Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Imagination Explore!

 This week we have been practising using our imagination during Explore Time. We know that if we know how to use our imagination, we can never be bored! We know that using your imagination is about using your mind to create something that is not real or pretend. We had some really cool big boxes and fun cardboard to use (Thanks Felix and family!) so we practised sharing this week to make sure we all got a turn with the equipment. 

We had so much fun using our imaginations, check out some of what we got up to!

Semi gave us his best serious 'Army Man' face when he was pretending he worked in the army. 

Logan W used 2 tubes to create this awesome telescope to see the stars!

Enzo was a spy and Zac P decided he was going to pretend to be a tree! 

Levi and Tane LOVED playing cowboys together!

They had so much fun acting like cowboys and pretending they lived in the Wild Wild West! 

Courtney used her imagination to pretend she was a Mum - she did a great job of looking after her new baby!

Felix, Toby and Cameron worked together to build this very detailed pirate ship 

Avery used his imagination to pretend he was an alien with antenna - he even made some antenna to wear! 

Scarlett loved pretending she was a librarian reading books to children

Ethan, Ruby and Ella were all having an adventure on their 'pirate ship'!

Courtney and Hudson made excellent spies

Felix was searching for some land!

Mia used her binoculars to search for things from her ship

Alyssa and Aria had great fun pretending they had wooden arms! 


Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Reptiles Explore!

 This week in Explore we are learning all about.... Reptiles! We have learned that reptiles are a group of species that have dry scaly skin, lay eggs on land and are cold blooded. We have talked lots about what it means for them if they are cold blooded and how they have to find ways to warm their body up, which is why lots of reptiles like to live in warm places where they can get both sun and shade. 

We have been focusing lots on asking questions this week, as questioning is a very important part of learning. When we hear something and we want to learn more about it, we just need to ask! 

Check out some photos of us hard at work:


Arabella added a forked tongue to her snake so it could smell

Austin, Scarlett and Aurora did a great job of sorting the creatures into piles of reptiles and non-reptiles

Seth made a great 2 colour pattern on his snake!

Logan W was super proud of his pattern snake

Zac P, Jamie, Logan P, Charlotte and Teityn were so great at supporting each other in the Memory Match game and even clapped when someone got a pair!

Cameron, Zach T, Koni-Leigh and Charlie were experts at sorting the animals into reptiles or not!

Enzo and Felix created this structure to seperate the reptiles from the non-reptiles

Kupa was so focussed while colouring his snake in a 2 colour pattern

Ryan put his pattern snake on his shoulders! 

Tane, Jack and Luca W all made matching snakes with forked tongues!

Aurora worked so hard to fold the paper and create her snake - she even gave it a face! 

Maia was so helpful and showed Ava how to correctly fold her snake 

Iris was super proud of her pattern snake! 

The guys were all working so hard to fold their paper to create the folded snake!

Semi and Kupa started making this habitat for reptiles! They told me it had to have places for them to get warm and cool down. 

These were our creations that made it to the WOW wall this week! Well done to everyone that got their work on the wall :) 




Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Construction Explore!

 This week in Explore we have been learning all about construction. We have learned about some of the different machines that help us build things and had a big focus on the importance of planning BEFORE building. We have also talked a lot about how people often notice a need or problem and then build something to fix it. Some of us even tried building things to solve some of our own problems!

We had a challenge set to create a chair out of paper (mostly) that could hold one of our class teddies. It was tricky but lots of us kept trying and some of us even made chairs that were strong enough! 

Check out some photos of us hard at work: 

Felix spent time making a strong foundation for his building

Ailbhe was super proud of her building that matched her plan!

Kenta worked hard to make his mobilo house match his plan exactly

Peyton and Maia worked together to create this amazing princess tower

Luca W was an expert at planning his ideas before building!

Hugh thought carefully about how to keep the minion up on his chair without falling!

Hugo didn't want bugs getting in our tulip plant so he tried constructing a device to sit on top of the soil and keep the bugs out

Tane followed his plan very carefully while building

Shelby, Logan P and Hudson worked together to make this elaborate train track

Zac P and Tane worked together to follow the plan Tane created

Nina was the first one to build a chair out of paper that could hold one of our soft toys without falling!

Ava worked hard to modify her chair and make it stronger

Te Huriwai and Milana worked together to create this seat out of blocks for the teddy

Noah thought the children needed more books so he planned to create this incredible library!

Charlie followed his plan exactly to make this wide bridge out of lego!


Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Spring Explore!

 This week in Explore we have been learning about Spring. Lots of us have had questions lately about why there are no leaves on the trees and when they will come back so it was pretty perfect that this week was the first week of Spring. 
We have learned lots about what happens in the different seasons and what kind of weather to expect in each season. We have also learned a bit about how trees and flowers get food, and also how to point out deciduous and evergreen trees! 

We have also worked hard on ensuring we are ALL helping to tidy at tidy up time, so that we are all playing our part to help out and keep our classroom tidy. 

Check out some photos of us hard at work! 

Scarlett enjoyed matching the baby animals to their Mums! 

Aria was an expert at knowing the correct order of the colours in a rainbow!

Felix was super focussed to figure out how to colour, cut and then glue together his butterfly to make it look like the picture!

Kupa stayed so focussed to colour all the colours of the rainbow correctly. Check out that great colouring with no white spaces! 

Arabella was very proud of her rainbow!

Caleb, Semi and Charlie worked together to build this giant farm for all the new baby animals!

Jack was an expert at using the pastel smudging technique!

Elijah, Arabella, Ethan, Avery and Luca were very focussed when colouring, cutting and gluing their bugs together

Mia worked hard to match all the baby animals to their Mums - she was so proud of her hard work and could even name some of the baby animals! 

Toby made this farm to house all of the new animals that are born in spring 

Hugo was very proud of his tree that he made out of lego!

Courtney loved using pastels to smudge and add colour to her leaves

Avery and Charlie worked hard to look closely at shapes and match the bees to the correct flowers

Nina was very focussed to solve the addition equations on the flower petals while Noah, Sophie, Austin and Logan worked together to match the bees to the correctly shaped flowers

Ailbhe was super proud that she could create this beautiful butterfly all by herself!

Toby and Zac P worked together all Explore time to make this elaborate farm!

Te Huriwai enjoyed doing the leaf rubbings this week

Hugh was super focussed while doing his pastel leaves!

This was all the amazing work that made it on to the WOW wall this week - well done to everyone who worked so hard to make these beautiful creations!