Sorry for no post last week; on Friday we were flat out with our final preparations for our decorations for the Southern Steel netball team's changing rooms.
Sunday was Steel-day and we were full of excitement as we headed to Invercargill's Velodrome for the Steel game against the Queensland Firebirds.
Before
Our first job was to decorate the changing rooms so the players would get a nice surprise when they turned up before the game: we had made posters for each member of the squad as well as written messages to our players or management team members. We put the messages inside balloons (also filled with sequins) and left a note telling the squad that they had to sit on their balloons to pop them and find the messages! A Freddo was attached to each balloon as well as a coloured gerbera flower.
After - with the kool Kokako kids!
We hung balloons and streamers around the room (including the toilets area) and above the hot and cold baths we had sheets of jokes to take the players' minds off the ice!
At the exit door we hung a huge poster with photos of each of us doing a high-five!
After tea and face-painting at McDonald's we returned to the velodrome to take our seats at the goal end of the court. Maureen from Road Safety Southland gave us safety vests to wear and we were ready for action - wigs, face-paint and bangers included.
Ready for action!
When the players entered the court area to warm-up we gave a guard of honour for both teams - this was pretty cool as we high-fived the players and clapped and cheered.
The Southern Steel enter the court area
The game was all action! The Steel were behind for much of the game but we think our cheering and chanting helped inspire the girls to pull out all their best moves and bring the score to within one goal!
We were gutted that the team couldn't quite pull off the draw to give us another ten minutes of excitement, but we loved being able to go down and meet the players while getting their autographs.
Hayley Saunders signs our booklets
The players told us they loved the changing rooms and their messages and posters so we are pretty pleased with ourselves - our aim was to give the girls some fun and to inspire them to do well and we think we achieved that!
Thanks tonnes to Kate Buchanan from the Southern Steel, Maureen Deuchrass from Road Safety Southland, and to the mums and dad who helped with transport, decorating and supervision. We all had a fantastic experience!!
Kia ora! Another five days of busy learning has passed...
This week Breana was our VIP (very important pupil):
Our technology inquiry is well underway as we have defined what technology is, looked at the technological process and been given a design brief to come up with a bird feeder to try and attract native birds to our school playground. We have looked at some other models and will soon be coming up with our own plans to create a prototype out of recycled materials.
For writing we published our letter to Richie McCaw and our anti-bullying poems. Fingers crossed for a win with each of these competitions!!
Miss Van den Beld got us started on our science inquiry - we viewed photos of different sorts of moulds - gross!!!
Mrs Miller has got us designing our pictures that we will use for lino printing - we look forward to starting to cut these out and hope to make them into pillowcases.
Mrs Coyle has collected our Steel game tickets and checked out the changing rooms - our ideas are flowing and next week we will be flat-out putting them into action!!
Have a super Mother's Day everyone! Today you can read comments of what we love about our mothers...
Kia ora koutou! Another working week over and Steve the rooster has returned to hang out with us at Edendale Primary School. It seems he is back from his summer wandering to spend his winter days with us, clearing up the crumbs we leave behind at lunchtime!
In our learning tasks this week we have had a real mixture of activities and excitement!
On Tuesday we began our hockey skills sessions with Sport Southland and today we shared our recorder playing skills with the school during Celebration - we have worked with Mrs Anderson over the past two sessions of Arts @ Edendale and were thrilled to play a couple of tunes today.
In numeracy maths we have continued with our subtraction strategies, as well as some fractions work and decimals work. Our strand maths is about geometry (shapes) and we will also be practising our time-telling skills this term.
For our inquiry this term we have a technology focus and this week we began looking at just what technology is and how we might define it. Next week we will look at the technology process and begin working on a project of design.
Our literacy this week has been based on writing letters to Richie McCaw, the All Black captain, to tell him what the Rugby World Cup of 2011 meant to us (an NZRFU competition - if one of us wins then an All Black will come to the school to meet us!).
Some of us chose a different writing context - we have worked on an anti-bullying poem for a competition being run by El Gregoe the magician and TrustPower. Watch out for these poems on our blogs next week.
We are also getting into little groups to find out about a variety of topics, which will be presented as movies or animations or webpages - Burt Munro, the recycling wheeliebins, our sponsor child Grace, penguins, and more! Keep an eye out for our creations over the next few weeks.
Our main excitement this week was finding out we have been chosen to decorate the changing rooms of the Southern Steel netball team for their next home game at the Velodrome on Sunday May 20th - we are planning our decorations and will be spending a $200 Spotlight voucher on materials for our ideas. We get tickets to watch the game and will also be forming a guard of honour as the team takes the court for their warm-up! Very exciting for a netball-nut like Mrs Coyle and the other netballers and sports fans in the class!!
This has come about because of our efforts to show our support for the Steel during the Clicked Yet? Road Safety demonstration that we had here at school, with Sheryl and Hayley from the Steel, just before the holidays! Way to go Room Kokako!!
And this afternoon we were thrilled to find out we had won a competition with Scholastic Books - Jeremy from Scholastic came along to Celebration and told us Marina had been drawn as the winner in a Star Bookclub competition held in Term One which we had all entered. Each of us won a book to read and Marina won a $20 voucher and Mrs Coyle won a $50. Thanks Scholastic!!
