Indonesian Lunch

Here are some photos of the Preps enjoying their special lunch on Indonesian day, a yummy fish soup!

Water Safety

This week, the Preps were in charge of running the assembly and our topic was 'Water Safety'. Students at Moreland PS had their first of eight swimming lessons on Wednesday, so the Preps wanted to help everyone be water smart. Below, you will find videos of the performance, our 'Three Little Fishies Book' and our video about water safety. Feel free to leave a comment below for the Preps and we will read them to everyone on Wednesday.

P.s. Don't forget to bring your bathers on the following dates:

Week 5: Wednesday and Thursday (6th and 7th of November)

Week 6: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (11th to the 14th of November)

The Moreland Explorers help save the environment!

This term we will be leaving the school each week for a walk to explore our local area. We will be focussing on participating in activities such as wearing protection from the sun, saving energy, saving water, and recycling to develop their awareness of environmental issues. Some of the skills that children will develop through this unit of work include: making and reading maps and models, safe and responsible behaviour while on local excursions, recording ideas and observations, collecting data, asking questions and using good listening skills. They will also learn to link cause cause and effect – understand those terms and some situations in which they apply.

Below you will find a collection of photos and videos from our first three walks. Week one focused on getting students to make and record observations about the different kinds of litter in their local community and who/what will this rubbish hurt. Week two focused on the rubbish in our school, students split into groups and sorted the rubbish they found into groups. This data was analysed during our maths lessons. Week 3 was centred around water and students went on a walk to record various sources of water. To end our walk, we stopped at the local car wash, where the students were lucky enough to see a car being cleaned, which was very exciting. 

Enjoy!

Week 1: Community Rubbish Walk

Week 2: Rubbish In Our School

Week 3: Water Walk

The Preps

The Moreland Primary School Volcano!

Our topic for Asian Studies for Semester 2 is Indonesia. In the last week of school, the Preps were learning about volcanos, which are very common across many parts of Indonesia. Students created diagrams, watched a David Attenborough documentary and finally got to create their own volcano. During Developmental Play, some Preps helped us create our volcano using sand and a bottle which went in the centre. In the afternoon, Ben showed us how to make the volcano erupt using baking soda, vinegar and red food dye.

As you can see in the pictures and the video below, the Preps were VERY excited. Next time, we are hoping to create an even bigger explosion.

If you would like to do this at home, we recommend the following website for instructions: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/vinegarvolcano.html 

- The Preps

Goodbye Ben!

The last day of Term 3 was a day full of celebrations and goodbyes. In the morning, the whole school participated in a Football Parade and in the afternoon the Preps sadly said goodbye to Ben, who will be looking after his baby full-time during Term 4. Our two SRC members presented Ben with a book, which included memories and reasons why he is such a fantastic Teacher. We had some fun with our parachute and ate some delicious fruit sticks that we prepared during Developmental Play. Also, we were lucky enough to meet Ben's son and his lovely dog Percy. Parents and siblings came along to help us celebrate a fantastic term and to say their goodbyes and best wishes to Ben. We are looking forward to having Ben back next year to teach us Science and Japanese and until then we are lucky enough to have Natalie joining us for Term 4. Below are some photos of the day...

100 Days of School Celebrations!

Last Friday, we celebrated the Preps 100 days of school by centring the day around activities that focused on the number 100. Below is a quick recap of what we got up to...

On Thursday, we started making our 100 cake and the Preps measured out all of the ingredients, ensuring that they were all mixed correctly and then put them into the oven to cook.

Developmental Play

Developmental Play was centred around the number 100 and challenges. 

Challenge 1: Build a structure from 100 cups

 Preps build a pyramid, a jail and a castle.

Here is an interview with two of the Preps who will walk you through their jail:

Challenge 2: Collect 100 smiles

A group of students went around the room collecting smiles. Pairs collected ten smiles each and added these to our graph. In the end we had collected 100 beautiful smiles and could easily skip count these by 10's.

Challenge 3 : Build a structure from 100 pieces of Lego/blocks

A group of students used 100 Legos and large blocks to create structures. Some of these included a castle, a space ship and a city.

Challenge 4: Icing our cake

Students carefully mixed the icing and applied it to the cake ready for the 100 party

Our 100's collection

Students were encouraged to bring in 100 of something for our display. Below are some of the interesting items that we had in our collection.

100 Cheerios

100 Marbles 

100 Footy Cards

100 puzzle pieces

 Our 100 Goggles!

During Developmental Play, students created their own 100 goggles which could allow them to see 100 years into the future.

Maths

Students moved around to three different maths activities which focused on the number 100. One involved counting 100 fingers and to do this the students practiced skip counting by 5's in order to figure out how many hand prints we needed. These displays have been used throughout the week for other maths activities.

100 Fingers

Some questions from the Preps:

"How many hands do we need if we want 10 fingers?

"How many hands do we need if we want 50 fingers?"

"How many hands do we need if we want 100 fingers?"

Our 100 Party

At 3pm families were invited to attend our 100 Party, which involved watching a slideshow of pictures of the last 100 days, listening to the preps sing a song, eating our delicious cake and spending some time together in our courtyard.

It's hard to believe that 100 days have already flown by, time flies when you're having fun!

- The Preps