Friday 7th August
Week 3 We have been completing our personal mihi's together with our families.  The children will learn these so that they can share them with others.  We are also in the process of completing our own visual mihi.  We have to include four elements that represent our whanau.  One being a koru pattern that represents our family, picture of ourselves doing our favourite pose, Two other visual representations of ourselves and our whanau.  PHOTOS COMING....
This week lots of kids have been trying to persuade me that we don't need homework at Carterton School and that Cellphones will be a good idea in class.  Yes you guessed it we are doing Persuasive writing.  Ours lovely Jane Cadwallader has been doing some art with our talented Rogue.  Here is some of her art.

Term 3 2015
Kia Ora
Welcome to another fantastic term.  Already this week has been full of fun, educational activities.  We have started PrEP and the kids are enjoying having a purpose to their Monday afternoons.  They are excited about learning to run a business and make a profit, which they will be able to spend on Market Day (the last day of the term).  In Studio 2 we have been finishing off our Dioramas from Term 2.  The students were given a brief which asked them to 'Create-an-animal'.  They were encouraged to use their imagination to make up an animal.  They presented their information about their animal in a Diorama, including it's basic needs, where it gets it's basic needs, where it lives and a description of their animal.  The students will be presenting these to the class and then bringing them home to share with their families.  Here are some photos from our first week at school.

Please keep the communication going between you and your child about what they are doing at school.  Often when you ask your child 'What did you learn at school today?' they will say 'nothing'.  My own children would say the same thing.  Try asking them 'What whats something good that happened today?' or 'What did you enjoy about your day at school today?'.
Have a great weekend and don't forget to come and see me anytime, about anything.
Kirsty Hull

May 2015
We have been doing some awesome work in Inquiry.  We have been investigating water and pollution.  I asked the kids "Can polluted water be cleaned?".  We put some of our lunch into a trough of water and left it there for several days.  The kids thought you just needed to clean the rubbish out but soon realised that the water is now polluted.  We went to the local treatment station to see how they treat the Carterton water supply and decided to make our own water filters to clean our polluted water.  The water was certainly better after we filtered it but it was still undrinkable.  We redid the experiment by thinking of what went well and what we could do to make our water cleaner.  When we redid our water filter systems we used some of the same material but added different products such as sand and grass.  The polluted water was cleaner but not for human consumption!!!  We think we may have left it too long before filtering it.  Now we are going to look at the effects of pollution on our animals and marine life.  We are also going to do some more experiments.  Thank you to those parents who are helping their kids at home with their homework.  We have had some fantastic presentations.  Kirsty Hull

Overnight camp - Connecting with our whanau

We have had a very busy term in the Studio.  The children have settled into routine and I have to say they are an awesome bunch.  We have been busy learning about different countries in the world and are excited to be presenting these to parents This Wednesday 1st April in the hall at 2pm.  We had an awesome camp overnight at school and then a trip to Upper Hutt on the train.  The children were very well behaved and it was great to catch up with parents.  The connections made that night between children/parents, children/teachers, parents/teachers is invaluable to the children's learning as they now know that as parents you value what they are doing.  I hope you all have a restful holiday with your families and the children come back refreshed and ready to learn.  Kirsty

                                            STUDIO 2 BLOG

Welcome to Studio 2's new blog for Term 1 2015.  We have had a great start to the year together with Studio 1.