a nice tea party with lovely manners.

Drama - Hairy Maclary Scattercat by Lynley Dodd

 Mrs Bowes and Whaea Michelle helped us create props to retell the story of Hairy Maclary Scattercat. We practiced 3 times before we recorded it.

Balloon Cars

We have been learning to follow a set of instructions and experimenting with different tyres for our cars to see what works best. 

We raced our cars to try which one was best. 

We learnt that: 

• Heavy tyres like golf balls are slow
• Big lid tyres went faster than little lid tires
• Wonky tyres go slower

Pet tadpoles in Rūma Piwakawaka

We have been learning about living things and what we need to do to care for them.

Our tadpoles need special care and the right food. We have been looking after them by feeding them lettuce and not touching the tank.

Update 11 November

One of our tadpoles has 4 legs and can climb!