Book Week

Congratulations to Samantha for being the winner of the D1 book cover competition in Book Week! We all had to choose our favourite Bible story and design a book cover for it...with a blurb on the back to tell everyone a little bit about it. Part of the challenge was to think of a clever name for the story.

Samantha with her prize

Samantha's book cover: Multiplied Miracle (the story of feeding the 5000)

 We also had 3 people who the judge said did a wonderful job too:

Jonathan's entry: The Floating Reserve (Noah's ark)

Samuel C's entry: David the Brave Attacker (David and Goliath)

Sam T's entry: The Tiny Soldier and the Giant (David and Goliath)

Greta work by everyone in D1 - your book covers are amazing!

Eggscellent Eggsperiments!

I think the title will give you a clue - we have continued our 'egg drop' fun! So what does happen when you drop an egg off the top of the senior playground? Have a look:

As you can see, some eggs bounce and survive the fall...but others don't!

Poor Humpty Dumpty...

So, back to the challenge! Each group had to design a way of dropping an egg without it breaking. Here are the designs and the results of our 'eggsperiments':

I like to call this one...Fluffy Surprise!
An egg surrounded by cotton wool with an outside layer of tinfoil to hold it all together.

Well done, Rosa and Madeleine - your egg survived!

This one could be called 'Beautiful Bubble'!
An egg wrapped in bubble wrap and tinfoil then decorated with little badges.

"Yes!" goes Samantha while Elina shows the smile of success.

This one looks like a 'Reverse Rocket Booster'.

When it landed, the egg had slipped to the end...lucky you designed a seat belt, boys!

Samuel and Jonathan with their clever contraption...and a whole egg!

This design needs to be called the 'Double Whammy' because it not only protected the egg inside the box...
it slowed down it's fall with a parachute too! 

Olivia, Tayla and Phoebe get the egg out of its feather bed - in one piece! Woo hoo!

What a lot of fun we had! What would YOU design to save your egg? Have a go...

Kingdom Kids Times Two!

It was wonderful to celebrate 2 special awards for D1 children at assembly yesterday. Jonathan and Jimin were both given Kingdom Kid awards - Jonathan's was from the end of last term but he was away and we had to keep the BIG secret from him all holidays (well done, mum and dad!).

Here they are:

Two awards? Twice as nice!

Jonathan's award says:

Jonathan has been an outstanding example of someone who is focused on improving himself as a learner and will honestly say if he truly understands, gets ideas a little bit or needs help to work something through. That’s integrity in action.

Jimin's award says:

Jimin is a wonderful example of our value of Kindness. She is often the first person to offer help to someone in need and is a kind friend to new members of our school family. She truly is one of D1’s ‘Good Samaritans’!

Shooting Stars!

It has been a while since we had new work on our Shooting Stars wall. This is where we share good examples of things we are ALL trying to learn. Children's own work is often the best 'teacher' for other children learning the same skill!

We have 2 writing super stars here:

Samantha has shown us a great example of a 'complex' sentence.

Complex sentences are tricky to explain to 7 and 8 year olds! With Samantha's example, we could see a sentence with another idea 'tucked' inside it. Samantha is learning to use commas to make this extra little idea stand separately. Here is her sentence with the special part highlighted:

Once upon a time in Magic World Jenny Jackhound, the half jack rabbit and half hound, was using her magic reading powers!

You know you are doing it right if you can take out the highlighted part and the sentence still makes sense! Very tricky...

Jonathan showed us how changing the length of your sentences makes your writing more interesting to read.

If all our sentences are short, our story will sound 'choppy'. If all our sentences are long, it might just put us to sleep! We need a mixture of both types of sentences to make our story enjoyable to read. Here is part of Jonathan's story about hacradeens (apparently this is a new sea creature that has been discovered!) with the short sentences highlighted:

Hey! Have you ever heard about a hacradeen? Today I'm going to talk about them. When they are angry their eyes light up red. Red is my favourite colour. Hacradeens can play skeleton too. Get it? Sometimes they light up as a skeleton!

Three in One!

How do you teach about the 'Trinity' to a class of 7 and 8 year olds? You rely on God for help! Let me set the scene...

D1 are learning that God never changes. One of the Bible stories we are studying is about Job - not the usual kind of kid's story but through it we could see that even though Job's life changed from good...to bad...and back again, Job didn't stop trusting God because he knew God hadn't changed even when everything else had!

So D1 made a list of all the things we could think of that 'God is...': Big, good, mighty, kind, perfect, holy, in control, patient, creator, everywhere, saviour (the list went on for TWO PAGES!).

One of the children said God is three in one... What does that mean we wondered? God gave us this idea of how to understand it:

Is there one?

No! There is three!

We know there is God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit. They are not separate 'people', they are ONE! Together they are strong and think and act as our one true God.
If they were separate, it would be like this:

If God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were 'three', we thought they would not be so strong and they could not think the same way or do the same things because each one would be on their own.

Our learning journey continues... :-)

It's Art Time!

On Friday it was D1's second to last trip to the high school art room. Everyone was really focused on their work and enjoyed the new examples of letters and designs that Mrs Sneddon showed them. They were letters from old Bibles - very fancy and creative! Mrs Sneddon also showed the children some letters that were full of pictures that started with that letter - a special treat for children who finished their work early!
Here's a look around the room - so many hard workers in action!

This was our lesson plan for the day.

The boys sharing ideas...

Awesome colours!

Some people working on the 'special treat'...

Great concentration!

More 'special treat' work...

Colours, colours everywhere!

Working hard...

Recycled Art in D1

On Tuesdays,  D1 have been busy using different materials to create an awesome piece of art.  It is going to be a beach scene made up of materials that have already been used for something else.  Here are a few pictures of our work so far.

Elina painting the sky using bubble wrap bought in by Samuel C.

Jonathan making the sand dunes using old coffee sacks from Mr Thompson.

Sarah using lots of glue to hold it in place.

Samuel using dye to make his ocean.  The fish are made from newspapers.

We cant wait to see what they look like all put together!

We're Going to the Art Room...

Last Friday, D1 headed off to the high school for our 3rd art lesson. We have been working hard and this was our lesson this time:

Mrs Sneddon thought D1 was working so well that she needed to plan ahead in case we finished quickly! Some people might be working on our term 2 theme soon: God Never Changes

Phoebe was adding some really cool patterns inside her letters. Jonathan was concentrating hard while he worked on another table.

Matthew M added a design to the background.

Mrs Sneddon showed us some lettering from old Bibles. Matthew Y liked one of the patterns and worked really hard to use it in one of his letters.

When Phoebe finished her letters, the next step was to add a black outline around them.

Our Second Art Lesson

Last Friday we went off to the high school art room again. D1 did a great job of remembering how to behave and what to do to be ready. I think Mrs Sneddon was pleased!

Our new learning goals...

...and another example of what we are aiming for!

Phoebe concentrating hard...

Samantha going from her practice page to the publishing card...

Sarah W doing a creative design...

Jonathan looks pleased with his progress!

Keep thinking about your letters and what you want them to look like, D1!