Tag: Riley

What makes you frustrated?

This week Kopa Wha has been working on the Letter Ff.

We have been looking at the emotion of frustration and what that may look like.  This emotion appears often throughout our day at school in numerous settings.  Our tamariki have been looking at a variety of short clips of others feeling frustrated when playing with a variety of toys.  An example of this is when we build a tower and it repeatedly falls down.

We have extended this emotion to relate to the environment as well.  I shared how I become frustrated seeing rubbish when out in our beautiful environment.  We incorporated our Community Outing to visit Ngamotu Beach where we put on gloves and collected rubbish from the beach.  We collected a bin full of rubbish and also while we were there collected seaweed, driftwood and sand.  Once we returned to school we created some artworks with our seaside findings.  These are displayed outside Kopa Wha.

Our tamariki have also enjoyed reading about the ‘Rainbow Fish’.  They created some beautiful collaged rainbow fishes which you can see displayed in Kopa Wha.

 

 

 

Surprise, Surprise!

In Kopa Wha we have been focusing on the letter Ss.  We have been integrating this letter with different emotions.

An important part of our daily teaching is recognising how we are feeling.  We have been introducing ‘The Zones of Regulation’ to help all our tamariki recognise the different ways we feel.  These are represented by colours.  We will be continuing to work on this next term.

This week we have been learning about the emotion of surprise.  Our tamariki have practiced showing the emotion on their faces throughout the week.  We concluded the week by creating a surprised emoji face.

We hope you enjoy the photos.

Have a fabulous holiday everyone and I look forward to seeing you all again next term.

 

 

Marvellous Math!

Ruma Wha have been completing some Marvellous Math activities this week.

We incorporated sensory and fine motor activities into our Math sessions and look what we created!

Everyone had a lot of fun and the classroom was a hive of activity.

Ka pai everyone!

 

 

Fine motor fun!

Fine motor activities are a huge part of our day to day programme in Ruma Wha.  The benefits of working on a variety of fine motor activities is extensive from strengthening their muscles in their hands and fingers to the development of hand-eye co ordination.

Our wonderful Occupational Therapist, Paula Matheson visits Whare Manaaki on a weekly basis to work alongside our tamariki and kaiako (teachers).  We hope you enjoy the montage of photos showing a variety of fine motor activities.

If you would like to find out more about fine motor skills please look at the Specialist Site below.  It has some tips and tricks and different ideas for you try at home with your tamariki.

Wonderful Week Two

Last week Ruma Wha was working on the Letter Aa for different body parts such as your arm and ankle.  We incorporated numeracy into our Inquiry/Alphabet craft work as well as practicing writing their own name.

We look forward to responding to your comments left on our blog.

Enjoy the montage of photos of your tamariki, as well as our Google Slides.

 

                                             

Welcome back!

Welcome to 2025!

I am super excited to be back in Ruma Wha this year.  I am so fortunate to be working alongside a very experienced and lovely colleague, Shelley Cook.  Shelley is our new Lead Teacher for the Whare Manaaki.  She is also the teacher in Ruma Rima. Please feel free to come in and say hello to both Shelley and I anytime.

This week all tamariki have been re establishing routines and settling back into school life.  The highlight of each day has definitely been swimming.  It has been delightful to watch and hear the squeals of delight during our swimming time.  It has also been pleasing to see how confident our students are becoming in the water.  This is such an important part of the curriculum for all our tamariki in our kura.  I am looking forward to extending our children’s abilities so that ultimately, they are safe in any body of water.

Please mark in your calendar the 12th February as the whole school (including Whare Manaaki) are attending the Aquatic Centre from 9.30 am.  We would love for you to join us and partake in the fun with your tamariki in the pools.  See you there!

                            

 

Awesome Autism Connex

 

Fantastic Frogs

This week we were focusing on the letter Ff for Frog.  Our ‘Great Book’ of the week was ‘The Wide Mouthed Frog’ which was a pop up book.  All the children enjoyed this story and created their own wide mouthed frogs with Helen during our Speech Language session.

We also created frogs with sticking plaster tongues.  We compared the tongue lengths and used the terminology of shorter and longest while partaking in this maths activity.

Check out the Alphabet and Great Books slide below.

                                                                     

 

Beautiful butterfiies!

This week we have been looking at the lifecycle of a caterpillar.

The children enjoyed exploring various texts about caterpillars and butterflies, both looking at the pictures and reading the stories together. They also participated in a range of dances, all of which they eagerly joined in with.

We then created some beautiful symmetrical butterflies with paint.  The children loved opening the page to see their butterfly emerge.

Ka pai Ruma Wha!

 

What begins with Bb?

Every week in Ruma Wha we are fortunate enough to have Fiona Waugh work with us around Digital Technologies.  For the past three weeks all of our students have been working on holding the iPad with one hand and pushing the button to take a photograph with the other hand.  We have also been working on each child correctly centering the object or person they are capturing.

This week Fiona showed us how to use iMovie.  This is our first attempt at each child recording a little clip of their peers, completing a voice over and uploading this great mahi.  Ka pai Ruma Wha!