Recharging our Learning Battery with Brain Breaks

 To help us be ready for learning, we are practising how to notice when we need to brain break to help boost our  Zest, Positive Emotions and focus. This week we used the Zones of Regulation to help us notice when we are away from the Green Zone which is the optimal learning zone. It can happen during the day, also our moods and needs can vary form day to day. It's important to develop strategies to help us get back into the Green Zone so we brainstormed some ideas that will help our brain have a quick recharging break of no more than 10 minutes. 

We made a bank of ideas that we can use during the day:

Some of these ideas are: climbing a tree, spending a few minutes at my favourite place in the school, going for quick run or kicking a ball, doing a quick drawing or having a drink of water or a quick snack.

Here we are practising our brain breaks to see if they can give a boost. Most of them were just what we needed to get some oxygen, positive emotions and help us to refocus on more learning! Do you have a brain break strategy that helps you to recharge?

Inquiry- The Power of Sound

 This term we will be investigating sound and music. Sound is a very interesting phenomena because it's invisible but we know it's there! What is sound? How do we hear sound? How do instruments make sound? These are some of the questions that will drive our inquiry this term.

We started our inquiry by collecting what we already about what we think we know about sound. After that we did a science experiment to test how sound travels through different materials. We tested what tapping sounds like when we hear it through the air and what tapping sounds like when we hear it through different materials, like a table. 

We are collecting the results of our experiments in charts.

Doing an experiment helped to prompt lots of new questions that we will look into over the coming weeks to expand our understanding of sound.

Investigating Symmetry

For maths this week we've enjoyed looking at wonderful maths patterns we can make that show different types of symmetry. We've used Creativity in different ways to make beautiful patterns that show how shapes repeat themselves and it has been lots of fun.

We made snow flakes to show reflection symmetry and looked at how shapes can have symmetry in them.

Some of us had a go at using reflection and rotational symmetry to create colourful patterns like flowers. We tried rotating patterns and reflecting them.

We created some symmetry art from our investigations

Matariki Celebrations

 Nau mai Matariki, nau mai Puanga, nau mai te tau hou Māori - We welcome Matariki, we welcome Puanga and the Māori New Year.

 

Matariki / Puanga is a time for learning and storytelling and an occasion for people to come together and celebrate what has been achieved in the past year. A time for whānau being together, celebrating a new year where everyone can flourish and remembering friends and whānau we have lost over the past wee while. 

We met on the beach to see the stars and say karakia together. 

Te Iwa o Matariki- Celebrating The Matariki Stars

When Matariki disappears in the sky and then reappears, it marks a very special time in the Māori Calendar as each star in the Marariki cluster has links to an aspect of our environment. You can read more about them here. 

We've spent time in our whānau groups across the school learning about the different stars and also connecting with all our teachers and peers. Here, some of us were learning about Waitā, the star that looks after ocean creatures, and creating musical rhythms to represent the animals. We used rakau sticks to create musical beats that represent different animals. It was wonderful to work with seniors from across the school.

We also learned about how Matariki is a time to celebrate with our whānau. We made some whare (house) that show our whānau and the Matariki stars shinning in the sky.

Here are some of works in progress!

Dwarf Beans

This week we wrapped up our plant inquiry, which we’ve been working very hard on this term! To finalise the end of our inquiry we planted our dwarf beans into the school vegetable garden. We first planted these beans as seeds and have been watching them grow, learning all about how plants change and the resources plants need to survive in the meantime.

We documented these developments in our Tautoru seed diary, and also drew scientific diagrams of how our seeds have developed throughout the term. Our Tautoru kids have really embodied the learner attribute of “I am a thinker,” learning all about how scientists think, and how we can be scientists ourselves when learning new things!

Hiwa-i-te-rangi

We have enjoyed learning about Matariki in Tautoru this week. Matariki marks the Māori new year and is a time for us to come together with our whānau, reflect on the past and look forward to what is ahead. Sharing the wisdom of our family members marks an appreciation of what they do and allows tamariki to reflect on what they do for others.

The youngest sister star of Matariki, Hiwa-i-te-rangi, is often called the wishing star. People send their goals, aspirations and wishes to Hiwa-i-te-rangi, in the hopes that they will come true in the new year. In Tautoru this week we’ve been drawing Hiwa-i-te-rangi and writing our own wishes on the back of the star. Doing this allows us to ask Hiwa-i-te-rangi what we want to see in the new year and tell her hopes we have for our futures.