WELCOME TO NELSON'S NEW STUDENTS

At the Nelson campus we were delighted to welcome seven new students to Year 3 and 4. Our new Year 3 children are Brock Ivory, Shiloh Thomas, Aqueelah Petrie, Jairus McLean and Quillen Haughten, who has moved here from England. In Year 4 we have Noah McLean and Tawny Maiden, also from England.

Brock Ivory, Tawny Maiden, Quillen Haughton

Shiloh Thomas, Noah McLean, Aqueelah Petrie

GIANT SUNFLOWERS

Last year the Greymouth juniors sent us some sunflower seeds, so last term we planted them in our gardens. What a surprise it was to return after the holidays to find gigantic sunflowers taking over the beds.

This is what Tesori Bailey, Year 4, wrote about the sunflowers:

All the juniors from last year have grown sunflowers from seed. The sunflowers have grown very tall and fat. The leaves of the sunflower are rough and heart shaped. When I touch the stalk it feels prickly and it is very hairy. Some sunflowers are droopy. The petals are bright as the sun. They have grown as tall as a giant. When I saw them I was amazed! I didn’t know they could grow so quickly, well for me. Mine didn’t grow. In the middle of the sunflowers there were little yellow flowers piping up. When they ripen and turn into seeds we get to eat them.

With no rain the sunflowers are now looking very sad. We wrote about how the wind this week affected the sunflowers.  This is what Maeva Brewerton, Year 4, wrote:

Yesterday the wind was blowing big gusts like crazy. The wind made some of our sunflowers collapse and the rest were blowing down, sort of tilting sidewards. I wished they weren’t bending down. If the sunflowers were normal they would be lovely.

For maths, the Year 3-4 thought of some counting and measuring questions to do with sunflowers. "How tall are the sunflowers?" How many seeds are there in one flower? How many petals are in a sunflower? were some of the questions they asked, which led to some estimating and measuring. They also wanted to find out the size of a leaf. This led to a discussion on how we might find out the area of the leaf. In this picture Noah and Aqueelah have drawn around the outside of a leaf on squared paper and are counting the number of squares there are.