Rainbow Looms

In Totara many of us are enjoying the challenge and creativity of making Rainbow Looms. Many of us are wearing our creations up our arms. One student is so into his loom bands that he brings his box to school every morning to do some making.

Last week a group of students decided to put all the loom bands together and see how big they would be. It was pretty impressive how massive the giant loom band was. Here are some photos of our efforts. They are a bit hard to see but if you squint a little you can see it.

I wonder if we could make it into the Guinness World Records?

Ski Trip

Ski Day 2014 on PhotoPeach

Friendship Skills

Last Monday we spent a big chunk of our day talking, role playing and sharing our ideas about friendship. It takes work to be a good friend and we all want to be the best friends we can be.

We learnt about what friendship is. These are some of our main points.

What is friendship?

• Spending time together.
• Sharing ideas and treats.
• Having fun.
• Respecting each other's differences.
• Loyalty, sticking up for each other.
• Caring for each other's safety and wellbeing.
• Both of you working on the skills to keep your friendship going.

We also role played the friendship skills we need to have. They are the following.

Friendship skills

How to be a friend!

Always

• Talk - be interesting, keep up with what's going on around you, eg TV, sports, music, shared interests - so that you have something to talk about.
• Share the conversation, so that you each get a chance to be listeners and talkers.
• Listen to what your friends are saying and ask questions about it.
• Praise your friends when they do something well.
• Use your manners - say please and thank you. Friends like to be pleasant to each other.
• Think of yourself as being a friendly person, look friendly and be friendly - and others will find you friendly.
• Be helpful - do things for your friends without keeping a score on who's done the most favours. 
• Give back things you have used or borrowed from each other (this is a good idea for brothers and sisters, too).
• Be aware of others' feelings - think before you speak. (Sometimes it is a good idea to keep your thoughts to yourself rather than upset people's feelings.)
• Handle conflict - by being clear about what you want and how you will compromise.
• Share your time with other friends.
• Be honest about your feelings, eg. "I don't think this is a good idea because…" But don't always try to be the leader - try out other people's ideas.
• Try to understand people by thinking about things from their point of view.
• Don't argue and get upset if your friend doesn't agree with you about something. That's O.K. She has the right to an opinion too.

Friendship Role Playing on PhotoPeach Friendship is Special on PhotoPeach

Friday

Friday is a bit different from the rest of the week. We are a bit more unstructured and when the year 5's actually head of to winter sport the year 3 & 4's get to do some fun things with the junior school. 

Today we had two members of the school council come and read us a book written by a young New Zealander who has dyslexia. The story is called Meet Mr Mr Sunny.

In the afternoon we had Junior PE. We are doing dance to rotations. It is pretty fun.