Whanau Day

On Friday 1 June we had a whole day in our whanau groups doing fun activities. Miss Keene organised six different activities and each group got to do all of them. We spent nearly an hour at each activity. Some of the activities were learning some tech coding, baking maori bread, making poi, and several different art/craft activities.

There was a sausage sizzle for lunch and we were all entertained by a performance by the school’s kapa haka group at lunchtime. We all had a wonderful time and are very grateful to all those who contributed to making this special day such a huge success.

Live Chat

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.

Today we had a “live chat” with them called “Reflecting on our Learning”. The children learnt about what topics they had been learning in their respective classes in each area of the curriculum. 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 about to end 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. In the photo montage below you can see photos of Room 8 children on top participating in the live chat with their penpals whose photos are on the bottom.

Book Week

From Monday 14 May till Friday 18 May, it was Book Week at Milton Primary. On Monday the teachers swapped classes and visited another room to read the children a story. Each day at a certain time a whistle would sound at a different time and we had to stop what we were doing and “Stop, Drop, and Read. On Thursday, to celebrate book week, we were allowed to dress up as our favorite book character. Everyone enjoyed seeing the other students costumes and their amazing ideas. Some of the costumes on display were Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, Snow White, Spiderman and various witches and princesses. We also had a book fair running throughout the week in the school library. There were chapter books and picture books for sale to help raise money for the school library. The books are amazing and very interesting to read. We love reading at Milton Primary School.

Play is the Way

Play is the Way is a unique programme of physically interactive games that develop self regulation within children and fosters independent, self-motivated, and empathetic behaviours. Play is the Way develops emotional intelligence and social competency skills so children can create close personal connections and a sense of self worth and belonging. We are very excited to be implementing this programme at Milton Primary this year. On Monday 7 May we had its founder, Wilson McCaskill, come to school and work with the teachers and the children. The children learn through playing a wide variety of fun games which challenge them to think about their behaviour and develop positive attitudes towards facing challenges, developing perseverance and achieving success. We are looking forwarding to embedding this programme into our school culture as a reflection of our school values of respect, responsibility, confidence and teamwork.

Wearable Art

As part of our investigation into the concept of "Sustainability", the children were set the task of creating an item of wearable art. They had several weeks to plan and make their creations and were encouraged to enlist the help of their parents on this homework project. On the last day of the term, the children presented their work to the class. They had to explain what they had made, how they made it, what materials they used, and what they would do differently if they did it again. There was a great variety in their creations ranging from various types of headgear to jet-packs and all of the children should be very proud of their efforts.

School Fair

On Saturday 17th March, Milton Primary School had its school fair. This year’s fair had a St Patrick’s Day 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, 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 Year 6 victims got thoroughly soaked. In the paintball you had to shoot the paintballs and try to hit the targets. Laser tag was also very popular. In the Fire Engine it was very loud and it was fun to ride around with the siren going. 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. 

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.