Life Education

The Life Education bus came to Milton Primary school recently. Pip and Harold, the puppet giraffe, were teaching us about peer pressure. We learnt about the tricks that other people might use to try to get us to do things that we know are wrong.We discussed the importance of friends and that, not only is it important to have good friends, it is important for us to be a good friend to others. We were reminded of what we learnt last year about keeping our behaviour “above the line” because the things that we say and do have a large impact on our personal reputation.

We all had fun in the Life Education bus and we look forward to it returning again next year!!! J

School Concert

On the Wednesday afternoon and Thursday evening of the last week of the term, Milton Primary School students performed a concert at the Toko High School hall. This year's theme was "Bedtime Stories" and each class based their item around a different story The items on the programme consisted of several high energy dance numbers, an action song, some short plays and two songs performed by MP3, the school’s band. This was enhanced by some wonderful lighting, sound effects and digital displays organised by the amazing tech crew.

At the end of the night the whole school performed two songs accompanied by the band. There was a raffle and several prizes were won. The hall was full to bursting on the Thursday night and nearly as full on the Wednesday. The concert was enjoyed by everyone. It was a wonderful afternoon on Wednesday and an even better performance on Thursday evening.

Technology Challenge

This term we are exploring the concept of change. One if the concepts we have chosen to investigate is "Disasters". The children were presented with the challenge of creating a diorama depicting the scene of a disaster, creating a model of an active volcano, or making a survival kit. They had six weeks to complete this homework task and were encouraged to enlist the support of their parents to help them. They presented their creations to the class on Friday and explained what they had made, how they had made them, and what they had learnt about the disaster they have been researching. As is always the case with these sorts of challenges, the standard of work that the children produced was extremely high. Well done everyone!

Cross Country

On 13 August, the Milton Area Schools Cross Country was held at Tokoiti School. The track was a 2km course around their school field and some neighbouring paddocks. The junior children had a much smaller track of about half a kilometre. It was a wintry day and the grounds were muddy but that’s all part of a cross country event. The Years 3, 4, 5, and 6’s who finished in the first five of their races get to go down to the South Otago champs. After their race, the children were very puffed and hot with all the effort they put in. By the time the older children finished their races they were very cold and wet! There were lots heaps of parents and family members there to watch their children. Every child should be very proud of themselves for competing so well and congratulations to those who qualified for the South Otago champs.

Clutha Clued Up Kids

On 31 July the Year 6 students from Milton Primary joined students from all over the Clutha district at the recreation centre in Balclutha for the Clutha Clued Up Kids workshop. There were 10 different stations for the small groups of children to rotate around. One activity was to ride a bike around a course. It had stop signs, some cones and even a ramp. In another activity we learnt about survival in the bush and how to build a bivouac. The other activities we did during the morning were dog safety, firearms safety, beach safety, fire safety, what to do in an earthquake, how to check a helmet, and we even did one about how your brain works and how to relax. Most people don’t realise how important these keeping ourselves safe tips are but if we remember what we did here it could truly save a life one day.

Hockey Tournament

A mild, sunny morning greeted all of the enthusiastic students who were participating in the annual hockey tournament that was held at Milton Primary School on Wednesday 3 July. A large number of teams from St Mary’s, Waiwera South, Waitahuna, Catlins, Lawrence, Waihola, Kaitangita, and Clutha Valley came over to challenge Milton Primary School.  M.P.S had seven teams entered but unfortunately none of them made it into the semis. Some children got hurt in the games (mostly from being accidentally hit by an opponent’s stick), but they kept playing and we all had to work together to get goals and try to stop the other team from scoring. In the end Clutha Valley beat St Mary’s in a thrilling final that went into overtime. We loved having the students from the high school reffing us. It was a long and hard day but we all thought it was definitely a lot of fun!

Visiting Author

Last week a visiting author named Raymond Huber came to the school to talk to the senior classes. He has had over twenty books published and he showed some of these to the students. After that, he led a workshop with the children in which he explained how he goes about writing a story and introduced the children to some new planning techniques. He was impressed with some of the students' writing and gave them some feedback about what they had done well and some suggestions about other ways of improving their writing. He showed us how he goes about editing his work and explained the importance of writing a good introduction which sets the scene for the story. It was a very interesting session and the children were enthusiastic about trying to use what they had learnt in their own writing.

