Wonderful!

Hi everyone and welcome back to another week of our wonderful learning at home. You maybe wondering how we have been doing this so today let's look at this.

We have been using google meet to get together each morning. This has been like our carpet session where we find out what is happening each day, celebrate our successes and look at what challenges we had yesterday. It has been fun catching up with each other this way. Here we are this morning. We were missing some of our students today but we hope they'll be back with us tomorrow.

After our hangout we then make a start on our Reading, Writing and Maths work. This has not been to difficult as we would do this if we were at school too. We go to the class website and look at our group planning docs to see what to do.  Easy! It's easy because this is what we would do at school too. Our teachers leave us videos that explains our learning and we can watch these as many times as we like. If we have any questions or are unsure of anything we can email our teachers or leave a comment in our workbooks. Our teachers check these all the time and comment on what we have done. 

We also have some great activities/competitions that we can choose to do after we have finished our Reading, Writing and Maths each day. This week we have been taking part in the Sports Lockdown Championship. We have had to compete in events at home and then share videos and photos of us doing the events. This weeks events were vacuuming, emptying the dishwasher, star jumps, press ups, tidying our rooms and setting the table. 

Well there you have it. That's how we've been learning and working while we have been staying in our bubbles. What have you been doing?

Aha! What a Genuinely Glorious Group

We are indeed just a genuinely gorgeous group of individuals that are all working together during this lockdown period.

You all know that we have been meeting every day using google meet. You've read about our online quizzes. We've also had a crazy hat/hair/wig meet. This was such a fun way to end an awesome week last week. We truly had a lot of craziness going on. It's great to see that even though our way of working at the moment is different, we are still able to laugh, smile and have some fun. Okay we have had more than 'some' fun, we have had a whole heap of fun! :)

This week is no different. Our quiz this week is about the teachers. Tamariki will be trying to guess which teacher has done different things or whether the information about that teacher is true or false. For those playing, I'll give you a little hint. One of the questions is, "True or False - Mrs Taylor has a cat called Humphrey." The answer is ..... false. Actually Mrs Taylor is allergic to cat hair so there is no cat called Humphrey. There is a teddy called 'Teddy' though. Friday is also the 1st May so we are having a "M" party on our hangout.
                "A party at 9am!" you say.
                "Absolutely," I say, "it will be a blast."

While we have been at home, we have been continuing with a shared story. This term our shared book is Possums 2U by Vince Ford. Vince is a fabulous New Zealand author who writes about life in New Zealand. Ms Dods has been recording herself reading each chapter. These can be found on our class website if you are interested in listening to this awesome story. We are enjoying it. Alongside having to answer some questions, we have been getting busy and creative based on different things that have happened in the story. These were our choices last week:



So as you can see, we could choose between making a possum, a poster, a cartoon, a shelter, or even a possum trap. Here is some of our awesome work:



See, I told you we were a genuinely glorious group!
See ya next time :)

Looking Back, Looking Forward

We have continued staying connected with our online learning this week. Many of us are enjoying telling each other some great jokes at the start of our hangouts. Some jokes are funnier than others!

Today we also did a quiz using our baby photos. This week I asked the children to send me a photo of when they were a baby or a toddler. I know that many of our families enjoyed the chance to look back and to see the photos that were taken and to discuss the different things that were happening at the time of the photos. We then used these photos and created a kahoot (cos Te Mahuri loooves kahoot) to try and guess which of our students is in the photo. It was a lot of fun!

If you would like to have a look at our then and now photos then check out this presentation ...


It's important to be able to look back and reflect upon times past. It's also important to be able to look forward and consider what might come. In the future I hope that our students and families look back on this time and that they will be able to reflect on some of the positives rather than just the negatives. I also hope they can look forward with hope at this time and not dread. And as I look to the future, I look forward to being able to see our students again face to face. While being online together has been fun, our face to face interactions are awesome too. Stay strong beautiful people, you really are an awesome group.

What a Week!

Wow! We have some awesome tamariki and whanau in our community that have engaged with us and the learning we've set and we couldn't be more proud to be apart of it. We have loved seeing you all through our video hangouts and we thank you for welcoming us into your homes and connecting with us. We have met some of your pets, told jokes, laughed and smiled. We've loved it!

Ms Dods found this beautiful video courtesy of Visit Auckland that reflects on this time and with still so much uncertainty about what is to come, it really is a timely reminder that our strength is in unity and that there will be an end to this strangeness.



Sit at a distance, stand as one.
When the time is right, we welcome you.
But for now, listen.
Our Earth Mother is breathing.

Kia kaha, and we'll see you all very soon.