WOW! Good on you Charlotte

Today Nickelodeon came to Merrin School. Charlotte won a competition and all Year 5 and 6 children came to the hall for a "Cracker of a Christmas Party". It was two hours of fun and food! At the end they all received gifts! Thanks Charlotte and Nickelodeon for a great time!

Yummy food being prepared

Charlotte leading the way. What's going to be happening inside?

Having fun - yee ha!

MAGNIFICENT ROOM 13 IXL MATHEMATICS

Wow!!

Take a look at this!!!!

It's about time we had a catch up!

After two weeks with our buddies learning to improve our swimming techniques down at Wharenui Pool, we helped them today with our next activity.

Each class has been working on the Inquiry "UV, You and Me".

Today we helped our buddies thread UV beads to make an ankle band, bracelet or necklace. We made some for ourselves too! It was amazing how quickly the beads changed colour when we walked outside.

Here we are showing off our beads and helping our buddies.

Wearable Arts Competition

William Wray and I designed our toga uniform for the Wearable Arts 2014 show. The ideas came form Astrix and Oblec. The costume was made old bed sheets and recycled cardboard. The costume was called "Domum fecit a'toga." We also used recycled tinfoil. It took five days during the holidays to make.
Thank you William for all your help and encouragement. Thanks also to our mothers for helping.

Ben Yang

Me in the toga

Jess and I designed a dress called "Teardrop" for the Wearable Arts Competition. The dress was made out of an old dress that no one could fit any more. We added a newspaper veil, bottle caps on the ruffles of the dress. We had old chippy packets cut into teardrops.

Thanks goes to Caroline Waddams and Amanda and Richard Simpson for helping with the hot glue gun and sticking it together.

Mia

Jess wearing "Teardrop"

Senior and Middle Stars Athletics Sports Day

What a great day we had for Athletics yesterday. Everyone tried their best with great results.

Connor about to throw a great throw in discus

Mohammad concentrating hard for his throw

Tom threw a distance of over 14 metres

Luke looking at the area to throw his discus in

Go Taylor and Emma

Oakley is way ahead in the 1.2km race

Welcome to Term 4 Everyone

I hope you all have had a great relaxing break. You will need it since Term 4 is flat out just like the other Terms!
Here are some of the events coming up -
This Term we start with the "Life Education" programme - "Friends"
 On the 23rd October is our Athletics Day.
Swimming lessons at Wharenui Pool start on the 31st October and finish on the 13th November.
Kapahaka starts at 2pm most Wednesdays instead of 2.15pm.
The Senior Choir is singing in the ChCh Music Festival.

We will of course be flat out with our Writng, Reading and Maths - lots of planning ready to go there.
Inquiry include "UV and Me" and "Cyber Safe Kids"

A BIG CONGRATULATIONS goes to BEN and Meshwa. They have been working so well on their IXL Maths over the holidays. I receive reports every week on how everyone is going and how many minutes everyone has done. If you get spare time before Monday get stuck in!!

Here are Tom, Yazeed and Connor having fun from our last experiment in the last week of last term!
Can't wait to see you all on Monday.

Have a great weekend.

Mrs McCallum

PS - Some of you need to buy a couple of 1B8 exercise books since we have run out of room in your other books.
PPS - Don't forget to bring your sunhats

Ms DR and Constable Brunton come to visit

Viki, Sapphire and Jenny invited Ms DR to talk to us about Positive Relationships. They had many questions to ask her. She helped us with strategies in how to get along with others and how to deal with problems we may not agree with, for example, how bullying occurs and what stratergies we should choose to help ourselves and others.

Ben, Kevin, Sam and Noel invited Richard Brunton to Room 13 to tell us about the work he does in the community and what we can do to help the Police and our community. He told us that we are the eyes of the community. He was keen to tell us of ways the Police build positive relationships with our community.

Richard also told us of his experiences working in the police force.

NZ 2014 election by Ethan Ng

Ethan Ng

21 September 2014

Election

Our election that happens every 3 years is one of the most important things in New Zealand. You get a say in who will represent you in Parliament. And, you get a say in what policies you want.

