Building Strong Foundations

This term we are launching into our inquiry about our range of distinct cultures that have developed over time in NZ that influence our way of life, alongside a focus on how our effort impacts on a groups success. We began by getting a taste of Maori culture through poi, rakau, waiata and maori myths and artifacts. We were also set a challenge that we found easier to complete when we combined resources and ideas and worked as a team.

Healthy Hoolie

We can make good choices...

We have been 'finding out' about making good choices towards living a healthy lifestyle as part of our inquiry 'Growing from within'. It has been very interesting finding out what we should eat lots of and not so much of, that 5 year olds should have 11-12 hours sleep each night, and many other ways to care for our bodies. We have come up with some examples of good choices together and will next be 'sorting out' what we know by working out what we do well already and what goals we could set for ourselves.

Niall is lucky enough to know Craig Smith AKA 'The Wonky Donkey' author. He came and shared his songs and books and then told us that to achieve your big goals you need lots of practice setting and meeting little goals. Great advice to us as we try to achieve the mammoth job of becoming great readers and writers and number problem solvers. We break these 'big goals' into little bite size goals and feel great about chipping away and achieving these.

Little FIsh!

Here are our swimming goals. We are already making great progress towards meeting them. Just goes to show how lots of practice and hard work everyday gets us closer to achieving the things we want to. If you could leave us a comment to give us some encouragement to keep on trying we will try even harder to reach our goals!

I am responsible for my own actions!

Manuka children have been exploring the Myross Bush Learner Profile code. We have 5 slogans to help us be the best that we can be in everything we do at school and home. Our value is 'self improvement' - check out what we talking about to make this happen....

• I work and play with everyone
• I can do the right thing even when no one is looking
• I look after my things and other peoples things in our classroom and our school
• I think about my learning and get the work done
• I join in and share my ideas
  

A spider teaches us goal setting!

Room 6 - Manuka - have spent the first week getting to know each other and the routines in our classroom. We are using the nursery rhyme 'Incy Wincy Spider' to learn about perseverance and that when it gets hard along the way, it's good to keep trying towards reaching our goals. We look forward to sharing those goals with you next week at goal setting interviews. We are enjoying new faces most days with school visits and new children starting.