Tennis

This week Gareth and Ian from the Burnside Tennis Club have been teaching us tennis skills. So far we have learnt how to hit forehand and backhand. Today, we've been learning how to serve the ball. A fun week learning and practising tennis skills was had by all.

 

 

Pastel People

We are doing art called "Pastel People". This artwork is building on the skills of blending we learnt last term when painting our butterflies. This term we are using a different medium which is pastel.

Children had one of two themes to base their artwork on - sport or family.

Some of the skills we have been learning are:

- using sketching techniques
- drawing human figures consisting of geometric shapes depicting movement
- understanding, explaining and using correctly, cool colours and warm colours
- using blending and shading to create movement
- using white to show where the light is hitting

Diamond Gymnastics - Jiayi

Serene Spotlight Stealers - Anusha

Radient Summer - Georgie

Future Gold Medalist - Caitlin Br

Subtle blending that isn't stripy

Family Love - Jessie F

Family Of Joy - Caitlin Brac

Skating At Twilight - Danbie

Flaming Soccer Player - Raymond

Ninja Thrust Kick - Levi

Amnythest Versus Emerald - Boris

Super Surfer - Holly

Star Player - Scott

Destroyer of Tae-kwon-do - Andrew

Elegant Ballerina - Jessie O

2012 Soccer Olympics - John

Basketball Shooter - Jason C

Silver Snowflake - Hannah

Brochures

This term, we have been researching various countries that competed in the Olympics. With the information gathered, we created brochures about the country to inform a reader.

Some of the skills we have learnt are:

Research
- note taking using key words, bullet points and short phrases in our own words
- classifying information using a graphic organiser such as a Data Classification Chart

Writing
- creating topic sentences to introduce the topic at the beginning of a paragraph
- turning our research notes into paragraphs to inform a reader
- using conjunctions to extend our sentences
- using topic based language
- adding detail to sentences with verbs, nouns and adjectives

Visual
- Finding out what the visual features of brochures are
- designing our own brochures
- planning our design
- using ICT skills to produce a brochure using Microsoft Publisher (word art, inserting photos, aligning text, creating text boxes etc.

Look at the FANTASTIC results!

New Zealand Olympians!

Today was exciting for Ilam school children as we waited outside school to cheer and support the athletes from New Zealand that went to the Olympics in London. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day. We waved New Zealand flags and blow up sticks in support as they passed us on their tour buses.

Here is a poem about the Olympics written by Caitlin Brown:

Twinkling eyes and a mysterious smile,

lining up to run a mile.

Breathing in and breathing out,

people walking all about.

Looking out from side to side,

if you don't win at least you tried.

Standing on the winner's block,

hearing the ticking of the clock.

Puffing cheeks

and sweating neck,

I've won a gold medal,

now that's a start.

John's Rabbits

Today, John's mother brought his baby rabbits to school. John is responsible for looking after them. Each day he cleans out their cage, changes their water and feeds them. It's best for them to eat a variety of vegetables and they enjoy  cabbage, lettuce and carrots among other things. They also need to be left out of their cage for an hour each day for exercise and of course they need alot of care and affection.

Medal Making

What, with the London Olympics about to start, we have been getting into the swing of things and learning about the ancient ones. We've also each adopted a country that we are going to track during the Olympics. This week, we are making medals from plaster of paris then engraving them with our own ancient or modern designs. For homework, we need to find a ribbon with colours that relate to our adopted country.

Spooning plaster of paris into our molds

Sanding our medals

Scraping the designs using a nail

Finished medals

Based on the women's "Heria Olympics" in ancient Greece with symbol in the middle representing the Goddess Hera, Queen of the gods. The blue and white ribbon is based on the modern Greek flag. The blue represents the blue in the waves and the white, the foam crests.