Gallery Seven - Week 4, Term 1, 2012

Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs!!

This week  at Kowhai assembly  Ashtyn and Shawn received our Kowhai Express Star awards. Ashtyn got her for being an engaged student who always giver her best. Shawn got his for being a self managing student who is always ready to learn.

Our Learning about dinosaurs continued this week, we all voted by way of completing a pictograph for which dinosaur we wanted to make a sculpture of. It ended up as a tie between Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus, so we all had to then cast a vote for one of those, Ankylosaurus won 16 to 9.  We also decided after previous discussion that we would make a wire and papier mache model but we are building a base to put the wire on. We found a good picture of Ankylosaurus in a book and have started construction. Mr Tree came in and helped us to cut some cardboard tubes with a saw to make our sculptures legs, we have filled a large bag with paper to make the base for his body and have rolled some wire mesh to make part of his tail.

Miss Bailey from Room 13 gave us some dinosaur books to look at which have started some very interesting discussions about whether dinosaurs were warm blooded, cold blooded, reptiles or mammals, we also talked about how the dinosaur skeletons became stuck in the rock and  how they people get them out of the rock. Miss Bailey also lent us some felt boards and we have been making some dinosaur scenes. Mr Shalfoon lent us some wooden dinosaur skeletons to look at which is great because we are going to enlarge a small skeleton to make a big 3D Carnivore puzzle as the one of our sculptures.

Kyla brought one of her budgies to school for us to look at, she was only 6 weeks old and we got to name her. We decided to call her Holly. Kyla’s mum breeds budgies so they have lots of them. Holly talked a lot during the day and some of us even wrote stories about her at writing time.

Bradley and Molly were our Artisan award winners this week. They both got their awards for being enthusiastic and  active participants in our Reggio learning.