Our Blog

Diya, Tobias and I have started up a blog about the environment and how we can help it. We are a group of five kids Diya, Tobias, Lawson, Tasleem and I (Finn). We are year 5 and 6 and we would really like to save the earth so if you want to support please come to our blog. Here is the link http://livinearth.blogspot.co.nz/

Hi I would like to share with you the french duck song by the year sevens and eights that they did in the assembly this id the link to get to the duck song by the year seven and eights.

Click Here!!!!

By Alexandra

Polydactyl Cats

Hi Everyone,

On the 6th of July my mum and I went to the pet shop on our way to new world and we saw the cutest kitten ever (Oliver). While we were  looking at him he started to play with my finger and we noticed his little extra toes. The next day we we went back and brought little Ollie home. At first we had some trouble naming him but then we settled on Oliver Twist because in Oliver Twist Oliver says "please sir, can I have some more" and Oliver's meow sounds like "more". Cats with extra toes are called Polydactyl cats.

Oliver has 6  toes on his  front feet and 5 toes on his back feet. An ordinary cat , has 5 toes on the front and 4 on the back. Polydactyl cats can sometimes have extra toes only on the front feet, it is even more unusual for them to have extra toes on the front and the back.

Polydactyl cats first appeared in the U.S, England, Asia and Nova Scotia. Because of the unusual feet they were associated with witch craft, so they were  killed. As people got used to Polydactyl cats they were believed to bring good luck. Sailors would take them on their ships to bring them luck and they were excellent hunters and mouse catchers.

Why do Polydactyl cats have more toes than ordinary cats? Polydactyl cats have a mutated gene. Or are they just more evolved? Some polydactyl cats can use their extra digits like we use our thumbs.

What is the highest number of toes a polydactyl cat has ever had? A cat called Jake holds the record with 28 toes- but not all on one foot!

If you have any questions please comment and I will try and find the answer!!!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz *snore* *snore* *snore* 

Maddy :)

WALHT: Write metaphors and personification

Enjoy!

Water Cycle Dances

Yesterday we presented our water cycle dances to the hub - aren't they awesome!

Bodhi's email from Tuscany

Bodhi's gotten in touch with us.  I've shared his awesome email with us below.  Doesn't it sound like he's having the most amazing time?!

Salve, 

We just got back from Tuscany, it was amazing and there were a couple of waterfalls that we saw from the city walls of Pitigliano which is a very old walled city (988 yrs old).  It's walls are built from solid rock and are really really high. It's also lit up at night by spotlights and looks like old and new at the same time. 

We went swimming in a natural hot waterfall, Saturnia and saw lots of fireflies in the bush, one flew right up to us, they blink on and off constantly, not like glow worms. 

We also visited another really old town called Capalbio, and there is a walkway that goes along the top of the wall.  The streets are narrow and cobbled and we saw lots of ape bikes, they look like cars with one wheel in the front and sound like huge loud bees which is why they are called ape because that means bee in Italian. 

The old towns were beautiful because they were not only made all of narrow streets with old steps and amazing buildlings, but they all had lots of flowers growing in pots and on the rock walls. 

We spent a day walking around Rome and saw lots of amazing old buildings I can't remember the name of right now, and visited a cat sanctuary where wild cats live in some old ruins that people can't go in, with Roman columns and an Etruscan cemetary.  Etruscans were here before the Romans so that's older than 2750 years. 

Walking around the streets of old Rome there are fountains you can drink from and the water is constantly running.  If they weren't running all the time, there is so much water flowing into Rome from the aquaducts the Romans built, that the city would explode with water. 

We should do our next school camp in Rome!

How to load a PDF into GoogleDocs and then embed in KnowledgeNET

Hi LH3ers,

The following video is here incase you need a refresher on how to save a PDF into GoogleDocs and then KnowledgeNET.

Similes

We've been learning lots about different types of language in our learning around narratives.

Here's a video that one group made to show you what similes are all about!

Water cycle songs!

In science we've been learning lots about water... we've each chosen to focus on one of these songs and are going to present it to the others in the hub as a song or actions - wish us luck!

Beware Of Reading: Danger Lurks!

During the Summer Holidays - a while ago I know! - Ben and I entered the Remuera Library's next top model contest. The aim was to have the most creative photo of someone reading and, yes, you guessed it: We Won!!! Believe it or not this shot was taken while we were moving. It took about 20 photos and a few lots of bruises when I didn't duck fast enough! The prizes were 2 books and a pack of M&Ms each. So head on over and enter a contest today!

