Musical Meerkats

Today the Marvellous Meerkats had a musical performance in the hall. All of the IAs and High Flyers and lots of parents were watching us.

A few weeks ago, we started practicing. We had to keep trying and trying.

Our performance started with Dash. Dash played his xylophone in front of the whole school. They loved hearing and watching him play. Azlyn helped Dash out because Dash was scared.

Then J-Lynn started to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the rest of us sang along. We used a special thing called a Makey Makey that turned Bradley, George, Natalia, Alex, Paris and Sunday into a musical instrument. All J-Lynn had to do was touch them on their hands.

Next Dakshesh played the Alphabet Song and Ryley played a special song Mr Davidson wrote. They both used the same instrument made out of the children.

When we were performing, we made mistakes but we continued. Mr Davidson didn't even help us one bit. He took this video:

We want to do this in front of the whole school again because we had so much fun. Some of us got scared, but we still tried our best and were very brave.

Our Trip to MOTAT

Yesterday the Marvellous Meerkats went to MOTAT to explore and learn about flight.

First we went to look at the exhibits. We got to play around in a room full of fun things. We also got to learn about some video games from New Zealand.

Then we took a train to the second part of MOTAT. We saw lots of big airplanes in a massive room.

Later, we got to learn about flight from Abby. We did lots of fun activities. Flight has four forces: Lift, Drag, Thrust and Weight.

We had lots of fun at MOTAT. I can't wait to go back!

Park and Walk Day

On Thursday, many of the Meerkats participated in the Travelwise Park and Walk Day. Many of us met at the park down the road and a few more met at the church, near the BP. We walked in a big group and even though it was raining we had a great walk together. We even got some hot chocolate for all of our work. Have a look at all the Meerkats who participated:

GEG Student Summit

Yesterday, some of the Meerkats took a bus ride to Hobsonville Point Primary School for the Google Educator Group Student Summit. We made a presentation on how to make animations using Google Slides. Then we got to see what other students were doing in other schools. we learned how to make a blog and how to make a Google site (more on those later, or if you're clever, you'll see what we made). We had lots of fun and learned lots.  Here is the presentation that we made:

Here are some pictures of us:

Using Google Slides to Show What We Read

This week, the Chimpanzees were reading the book, Wolves. They did lots of activities about the book. One of the activities was to make a slideshow about wolves. Here is the work that Sunday and J-Lynn did:

Fluency Practice

This week some of our reading groups started filming our reading so we can practice getting better at making it sound interesting. Here are the people that filmed their reading this week. Have a listen:

Basic Fact Families Part 1

Recently, we used a Stop Motion app on the iPads to make some videos showing some basic fact families. Have a look at some of the videos we made (More to come soon):

Ordering by Long and Short

On Wednesday the Marvellous Meerkats learned about long and short.

First we each looked for one thing that was long and one thing that was short.

Next we got into our groups.

Then we put the shortest one down and the longest one down. They have to start at the same spot.

Have a look at the pictures we took:

Same Length Scavenger Hunt

Yesterday, when Mr Davidson was at a maths course, we did some maths of our own. Whaea Mele gave us eight blocks. She told us to find something that had the same length as the blocks. We found pencils, felts, scissors and books.

Writing

Here is the writing that we did this week after we had put the pictures in order. Remember, we hadn't read the story before we did this. We hope you enjoy reading them.

By Han & Koringoa

By J-Lynn, Jalais & Dizaliyah

By Ryley, Asafo & Soileti

By Sunday & Paris

Buckle Up!

This week is Road Safety Week. Every day this week at lunchtime we could go to Room 2 and get our picture taken. We had to line up with a partner. Next we buckled our seat belts. Mrs Priestly took our picture. We got some prizes for doing this. Someone will win a booster seat.  You have to be 148cm tall to not use a booster seat in a car. That's all of the Meerkats, except for Mr Davidson.

Making Seventeen

Slowly but surely we're getting higher and higher with our teen numbers. Here are the Pic Collages we made for 17. How many more teen numbers do we have to go?

Making a Story

Today in writing Mr Davidson gave us some pictures from a story that we haven't read. We had to work in teams to put them in order (it didn't have to be the right order, it just had to make sense). Then we came up with a story for the pictures. At the end of the lesson we started writing our stories on the chromebooks. We haven't finished them yet, but check back later this week to see what we've written.