Kōwhai Team Year 3-4 : Kōwhai News Term 2 Week 7

It has been another busy fortnight in the Kōwhai hub. Enjoy reading about our learning and adventures.

Keeping Well

Thank you so much to all whānau for making sure we keep our hubs as healthy as possible by keeping tamariki with coughs, colds and other symptoms of illness at home.

Please do send your child to school with a named jumper every day, as the cooler air during playtimes can get suddenly chilly! Jackets on wet days are also a priority, and gumboots are always welcome (with shoes for wearing in class). Thanks, everyone!

Learning Conferences

We are excited about meeting with you next week! Please remember that school closes at 2pm on both Wed 14th and Thurs 15th June.

If you haven't yet booked a learning conference, you can still book here (code: 8f6xx).
Please also fill out this form regarding care of your child from 2-3pm on these days. This form needs to be filled out by EVERY family.
We also encourage you to spend time looking at your child's report with them on HERO.

Maths

Currently, our maths learning is focused on multiplication and division. We have been enjoying a mix of:

Small group explicit learning with a teacher
Problem solving, solving problems like: In the cross country, 9 minions ran two laps each. How many laps did the minions run altogether?
Targeted maths worksheets, such as multiplying by skip counting, e.g., 3 x 2 = 2+2+2
Maths games with a group
Finding arrays outside and in the classroom and drawing our own
Maths games online

You can help us at home by practising the 2, 5 and 10 multiplication and division facts with your child. If they know these already, you can work on any of the other multiplication and division facts. Practise, practise, practise!

Wellbeing

Support your child's emotional awareness by listening to this story.

As well as our weekly PB4L focus (e.g., on kindness, friendship, upstanding etc.), we have wellbeing sessions each Friday, focusing on different topics that the teachers see the children might need support with. Recently, we have looked at emotions. We have...

identified and named emotions
talked about how these feel in our body (e.g., when I am nervous, I get butterflies in my tummy)
shared what causes us to feel these emotions
played fun emotions games
and also learnt some strategies for dealing with anger, sadness and frustration, such as talking to an adult or having some quiet time.

Waka & Migration Learning

We're really enjoying learning more about early migration to Aotearoa. We have especially loved learning about the different waka that different groups of people created to make the long voyage over from their homelands. You can explore some of these waka in 3D here and also learn about the traditional Ngāi Tahu way of building Mōkihi to travel local rivers.

Writing

Many children have been writing explanations over the last few weeks, and working on publishing and illustrating their work. Here are just some of their masterpieces:

Discovery

Tamariki are loving lego challenges (thanks, Anna R, for creating these each week), programming challenges (thanks, Nick) and Rowe's wonderful art inspirations. This week, Rowe has shown us how to make 3D paper sculptures! The teachers have noticed how great we are at working together and teaching each other new skills.