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=This is the 2009 wikispace for room 4.= =Here is a new address for 2010 http://room4otaika2010.wikispaces.com/= =Room 4 Otaika Valley School=

Welcome to our class wikispace. We would welcome your feedback, please contact us on room4@otaika.school.nz

Term 4 week 4

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Flower show has gone and it was wonderful. Pictures of our class displays are on our flower-show page. Also our butterfly garden is looking beautiful. It is nearly finished all we need to do is nurture our plants and put down some paving stones. We decorated it with colourful butterflies that the children made on the computers using the KIDPIX programme, on flowershow day. Margaret and Debbie cut them out and put them on to the sticks. Thanks for all your help. Next week we will start preparing for our school concert. We will keep our 2 items as a surprise for when you come to watch us on the night, but we will be practicing hard before it. We will be focusing on drama and language activities and how to behave in front of an audience, how to speak clearly and to use expression and how to work as a team. As part of our drama activities we will be using puppets and making movies of ourselves acting and using puppets.

Welcome back to term 4 This term is always an exciting term with lots of extra special activities happening. Firstly we have a first year teaching student with us for four weeks so welcome back to Debi Smith. Flower show day and Ag day are on the Friday 30th October, families are joining us on that day for lots of exciting activities and things to see, do and lots to buy.It is our major fundraiser for the year and pour PTG work very hard to enable this day to occur.

Our class is making the following items: 1. A class scarecrow. 2. Scarecrow art pictures 3. Vaseline flower saucers - children need to bring leaves, petals, small flowers, a named saucer/plate 4. Sand-saucers- children need to bring leaves, petals, small flowers, a named saucer/plate 5. A fruit and or vegetable creation children need to create a thing made of fruit/ veg. They can be as creative as they like and can bring items from home, however they will make it themselves at school. They might need toothpicks,raisons or similar for eyes, something for teeth, hair etc 6. A decorated biscuit: we will create this at school with items at school, they can eat them on Friday 7. Their calendar art is on display in the class. 8. A collage flower picture. 9. Their grass head men are growing- not quite as lush with the hair growth as we would like, but, they have some hair.

Come and look at our butterfly garden. We are making great progress thanks to our wonderful parent helpers. The children love getting out in the garden and are learning lots from our very patient parents. The class sunflowers are growing rapidly and look nice and strong. The Hebes donated by Palmers have gone into the garden and look very healthy. Next we need to put in some pavers and some small nectar producing annuals.

Our value this term is **success** and we will be learning to set goals and learning intentions and find ways to successfully meet these. It is part of our school motto commitment and success.

For physical education we will continue with cooperative games plus we will be joining the rest of the school each morning to take part in a series of PE activities. This will involve working with teams of children from all levels of the school and rotating around a number of skills based activities organised by the staff. We will work in teams to help and support each other and to have success in the activities through working co-operatively. On sunny days we hope to get some aerobics in as well.As soon as the weather warms up and the pool reaches the required temperature we will be swimming. Our class swimming time is 2:00 to 2:30 daily. //Everyone takes part and initially we concentrate on pool safety and looking after our belongings.Please help your child by naming every item of clothing- including the swimming bag the clothes are in.//

//** Recently Monique Cross and I went to a study day and they talked about the "summer slump" which referred to children dropping back in their reading over the summer holidays if they didn't read.I thought I would copy some of the hints they gave out. **//

//**3 important messages for parents / caregivers / whanau** //

// We know you want the best for your children. // // Here are three things you can do which will really help them : //

// **1. Encourage your children to read.** //


 * If your children spend 15 minutes each day reading or being read to, it will help them become excellent readers, writers and thinkers and do well at school and life.
 * 15 minutes is only 1 % of each day. It could be in 3 lots of 5 minutes. It isn’t much time but it makes a HUGE difference.
 * If you would like some help getting books to read and share, then please ask us, we’d be happy to help.
 * 2. Keep reading and writing happening over the school holidays.**
 * Many children, especially struggling readers, forget some of what they've learned or slip out of practice during the summer holidays. If you keep reading to your child and encouraging them to read and write, then they won’t lose ground they have made over the year and “slide” back.
 * Keep it fun – read anything, write anything – lists, recipes, stories, postcards, comics… Ask your child’s teacher for ideas.
 * 3. Read aloud to your children.**
 * The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.
 * Reading aloud to children stimulates their interest, their emotional development, their imagination, and their language.
 * Reading aloud to your children every day will help them become great readers and listeners, but most of all they will love you for doing it with them and they will remember the times you read to them all their lives !