Global Classroom Update

Throughout the year the children in Room 8 have maintained a penpal relationship with children from a class at Excelsior Elementary near Sacramento in California, U.S.A.

We recently completed a collaborative investigation of the gold rush with the children engaged in face to face discussions with their American buddies using google hangouts. It was very interesting to be doing this in real time even though it was 9.00am on Thursday here and 2pm Wednesday afternoon there! This will be our last interaction with them for a while as their school year is now over and they won’t start again until they return from their summer break in mid August. We will look forward to catching up with them again then.

Board Games

We have been learning about the importance of rules in any community in order for things to run smoothly.

For the last few weeks our challenge has been to design our own original board game. One of the most important tasks has been to write a set of rules that can be easily understood so that people can play the game without having to be shown how to do it.

Wheel-a-thon

On Wednesday 22 May we had our first ever Wheel-a-thon to help raise money for the purchase of some new school bikes for children to use on our new bike track. Miss Keene, with the help of our student leaders, did a tremendous job of organising a variety of different activities to entertain and educate the children in a fun filled programme that ran from morning interval until the end of the day. At one of the stations the children learnt about bike safety and how to stay safe on the roads. Mr Wilson demonstrated some bike maintenance skills and the student leaders ran some fun activities like relays and novelty races. There was also a delicious sausage sizzle for lunch. Many children gained sponsorship for riding as many laps around the bike track as they could and there were prizes for the best decorated bike and helmet. This was a very successful and enjoyable fundraising and we would like to thank all of our wonderful sponsors.

Anti Bullying Week

This week we have been doing a series of activities to help us gain a greater understanding of what bullying is, how to deal with it, and how to prevent it from happening. In one activity we traced around one of our hands and then wrote on each finger the name of someone who could help us if we were being bullied. In another activity we drew a picture of ourselves, swapped it with a partner who then screwed it up. When we were told to try to flatten out the creases we realised that no matter how hard we tried, the creases could still be seen. This reminded us that the effects of bullying cannot be removed just by saying you are sorry. Finally, we sat in a circle and tossed a ball of string to someone else in the class while paying them a compliment. We ended up with an interconnected web of string to remind us that we all have a support network to help us whenever we need someone to talk to or help us.

Pitcher Plants

Last week Mrs Kaye brought along a pitcher plant for us to investigate. Pitcher plants are several different carnivorous plants which have special types of leaves which trap the insects that these plants feed on. After close observation and a class discussion about them, we carried out some research to find out more about pitcher plants and recorded our findings on an observation worksheet.

Art Gallery/Toitu Trip

On Wednesday 10 April Rooms 7 and 8 went to the Art Gallery and Toitu on a bus trip. Room 7 went to the art gallery first and Room 8 went to Toitu. At Toitu we discussed what life was like in early New Zealand and what it was like to travel on a boat for four months from the other side of the world. We watched a slideshow about what Dunedin looked like when it was first settled and then we went on a treasure hunt to find out interesting facts about the gold rush days. At the Art Gallery we watched a movie about life for the Chinese settlers in the gold rush days and we discussed some of the art works in the gallery about gold. Finally we created a wonderful mural about the gold rush for our classroom wall. Some examples of our work have been posted on the Art Gallery’s website. It was a very enjoyable day!

Year 6 Camp Stall Fundraiser

On Thursday 4 April, the Year 6 children had their camp stall. It was held in the school hall at lunchtime. There was a huge crowd of people buying all sorts of things. It was amazing looking at all the different things people were selling. They were selling things like baking, toys, lollies, drinks, popcorn etc. They had to make posters saying what they were selling at their stall, as well as the price. Most things were either $1.00 or 50c. The Year 6’s made $470.50 from the camp stall which was a huge success and we really appreciate all the parent help we received to prepare our goods for sale. Now we can’t wait until we head off to camp in November!

