Dress up Day - St Mary's 2014

 Dress up Day

Last Thursday St Mary's staff and students came dressed up as their favourite book character. We had all sorts of characters in room 6 as you can see from our photos. Children had to bring a gold coin donation, which will go towards relief efforts for the typhoon ravaged Philippines.

Some of the children put a lot of effort into their costume selection.

A group photo shows the wide range of characters we had in room 6.

Poppy vainly attempts to scare Mr. Bach with her costume.

  Charis

 Veronica

 Koby

 Jasmin

 Naina

 Ria

 Lucille

 Tyler

 Willem

Misty

Picture Prompts - writing

 Picture Prompts - Motivating to Write and stimulating thinking

A good way of getting children to write is by using picture (usually photo) prompts. Big pictures are best and they can be electronic or in paper form, as long as the children are able to look at them closely from the place from where they are writing.

Children can be guided to describe the setting or a character in the setting by using looks like, feels like, smells like and sounds like, or they can use the scene to begin a story using who, what where and when.

 The children may have to be encouraged to choose a prompt as procrastination in making a choice is common.

 Room 6 children have chosen their prompts in this picture and are now orgainising their books and other writing equipment.

Some children are very happy and motivated writers - others may need support and encouragement to write.

 Welcome back to Term 3

Welcome back to Term 3 for 2013. Hopefully children are all rested from their break and ready for some learning. Opposite is a small selection of some of the creations of several children - Charis, Veronica, Vincent, Mele, Malia and Misty - on the 'Book Creator' app on the iPads. I could only choose the ones which were named, so I am able give credit to the authors. There are a few more  exceptional ones I could put up at some later date if the authors can find the creation, name it and then tell me it is ready to go up. Some creations could also do with a bit of editing. 

  

 These creations were developed as part of last terms concept of sustainability. This term our concept is enterprise. We will be looking at what enterprise and enterprising mean and what makes an enterprising person. Perhaps we could see some Book Creator creations on this topic soon!?

Misty's Post from the Gardens

Sustainable Gardens

   

These are some of our bottles that we have reused and filled with compost to grow veges.

These are silver beet plants and something else.

This is the compost bins before the worms have started their work.

Beet root plants.

People have been watering them, plants need water to grow.

This is a worm from the worm farm bins.

This is a worm farm

People are planting lots of different vegetables in our sustainable garden.

These people have been planting sun flowers.  

There was worm pee in here but it's gone now, we used it as fertiliser for the plants.

 Interhouse Cross Country 2013 

Room 6 students trained up hard over 6 days at the beginning of term 2. We ran for ten minutes every day around the school filed and recorded the number of laps we completed. Our training goals and record of laps run will be put into each child's portfolio

Some children made more progress with their fitness than others

 Poppy trained hard. Here she is putting her hand out to get a lap marker from Mr. Bach.

Naina runs past Mr Bach who kept track of the children's progress. Mr. Bach used to run with the children in past year to improve his fitness, but unfortunately a severe ankle sprain has lead him to retrie from running and focus on biking and kayaking.







Willem and a group of mixed room 6 and 7 girls make their way past the recording point.

 Room 6 children performed well at the school cross country held in the Redwood Forest last Wednesday. Josh (above) and Alex and Misty (below) all got high placings in their year group.

 

Koby (above) and Poppy (below) also ran well for excellent placings in the cross country event.

Some of our year 4 children will be attending the interschool cross country event for certain.














All of the St Mary's staff helped out during the event. Here Mr Volschenk is guiding children to the recording table. Mr Bach was the unofficial photographer and First Aid Coordinator!!!

   



Mrs Park and some girls at the recording station.

The children cheered on the other children from their houses in the races.

 Some children really got into the cheering business.

Sustainability -Term 2 Concept

 Our concept this term at St Mary's is ‘Sustainability’. Children will learn what difference they can make to their immediate environment. We will focus on sustainable gardens and recycling will also be part of the programme. Middle School children will be using the school gardens, looking after the chickens, recycling scraps, running a worm farm and trying very hard to persuade others to do the same.

 The middle school has exclusive access to the school garden's this term and room 6's day in the garden is Wednesday. In class we will be talking about sustainable practices and why sustainability is important but on Wednesday's we are allowed to get our hands dirty weeding the gardens, getting the scraps from the chickens and keeping an eye on the worm farm.

 The children enjoyed their first afternoon in the garden and found lots of fascinating things to talk about. Tae'o and Misty in particular seem really keen to share something with Mr. Bach.







The children were not scared to get stuck in weeding the gardens and looking for insect pests on the leaves.

 Some caterpillars were found on some of the cabbage leaves but with autumn upon us there should be no more butterflies laying eggs.

 This week Poppy also shared something very interesting for news. She brought a large abandoned nest from last summer, probably made by a larger bird like a blackbird or starling. Interestingly among the twigs and leaves used to build the nest was a piece of plastic rubbish.

Koby was also lucky enough this week to receive a special prize at assembly for his holiday reading. He won one of the main prizes - a book voucher. Well done Koby.