Coke and Hamberger talk about Essentials of Life

Our reading group has been building our knowledge about things that are essential to life.  We've learnt that there is a difference between something being essential and important.  Sometimes it's hard to know if it's important or essential.

We've made videos on GoAnimate for you to see.

By Alexander

Essentials of life (by food) by AlexanderH on GoAnimate - Alexander

Video Maker - Powered by GoAnimate.


GoAnimate.com: The+important+and+essentials+of+life. by ME 109 - Albert


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun! GoAnimate.com: Food+and+Water by damien62


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Harry write and performs his own song!!

Today I'm going to sing you a song. I wrote it myself and I played it on the ukelele. I hope you like it - Learning Hub Three think it's pretty awesome!!!

These are the words:

One day my Mum went to the beach and she sang me a song,

About the crabs and the shells in the world,

And the fruit and the vegetables in the world,

And how much she loved me in the world.

And she went back home and she sang me another song,

About the crabs and the shells again,

And the fruit and the vegetables again,

And how much she loved me again.

I'm feeling on top of the world,

Ooooooohhh,

I'm feeling on top of the world,

Ooooooohhh,

I'm feeling on top of the world,

Ooooooohhh,

I'm feelng on top of the world,

Ooooooohhh lahhh.

Have you written a song before?

 From Harry (the rockstar!!)


 

Our first science day

Hi everyone it's Michelle here. I am going to talk to you about our first science day this year and it is about water. We were divided into different groups .Their was a group with Miss Holland, Miss Smerdon & Mrs Chapman. I was in Mrs Chapmans group we were asked if we could choose one table to go to for our first experiment to begin! At my table there was Sarah Savannah Noera-miah and I. We had to get a ice balloon (water balloon frozen for 2 weeks) we had to peal the balloon outside off it to make it just ice! Next we put dye on the ice (We need to have a fair experiment. That means that there needs to be one thing the same like does a plant grow in the dark then in the sun the sun has water  so they both have to make water) On one of the ice balloons put 1 teaspoon of salt onto it equally. And watch it for 5 minutes what happens?  My group found something weird the color changed on the salted ice. So we put it in two glass bottles and listen to this the dye with the salted ice had more water! do you think you know why? Comment below we would love to hear what you think.Thanks for reading! Michelle.

Baking with Mrs C - Measurement in Action

Yesterday Mrs C's maths groups came together to make Easter cookies!  We've all been learning about measurement at our level and Mrs Chapman's groups put what they learnt into practice.

The cookies tasted amazing, thanks for sharing them with us!!


Baking and Measurement! on PhotoPeach

Tomorrow's the BIG day!

Hi everyone,

Tomorrow is an exciting day!  It is the day my mum and i shave our heads for an amazing cause.  I am very excited about this because we have raised $646 for child cancer.

I'm not really scared because my mum showed me a picture of me  when I was younger and I had my hair shaved and I looked quite nice, so I think it will look good this time too.  I'm also going to get some designs shaved into it.
Are you shaving your head to raise money for people with cancer?  Would you be courageous enough?

Thank you for reading.  See ya next time on the blog.  From your friend, Caleb.



This is me with my hair still....

Harry and Reece visit Old MacDonald's Farm!

At Old MacDonald's farm I saw a pony called Cricket.  I saw two ducks, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens and a rabbit.  I felt good because I liked taking pictures of the animals and feeding them and I went there with Harry and Jennifer went with us too.

We took photos and will share them on Monday.  Here are two of Harry until then.

Here is a photo of a cute rabbit we found on the internet.  I hope you like it.

By Reece!

We have made it!

Hello' it's me Caleb again. Today i am going to tell you about how much money we have raised for shave for a cure this month. Our target was to raise  at least $500 and on Wednesday the 28 we earned over our target, we have raised $501. I feel very happy about how much money we have now.  Theres only 3 days to go till our shave hopefully we can raise more before then.
from Caleb

P.S thanks to  those who sponsored me and my mum:-)   

Enviro

We've spent this afternoon having an interesting discussion about the way we respect the environment.

What could happen if we don't respect the environment around us?

How could we show courage to actually make a change?

How should we solve our ant problem?

What would you suggest?  How can we overcome our ant issue in the bowling alley?