The requirements for voting are that you:

1) Are 18 or older,

2) Have been living in NZ for 1 year or more at one point of your life

3) Are a NZ citizen, OR Are a NZ permanent resident.

In the election, you get 2 votes. The first vote is the party vote. It largely decides how many seats the party gets in the Parliament. Whoever, in your region (electorate) wins the second vote becomes the local MP. 

Here are some of the parties:

National

Labour

Greens

New Zealand First

Conservative

Maori

Act

Internet

Here are some of the winners in Christchurch(Candidate vote) for this election which was held on 20 September 2014. 

Christchurch Central-National

Christchurch East-Labour

Epsom-ACT

Ilam-National

Wigram-Labour

In my electorate, Ilam, the incumbent MP from National won the seat. The below is the chart of electorate votes for Ilam. 

Overall, National won with 48.1% of the party votes. Here is one of the policies that National made.

Education- Higher wages for teachers and use $350million to build 9 new schools in Auckland and 130 new classrooms in existing schools.

Some facts

The non-voting percentage this election was 23%.

700,000 people voted in advance.

Merrin school was a voting station!

Cycle Safety for Year 6

Constable Richard from the NZ Police, Mike, Jan, Bek and Monique from the Christchurch City Council are with us this week to help us learn more about Road Safety and Cycle Safety.

Our helmets and bikes have been checked. We are now practising our skills before we cycle on the road.

Check out our skills on the Merrin School Courts.

Daniella cycling well

Isabel practising her skills.

Connor learning his skills.

Mohammad having fun learning the cycle skills.

"Poppy"

Freddy paid us a visit bringing Poppy. Poppy is a German Pointer. She is six weeks old.
Many of us were keen to pat Poppy and ask questions about how to look after her.
Some of the Room 13 mothers came to see Poppy. How cute!

Inquiry - Building Positive Relationships

We are flat out with a variety of activities regarding this area of our learning.

Some groups have designed games to show how we can work out ideas and issues co-operatively.

Taylor, Senaya and Emma have rung the Salvation Army. They are keen fof the girl's idea of donating, clothes, books and toys.

Oakley and Noah are going to coach the Juniors in Rugby skills.

Various groups are using the I-pads to present their findings about positive relationships.

Other groups are making surveys about people's opinions on aspects of positive realtionships.

Yazeed and Tom are reading a copy of an email that they received from Ben Sigmund.
They asked him several questions on how to be a positive team member in soccer.

Charlotte and Meshwa are busy on their ideas for their presentation.

Rockets

This week we have been working on making rockets from film canisters and the antacid tablets. Some canisters shot up to over 7 metres!

We decided then to make rockets using vinegar and baking soda. We saw a cool youtube clip on how to make these.

Unfortunately they did not work! We could'nt get the lids on quickly enough. Instead, there was plenty of fizz going on with the vinegar just pouring onto the ground!!

However, we did have fun making the rockets. We learnt a lot about why this experiment did not work for us!

Presentations about this weeks science experiments

28th August 2014

Today we worked with a buddy to present the ideas we found out about with our experiments to do with rockets and cars - force - action - reaction.
Here are some of us showing our presentations - slide shows and using the "Explain Everything" app.

Balloon Cars!!

Yes, after experimenting with the rocket balloons we made some rocket balloon cars. We used Life Saver lollies for wheels, a balloon for the force, straws, tape and card.

Have a look at these photos

Making balloon rockets - Yee ha!

Today we have gone crazy learning about Newton's Third Law - "Action/ Reaction"

We made rockets from balloons, string, tape and straws.

When we blew up the balloon and let it go, it flew out of control.

To give the balloon direction, we threaded a straw through string and taped the balloon to the string.

The string was up to ten metres long. The longest flight - or reaction flew for 11.65 metres.

Some of us climbed up trees to try to shoot the rocket up.

Now we are making rocket cars!

Watch this space!

Tom, Jenny and Jess

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