I have so many ideas to share.

I am proud that I can manage my things at home.

I like to try to do things to help myself

I am so helpful at home. I can make lunch.

I love to write about stories I have heard and I love to draw.

I have been taking risks. I can climb up on the big climbing frame at school.

I am only but I can make my lunch with mum.

My mum is pleased that I can do some things all by myself.

I do like to help to manage my things at home. I am helpful.

I help at home and manage myself.

I have lots of things to share at writing time.

I am helping my mum in the kitchen.

I can manage myself at home and at school.

I am so proud of my writing and my reading.

I am so proud that I can manage myself. In my writing I can use spacing in between my words.

We are getting so good at writing and reading. I wrote about managing myself at home.

I love to dress up in class. We have fun being another character.

Check out what we are up to.

We loved having a new boy in our room. He is called Rascal.

Rascal was looking all around our classroom. He let us stroke him, feed him and he even rolled over for us. He was very fluffy and white.

Welcome to our new friends.

We learnt that you feed dogs twice a day and that if they have treats, they have to work to earn it. Our new class friends had little uniforms on!

Rascal is patient.

We were so happy to have Rascal and Curlie in class. Rascal wore a jacket because it was very cold. He was cute.

I loved stroking Rascal.

I had such a good time stroking Rascal. He is very soft and has a coat of wool. He was very calm with all the children.

Ooh La La!

Guess what! We had Mrs Girvan's little dogs visit our class. The big one was called Rascal and the little one was named Curlie. They loved being with us. We asked them to do tricks and then we gave them treats. They were very good listeners and did as they were asked. They could sit, lie down, dance spin and roll over. We all had a chance to do something. They were really friendly.

Learning to read.

Whoops! Mrs Girvan took a picture of some of a reading group making the sentences from their reading book. When we learn to read, we sometimes forget which direction we are supposed to go. Often we do not realise that we have made an error. It would be really helpful when we are reading at home, that we point to each word and each line as we read. It will help us to remember.

Look Who Came to Visit Our Class!

We were so excited when a friendly mouse came to visit our classroom. We were not sure whether he was real or not because he was tall. He was so kind and made us feel special. He wore very smart clothes. Some of us had a hug from Geronimo Stilton. It was so special.

We are part of the "Give It A Go Club."

We love to try new things We have started to see it we can count in twos. We had to try to place two more things on each bicycle to help us to count.

Don't you love our flowers?

When we were learning to draw a flower, we also learnt how to write numbers. We take our time to do them carefully.

We love to use the patterns and shapes that we have learnt in our writing, to make some thing new!

Some days when we have done our handwriting we learn to follow directions from Mrs Girvan to make patterns and pictures. We love doing that. It is tricky to remember things like how to draw the shapes and to listen to how we need to do it. Never mind, we like challenges because we are proud of ourselves at the end of it.

We are learning to write sentences.

It is hard work knowing which way to go when you are writing. We are learning how to write each other's names and to remember to put finger spaces in the correct place. We are also learning how to make our letters the same size. Every day we try so hard to do our best job.

Market Day is here! Yippee!

Our class had a beautiful stall. It had lots of colours on. Lots of children came to buy our cookies and we ran out of biscuits in 15 minutes. Child blocked out for privacy purposes.

Wow! Look at what happens when you persevere. We are so creative.

We were very patient when we decorated our cookies. Each one is unique. We surprised everyone in school that we were so talented at decorating. We felt very proud of ourselves.

We practise what we learn so that we get better and better at doing things.

We found it a challenge to learn how to outline a biscuit with icing and then to try flooding it to make it lovely but we didn't give up!

We decorated biscuits and some of our friends in class took these pictures of us.

We are learning how to take photos of things that happen in class. Joshua and Isaac took these pictures.

We have learnt how to make biscuits.

In our class we learnt how to make biscuits as we wanted to sell them on Market Day. Many of the children did not know how biscuits were made so we became bakers for a day. We used butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and flour. When we mixed the ingredients together it made a dough. We made shapes. It was really hard work mixing the butter but we helped each other.

Oral language is so important.

Developing oral language enables the children to communicate with other people. The better the vocabulary that is developed, the more assured children become in being able to explain what they are doing and feeling about things and situations.

Building things helps me to use my imagination.

Building things helps the children to use their ideas and oral language to share what they have done. It also helps the fine motor skills so that fingers can hold a pencil and use it to write beautifully.

I practice how to write letters and words

I have been super fast at learning my words.. It means I believe in myself. I can learn tricky things.

Every day we go over our words and play games. It is fun to see who can find the words the first!

I love to learn new words. I can match so many.

Learning the words on our sheet is so important. I have to learn them every day. I get better and better at doing them.

I just love my new guitar.

My mum helped me to make a new guitar. We had a happy time doing it.

I can talk about how things work!

Peace Focus

Our daily peace focus helps the children have a calm start to the day and to reflect on how we are supported within our families and school and how we can do the same for others. We talk about something that the class needs at that time, perhaps patience, or gentleness. It also helps to scaffold the learning needed to build confidence or trust or forgiving someone who may hurt us. We have stones with words on and we are able to talk about what they mean to us. The class share their thoughts and experiences. We also have positive affirmations on cards and we take a statement a day and look at how it affects us, Eg."I have many gifts and talents." "I am learning to let others speak." A candle helps us to focus and we have a little "oil of gladness" or lavender which the children have on their hands. We talk about how the fragrance affects everyone in the room making the environment feel peaceful. We learn that how we behave and treat others can do the same. <

Odd Socks

Odd Socks was a Powerpoint about difference and diversity. It was explained through a story of a little girl who wore odd socks everywhere she went and the effect that it had on her older brother. It embraced the idea that we are not all made the same but we are valued and important to so many people. We talked about how we can help other people who are different to feel a part of our community in and beyond school. Many of the children understood clearly the message and were able to share their feelings.

We have been learning that we learn from others how to be positive, grateful and use our talents to learn.

It has been inspiring to hear Room 8's points of view and how they were moved emotionally by discussing the life of Nick Vujicic an Australian man born without arms and legs. After I showed the video to the children they fell silent. One of the children then said she felt sad for Nick but he was so happy! The children were able to appreciate how different we all are and yet each of us has something to offer. They said that he was kind to help other people to feel happy about themselves.

I just loved doing the calligraphy. I stayed focused for such a long time. I hope we can do it again.

I really liked doing the Chinese writing. It was a challenge to hold the pen correctly but we tried hard.

Mrs Yang came into our class to help us to learn a little Chinese Calligraphy. We had a special paintbrush and ink that came from Taiwan. We were listening so well.

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We counted all of the 'Thank you' stones we have earned. We had over 300 in one week. Wow! That means Mrs Girvan catches us being good, and kind and thoughtful and working hard in class. We love to earn them because it reminds us to think about making good choices and helping each other.

Wow! she

I have made some words from my list. I love learning.

Look how I have made my name using magnetic letters. There wasn't an 'l' long enough so I made one myself.

I have not been at school very long but I know how to be kind and play fairly.

Each day we take it in turns to be the star of the day. We are learning to appreciate what talents we have, the things that make us special and to understand more about how we fit into our class.

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Children learn very quickly whether they are treated the way that they would like. Room 8 were able to discuss times in their own lives when people had not treated them fairly.