Harold, Easter + Pumpkins!

Harold has been parked at school since last week and we have all been very excited about getting our turn to go and see him. Today the Forest readers got to go for their first session! It was a lot of fun and very exciting. We learnt all about healthy foods. I have some photos but I'll save them up for tomorrow so we don't ruin the surprise for the Ocean readers! Tomorrow the Forest readers will get their second session, and the Ocean readers will get to go twice!

Easter fun continued today as well. We made some cute little Easter baskets shaped like a rabbit - they even have a fluffy tail! We have left them at school... if we're lucky the Easter Bunny might just pay a visit later in the week.... :)

Finally I have some community news about pumpkins!

Remember when we went to see the giant King Pumpkin down at the community garden? There is going to be a pumpkin competition on at the garden at 4pm on Sunday April 12th. There are a few exciting things going on for this!  There will be a colouring competition - keep your eyes out for this as we'll try send them out through school in the next couple of days. Also there will be a carving competition. If you would like to try a pumpkin carving there will be pumpkins available at the garden from next Tuesday for you to take home, carve, then bring back on the 12th for judging at the competition. It would be awesome to have lots of Pikopiko families involved :)

Easter Activities

We are in the last week of term now and it is only a few days until Easter! We started doing some Easter activities in the Pikopiko team today.

During reading time our must do activity was a little easter egg craft that opens up to show an Easter Bunny :) Very cute!

After lunch for maths we practised reading our colours and numbers with an Easter picture. Great work everybody :)

Fabulous Friday Fun

Fridays are always lots of fun in Pikopiko! So much happens, we are super busy!

Every Friday morning we have a sharing circle. This is the time when children can bring a special thing from home to share with the class. It is a great chance to practise our oral language skills and our respectful listening skills :)

Every second Friday we have our whole school Tall Learner Assembly. Today's was extra special because it was the Juniors turn to share an item. Pikopiko and Kowhai sang their awesome volcano song to the rest of the school. Well done on another great performance!

The sun was out for Discovery time this afternoon so it was great to get back in the sandpit. Lots of fun with digging! The dress up box is always a favourite as well :)

Congratulations to the Tall Learners for Pikopiko this week. Well done to Lily and Amalia who received pink Inquiry bands for their awesome volcano projects. Fabulous work Zac who received a green Community band for his great contribution to Pikopiko.
Because this was the last assembly of the term each team also awarded a Tall Learner of the term rainbow band for someone who has been displaying all the Tall Learner attributes. Congratulations Natalia for receiving the term one award. You have been doing some amazing learning and you make super choices in Pikopiko all the time.

Have an awesome weekend and see you all on Monday for our final week of the term!

More Go Noodle Fun!

We teamed up with Freckles Sinclair again this afternoon for some more Go Noodle fun. We got our bodies moving and our brains working with some fitness moves and yoga practice. We learnt the tightrope move and had to balance with our eyes closed! Tricky!

Tomorrow is Friday so don't forget your library books! Also it is our Tall Learner Assembly and Pikopiko and Kowhai will be performing our volcano song to the school. We'd love to see some families along to watch at 11.45am in the hall.

Preschool Visit

It has been a few weeks since we've seen our preschool friends so it was great to have them visit us again today :) Some of them are starting in Pikopiko just after the holidays! It was exciting to show them our photos from our trip yesterday. We all wrote about what we had done on Quail Island and our preschool friends did some writing and drawing as well. Thanks for coming guys, we always enjoy seeing you and can't wait to have you in our team!

Quail Island

Well after the horrible rain last week we had an absolutely stunning day for our trip today! We headed over first thing this morning on the boat - it was beautiful looking out over the harbour. Over on the island we were very lucky to have a special guest Maria who knows ALL about Quail Island and told us lots of amazing facts. We found out about how we were sitting right in the middle of an old volcano! And that the volcano used to be three times as high as the hills that are there now. The children did a fantastic job of walking all around the island and saw lots of interesting things along the way, like the old shipwrecks and the dog kennels.

We had such a wonderful day. Thank you so much to all the parents who came along and drove children to and from the ferry - we couldn't have done it without you! Thank you too to Maria for coming along and sharing your knowledge with us :)