Think creatively?  Think seriously?  The choice is yours!

Shaving my Head for Cancer!

Its Caleb here again. I wanted to share with you all what I am doing with my mum. This year my mum decided to join the shave for a cure cause. She is going to shave her head to help raise money for children with luekamia. I have decided to do it with her. We are trying to raise money to help parents get the help they need for their children to get better. I have copied the following off the shave for a cure website
We've joined the Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand (LBC) in their effort to get 10,000 people shaving in a mass expression of solidarity. That’s one shavee for each one of the estimated 10,000 New Zealanders living with a blood cancer or condition like leukaemia. LBC is the national charity dedicated to supporting patients and their families living with blood cancers and related blood conditions, this support can last months or even years.

So far my mum and I have raised over $200, our target is to get $500. If you would be so kind to help us raise money you can come to our page and sponsor us. you can go to http://www.shaveforacure.co.nz/view_event_profile/6226 where you will see a before photo of us and after photos when we do it on the 31st March.

Hi its Caleb here, I'm going to tell you about my first time fishing. I went with my Auntie's & one of their boyfriends. It was a awesome day, even though i didn't catch anything it was still fun and I learnt alot. After my aunties told me how to do it i kinda got the hang of it and did well. Everyone around us were getting fish while we waited, we had lots of bites but no luck. In one of these photo I am holding a baby snapper. A man fishing next to us caught it and let me take a photo with it before putting it back into the ocean because it was to small. I am hoping to go fishing again soon, so next time ill write about the fish i got and i hope i get a really big snapper. Thank you for reading my story, see ya on our blog again soon. :-)

Baking Scones

Hi it's Damien and Luca here and we made some yummy scones!!! We made savory scones with ham and cheese, we also made some sweets cinnamon scones topped off with icing. We did a really good job at kneading the mix. It was very yummy that we wish we can eat a lot (but they were for the parents who are coming to a teacher interview so we only got a bite of scone). Here is the link of the recipe: click here!  We changed it a little to make the sweet one... we used much less salt, added 1.5 tablespoons or sugar and rolled it out.  Then we added cinnamon and sugar and when they were cooked, drizzled icing on them (cinnamon and vanilla flavor).

We hope the parents enjoy eating the scones as much as we enjoyed making them! If you make them send us a comment on how it went and what it looks like.

By Luca and Damien

Baking Scones! on PhotoPeach

How to write a quality comment

Today Miss H's writing group was looking at what makes a good comment - we'll be commenting both on blogs and in KnowledgeNET so it's important that we know how to do it!

We'll share our success criteria once we finish with you tomorrow but in the meantime, check out this video from America that we found through one of our quad blogging friends. 

Here are some things to think about:

1. Compliment the writer.
2. Add new information.
3. Make a connection with the writer.
4. End with a question.
5. Re-read your comment and check it!

Quad blogging has begun again!

Hi everyone,

Today is the first day back to quad blogging for the year!!

Check out Bradford Moor Primary, UK and leave them some awesome comments introducing yourselves!

Hub 3's package from St johns Vianny

Hi everybody!

Last term we were quad blogging with St John Vianny, as some of you know, we skyped and asked them decided to exchange packages with them. We were so excited to get inside that package! Just to let you guys know we are working very hard to get this package together. We want to get this package over to you as soon as possible!

Thanks Guys so much!

P.S those lollies look yummy!

we hope you enjoy ours!

Dasha, Dani and Ollie

New shade for the playground!!

Hi i'm Michelle and i'm one of the year 5s in Hub 3.

I'm here to talk to you about the new shade on top of the playground. The FOSS have been working really hard to get this shade for the playground.  They had to get lots and lots of donations. Everyone in the school is really excited to have this shade because it will stop us getting sunburnt!  Here are some photos I took of the shade and the playground.

Darkling Beetles

Hi guys it's Ben here,

I've just been researching about Darkling Beetles.
Darkling female beetles lay anywhere from 400-800 eggs!
The adult lives for a few months. The entire life cycle takes about a year.

Isn't that interesting!

Day One, 2012

Hello,

We are Matthew (Matty - year 7), Jackson (year 7) and Bodhi (year 5) and we're here to tell you about our first day at school in 2012!  For two of us (Bodhi and Jackson) it's our very first proper day at Stonefields but Matty started here at the end of 2011.

