Happy Holidays 4

Happy Holidays 3

Happy Holidays 2

Happy Holidays 1

Sunshine Online

With the summer holidays coming up, I know many of you will be thinking about a holiday pack of reading books to have at home, to make sure your 'little ray of sunshine' doesn't forget all the important skills they have learned this year. To help us out, Sunshine Books have offered a free trial to New Zealand parents and teachers to access their digital learning space at http://www.sunshineonline.co.nz where you can find lots of e-books and activities at just the right level to keep the kids on-track over the summer.
This login and password is valid until 28 January 2014:
Login: sunshine2013
Password: newzealand

To find out more about the phenomenon of 'summer slide' and why continuing to practice reading over the holidays is important - click this link.

Letters from Lower Hutt!

Earlier this week we received letters in the mail. They were from Room 3 at Dyer Street School in Lower Hutt (Wellington). The children there are learning about earthquakes and wanted to ask us some questions.

There are 24 children in Room 3 at Dyer Street and some of them even had the same names as us! They have two Ella's, and Isaac and a Mackenzie in their class too.
Here we are reading their letters:

Some of the questions they asked:
Does Christchurch have more earthquakes than Wellington? 
Does Christchurch have less earthquakes than Wellington? 
Do you have very big earthquakes?
What do you do in an earthquake?
How do earthquakes happen? 
Do we 'Drop, Cover and Hold' in an earthquake?
Why do people 'Drop, Cover and Hold'? 
Do you know about tectonic plates?
When do you know when earthquakes will happen? 
Did your classroom windows break?
Do you feel scared? 
Do dogs bark before earthquakes? 

From Arshaq, Isaac, Sio, Alex, Kane, Seth, Allison, Leah, Zane, Alyssa, Levi-Blue, Millie, Ashlee, Moses, Caleb, Mackenzie, Ella, Nyra, Ella, Rebecca, Fekita, Riley, Gabe and Ryan.

When we did some research to answer their questions we found out that Christchurch has had 12,800 earthquakes in the last 3 years! Here is a map that shows all of them:

We sent photos of us practising our 'Drop, Cover, Hold' too. We do this to keep ourselves safe. We can Drop, Cover, Hold' under a desk or in a doorway. We can also Drop and Cover like a turtle if we are in an open space, like the playing field, and there is nothing to hold on to.

We really liked receiving letters in the mail and tried to answer as many of their questions as we could.
Thank you for your letters Room 3 and good luck with your earthquake research! We hope you get our letters soon.
From Room 3 at Springston School.

Glorious Gardening!

On Wednesday we went to the Secret Garden with Room 6. It was fantastic. It was a beautiful day for pulling weeds, checking out the new 'bug hotel' and eating broad beans fresh from the pod!