It's Shopping Time!

Being able to understand our money, the different types, how to add it and to know how much change to give or to receive, is a valuable life skill that Te Mahuri students have been learning about in Maths over the past two weeks.  The children were able to earn money for all the different activities they did as well as HERO cards they were given for showing their YMS HERO qualities. These are some of the many things we were asking them to do:




At the end of each day, the amount of money they had earnt was added up and as the week progressed the children were excited to see and work out their earnings. Now I can hear you asking, what were they going to be able to spend their earnings on, and the answer to that is in our very own Te Mahuri shop. We asked our whanau for help with old toys, books or baking so that the children had a variety of items to spend their earnings on  and our whanau were extremely generous and we cannot thank them enough. Check out our awesome shop!



So as you can see, our children were spoilt for choice and were absolutely overjoyed and super excited when it came time to spend their money that they had earnt. Some children spent a long time considering what to buy, others were straight on in there spending quickly. Some children spent all their earnings on themselves, others bought things for others. Some spent all their earnings and others have kept some of their earnings and intend to spend it on some free time next week. No matter what though, they all enjoyed themselves and learnt a lot too!

What are your thoughts?

This week we are going to be looking at the idea of reasons and reasoning. We really want you to to give reasons, listen to reasons, sort the different reasons and engage with others in a way that might change their minds. All this we will be doing as the week goes on, but firstly, let's consider the following ...



So what are your thoughts? What would your answer be? Why? Put your answer and reason in the comments. Check back throughout the week to read the other comments and to see the variety of responses. Leave them a comment to explain why you agree or disagree with them. Let's see what we all think.

Our New Book and a Secret Code

For those of you who are have been checking out our class website, you will know that we started a new shared book at the end of last week. The children were presented with 3 very different books to choose from (see picture below) and in a democracy rules decision, The Dragon Defenders was chosen. This was a very popular choice.

This book is not disappointing us. We have had opportunities to imagine what it would be like if we lived on the same island as the main characters. Some of us were concerned that the boys had never seen a smart phone! We have thought about the different characters we have heard about but are yet to meet and  have considered why we have our own opinions about them even though we have only met them through the thoughts of our main characters.

This book also has an interactive component to it. When we got to page 51, there was a coded message that they boys had found but none of us knew how to decipher it. Here is the message, what do you think it says?

Exactly! We had no idea other than it was probably written by someone who calls themselves 'The Pitbull.' We came up with a lot of ideas of what it could be though. Then we used an app on Mrs Taylor's phone, AR reads. When Dylan put the camera over the page the code changed into a special message. Check out what Dylan deciphered.


Cool huh ?! We know it is quite hard to see the video but we know you get the idea. Well we are super excited now. We knew that dragons were involved somehow by the title but this is the first mention of them in the story. I wonder what else we will need to use the app for?

What book are you reading at the moment? What are you enjoying about it? Should it be one of the choices for our next shared book?