We have had heaps of fun so far today and are hoping to have an even better time throughout the year!!

When we woke up this morning some of us were feeling a bit nervous and excited.  It was great for some of us to see the people we already knew and catching up with each other.

Today we talked about what we need for the day and the year and organised our things.  We had to be detectives and really got to know lots about each other.  We had a fun time introducing ourselves.

Later in the day we did a maths test and a lot of people showed determination to do their best!

We're looking forward to this year continuing and getting to know each other better.

How was your day?  Ours was FANTASTIC, AWESOME and BRILLIANT!

See you later Aligator, Jackon, Bodhi and Matthew

The pupa have transformed into BEETLES!

Hi everyone, it's Ben and Tobias here.

We arrived back at school today and we checked the mealworms (which had been living with Miss H). We saw over 100 beetles! We also gathered around 20 pupa that are going to turn into beetles.

We were excited to finally see some beetles and were extremely surprised about the number of beetles!

When the beetles are first born, they are a light colour and then they turn brown before turning black. We noticed that the beetles like to hide in the dark places - the egg cartons make great homes for them, where they like to live in big groups.

We have to be careful because if we leave the pupa or beetles in with the lavae, because they might eat them!

The next step in the process is the reproduction. Soon they will lay eggs (they might have already because they're so small we can't see them!) and they'll turn into baby mealworms for us to feed our bearded dragon, Sid.

Thanks for reading - we'll tell you more soon.

Tobias and Ben

Knowledge or Imagination?

Spreading the blogging love...

This time last year, many of us in LH3 were brand new to blogging (myself included!)  It's amazing to think back on how much we've learnt and benefited from sharing our learning with the world in less than a year.

With that in mind, I'm especially proud to share this message with you all...

What do you think LH3?  Are we up to the challenge of helping a new class get their blog established?

You've all learnt so much and will have great ideas and hints to share.  Some of you might even like to put together a presentation (edu.glogster, wordle/tagxedo, prezi, google presentation, video message... the possibilities are limitless!) that could be shared with Room 15 (a year 7/8 class down in Wellington) ahead of talking with them.  

I'm sure they'll have lots of questions for you too, so we'll need to think back to the questions we had when we first started blogging and try to foresee what they might ask us.  What information is most important to share with them in your opinion?

How exciting!

Banana 2.0

Here's a bit of light-hearted humour for you!

A little bit silly but I thought some of you might enjoy this graphic showing the many uses for a banana.  

I wonder who can work out what a 'covert operation' is?

Do you know what 'potassium' is and why they've placed it here?

This graphic was put together by a friend of mine who studied graphic design - what a neat job getting to put together a whole lot of fun images!!

She's suggested it's best viewed whilst listening to this song...

Stephen Wiltshire: The Human Camera

Well it's just about that time of year again - we've been in at school (the teachers and our fabulous Office Wizard) getting organised for 2012 and can't wait for you all to join us!

We've been talking quite a bit about strengths and talents... of course everyone has certain things that they're particularly interested in and special talents and skills.

I came across a photograph of some artwork by Stephen Wiltshire tonight and was instantly taken aback.  I won't say much more but I suggest you watch these videos.

Have a think for a moment about what an amazing talent Mr Wiltshire has - I know I certainly couldn't do what he does!  

Skills and talents come in all shapes and sizes... be brave enough to keep pushing to discover and better yours.

Enjoy the last of your holidays everyone.  See you on Tuesday!

Quad Blogging Returns

Hi everyone,

Sorry I've not been on the blog very much - I've been taking it easy and really enjoying my holidays (as I hope you all have too!).  Whilst I've not been on here, I have been thinking about you all and all of the exciting and new experiences we'll have next year.  What a year 2012 will be!!  It still feels a bit strange to even be writing 2012!

I've signed us to to be quad blog buddies with three fantastic schools over in the UK - they're all excited to read, post and feedback with us so I'm confident this will be a great experience.

If you have a chance, pop over to their blogs and introduce yourself:

• Bradford Moor Primary (UK)
• Miriam Lord (UK) and
• St Lukes (UK)

This week the focus blog is the fabulous Bradford Moor Primary.  There's a fabulous post and video for you boys interested in history (the Romans vs. the Celts!) and some questions to get you thinking.  Have a great time checking out their blog and don't forget to leave them some feedback.

Enjoy the last of the holidays - I'm excited to see you all again soon!

:)

Miss H