Edison Robots

Last Friday a teacher from another school came to teach us about how to program an Edison robot. First we learnt how to connect the robot to a laptop so that it could receive instructions. We learnt what the various buttons on the robot did. From a website we were able to pick the commands we wanted to give to the robot. With our instructions selected, we were ready to start. If our instructions didn’t work we had to try again. Sometimes it was hard to find what our mistake was. We could get them to move but not always where we wanted them to go. So it was back to the drawing board. The visiting teacher said she was impressed with our perseverance. Our challenge was to program the robot to move around in the shape of a square. We had a lot of fun playing with the robots and trying to complete the challenges.

School Fair

On Saturday 16th March, Milton Primary School had its school fair. This year’s fair had a circus theme and there were a lot of activities based around this theme. There were a lot of fun things to do including sponge throw, a bouncy castle, paintball, horse riding, gumboot throw, zorbs, and many other interesting activities. Lots of people also contributed to the raffles. Thank you to those who donated the wonderful prizes for these. The sponge throw was really fun and the willing victims got thoroughly soaked. In the paintball you had to shoot the paintballs and try to hit the targets. Also there was a baking sale and there were a lot of sweet treats to buy. Thanks to all the people who contributed to help set everything up. It was a massive fundraiser for the school. 

The Wax Museum

In Room 8 we have been exploring the concept of “Success” by researching the achievements of famous New Zealanders. Each child was asked to  select a different person to study and create a display about them. They also created a  backdrop, gathered together appropriate clothing and props, and on Thursday 14 March they dressed up and posed as their famous New Zealander in our version of a wax museum.  This project was done in conjunction with our buddy class in California whose wax museum on Famous Americans was on display at exactly the same time! Afterwards, the children created short videos of themselves posing as their famous New Zealander and explaining why they are famous. These videos have been shared with their American penpals.

Geometry

In geometry, we have been learning about the properties of 2-D and 3-D shapes. We have learnt that the flat surfaces on a 3-D shape are called faces, and the pointy bits are called vertices. We have learnt the names of some 3-D shapes and how to recognise them from flat representations of themselves called nets. There are a lot of new words to learn in like parallel, perpendicular and congruent. We have been learning to use the language of geometry to describe 3-D shapes like the ones you can see in this photo.

Athletic Sports

On Wednesday the 20th of February it was the Milton Schools Athletics day. St Marys and Tokoiti came to participate with us. All of the events started at 9.30am and went to around 2.00pm. Lots of parents and caregivers came to cheer their children along as well as their school. These were all of the events: high jump, long jump, mini hurdles, 100 metre sprints, 200 metres, 800 metres, shot put and discus. Each child put in a one hundred and one percent effort. At the end of the day children went home with a red face and a smile with tomato sauce over it from the delicious sausage sizzle at lunchtime provided by Home and School helpers. The 800 metre run was the longest and made us puff and slow down a little bit more at the end of the race. Everyone tried their hardest and our best wishes go to the children who qualified for the South Otago sports in Balclutha. It was a great day but everyone’s bones would have been very stiff and sore the next day!!

Family Fun Night

On Wednesday 13 February we had family fun night. This event was combined with a Meet the Teacher evening. There was a shared dinner of finger food at 6.30 and before and after that, parents visited teachers classrooms to talk about things like how to help your child at home. Meanwhile, there were some fun games happening outside. There were people playing various games and others playing cricket. There were also moonhoppers to bounce around on, sack races, and the always popular water activities. It was a fabulous evening of community fun and a great way to start the school year.

Swimming

We were all delighted to be able to get straight into swimming instruction right from the first day of the school year. We were also fortunate that the weather stayed fine for us! In this block of swimming, we focus on practising the basic swimming strokes eg freestyle and backstroke. We use equipment such as floatboards to work on our leg action and once we have mastered that we go on to work on arm action and breathing. Many children have made tremendous progress since last year. We will be off to the pool again at the end of the year when the focus will be on water safety.

2019

It's great to be back for what promises to be another exciting year for the students in Room 8. The children have settled into their work very quickly and our classroom routines are already well established. There will be regular updates to our class blog throughout the year including samples of the children's work and photos of the children participating in a variety of different events and activities. You are encouraged to make regular visits to the blog to check out any updates and leave a comment if you would like to.