Carolling has hit Milford School!

Recently, Milford School had a carol night for Christmas on the field of Milford School. Parents, friends, family and teachers were all crowded around with picnic mats and food. Sausage sizzles, lollies, cold drinks, chips and chocolate bars were for sale to fundraise for the school. Even the ice-cream van ‘Mr Whippy’s’ was there to celebrate Christmas with us! While everyone was eating and playing, music was being played by the rock band, orchestra, ukulele group and Year 2 recorder group. At last Santa arrived with his big bag of lollies for a lolly scramble. Kids were jumping, screaming and running for the lollies, it was chaotic!

Christmas Festival of Song

Christmas festival of song 2011 was a great hit! The Juniors sang beautifully on the 6^th and the Seniors on the 7^th.  First the kids sang all the traditional Christmas carols (One Child, When a Child is born etc.) and then sang more fun songs (Kiwi Jingle Bells, Grandma got run over by a reindeer etc.) In between there were bible readings and children playing music.

The Music Concert

The music school concert was very interesting and a lot of talent was shown. People played the guitar, the keyboard, the piano and the violin. It was exciting to see the number of children play their songs on a musical instrument. All of the children looked like they had practised their special songs a lot to have performed to such a high standard!

                                                                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                   

Secret Shared Lunch in Room 2

On 14^th of December, Mrs. S, Claire and Meghna organised a secret shared lunch especially for Mrs. Smits. Firstly, they handed out some secret letters to the whole class except Mrs. Smits and everybody had to bring food for shared lunch. Unfortunately, some people forgot the event but kindly, their friends donated their own lunch like ezy lunch and sushi. We also, organised this secret event with Ms. Boyd and she tricked Mrs. Smits by asking if Room 2 wanted to play a game with her class outside. This was a distraction to help the organisers set up the foods and the table. Room 2 had a great time and it was Mrs. Smits first secret shared lunch in her time of teaching!

SKIDS T-Ball Competition

In Term 4, Year 5 and 6 classes held a SKIDS T-ball competition. 6 classes got separated into 2 pools and play 2 games each. The winner of pool A plays the runner up in pool B ( Room 1 vs Room 2 ) and the winner of pool B plays runner up in Pool A ( Room 5 vs Room 4 ) . Every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday lunchtimes two teams who are playing have to gather up on the field and Mr. Anderson, the referee starts the game. On Thursday 1^st of December, Room 1 played Room 2 and Room 2 made the finals and is going to play Room 4 or 5 in the final. Every classes participating enjoyed the games and some students already started to guess which class is going to win!

The winning T-ball class - Room 2!

An Interview with Ms Hopkirk

Miss Hopkirk is Milford School Principal. Here is what she said when Anna and Inmoo interviewed her.

Tennis at school!

At Milford School we are very lucky to have a TENNIS CLUB right next to our school! This Thursday we are having Tennis coaching and it is going to be REALLY fun! We play games and we learn how to do a forehands and backhands and serves and a whole lot of other techniques!

                                                                                                                 

Water Safety!

On Monday 31^st October 2011, the year 5&6’s, had a theory session about water safety. The instructor, from Millennium, came and taught us the difference between a life-jacket and a buoyancy vest. She also taught us about how to survive when you are lost at sea.

On Wednesday, 2^nd October 2011, to Thursday 3^rd October we had our practical lessons. One group did safety in and out the boat, how to get on and getting off. The other lesson was on what to do when a storm came and the boat was nowhere to be seen.

Getting instructions before practising our emergency plan.



Christmas Singing

On the 6^th and 7^th of December the school will hold the great annual Christmas Festival of Song. The first of the two days will be for the year 1-3s and the second is for the seniors. We all can’t wait and so we are all doing lots of singing to practise with our classes!

Pepero Day!!!!!

In Korea the day 11/11/11 is called ‘Pepero’ day. Pepero is a type of biscuit that look like a 1. Two Peperos make 11 so 11/11/11 is called Pepero day. Pepero is shaped like 1 and has chocolate covering all over the biscuit. They are yummy and Pepero day comes once in a hundred years. So we are lucky. I am looking forward to the next Pepero day in 11/11/2111.

Kids For Kids Concert

The choir are practising for the Kids for Kids concert every Thursday for a whole hour from 11:30-12:30. The concert is on Monday 14^th and I am sure that the choir will have a fantastic time at the performance on Monday. It is with SUZANNE PRENTICE! We are looking forward to hearing feedback about how it went! Alex says "It's very loud but it was AWESOME!

Well, here is a photo of us in the Kids for Kids concert that was performed on Monday, everybody had heaps and heaps of fun!If you are trying to look for the Milford School children we are right in the middle.

                                                                

Sharing Assembly Singing

Every term, Milford School has 2 or 3 sharing assembly.In a sharing assembly, different groups and class share their skills with the whole school. In these videos you will see the ukulele group playing 2 of their songs, Whole World and Hound Dog, and they sound really good! 

Police Visit

At Milford School, one of Term 4's topics is “Keeping Ourselves Safe (KOS)”.  A police officer came and told us about the 7 abuses; emotional, sexual, family, neglect, cyber, physical and no abuse.   The police officer told us about other abuses that are very harmful for us.  She told us how to keep ourselves safe from other violence and that if we are involved in any of the abuses tell an adult that you trust, for example (parent, teacher and friend).

The Stu Duval show

On Thursday 28^th October, Stu Duval (a famous New Zealand artist and actor) came to our school to put on a show. He told us his very own made up Christmas story called Jingle Bull. He also showed us how he learned to draw at school. He taught us one very important thing- S, 2 dots, a prickle and a line. His show was very entertaining and funny. Rhiana Merota described the show as “cool and interesting”. Janice Lim said the show was “creative and funny”.

Year 6 Speeches

At the end of Term 3 the Year 6 students did a speech competition. All the students had to prepare their own speech independently and present it to the whole class. Lots of them had no experience presenting a speech before and were nervous. The teachers and a buddy marker got to rate students’ speech out of ten in many different kind of skills. The best two speakers from each class got to share their speech in the Year 6 syndicate assembly and all the finalist were boys! Lots of Year 6 students had a great experience and now, lots of them are ready for some more advanced intermediate speeches!

Training like the All Blacks!

Recently, the Year 5/6 has been training for our upcoming athletics event. Everyone’s training really hard like the French rugby team ready for the All Blacks, running, throwing and jumping. Nicole from Room 1 says, “It’s really good for us because if we never did this, then on Athletics Day we probably wouldn’t know what to do. So my last word is …. IT’S REALLY GOOD!” We’ve all enjoyed the time training as we are also doing P.E.

The ENVIRO lunchtime club

Every lunchtime the ENVIRO group come together with the rest of the school students who want to help out. They all work really hard to try and make our school a much better and environmentally friendlier place for our school students to be in. The things that the children do

(with adult supervision) are woodwork, painting the drains, building a school forest, and heaps of other things.

                        

                                                                              

Great Golf!

At Milford School the Year 6's had two golf lessons, one on each day. We had lots of fun and it was really enjoyable. Everybody loved the exciting golf lesson and luckily there were no injuries at all. We found it very fun and most of the people want to play again. There were lots of exciting, cool games where we got to practise hitting the different balls (large rubber ball, two tennis balls and two rubber golf balls).  We practised hitting for distance as well as accuracy. It was extremely fun!

Halloween

Halloween is an annual holiday observed on October 31, which commonly includes activities such as trick-or-treating, attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.

Some Milford School children had fun after school dressing up and going trick or treating. They made sure they were safe by going with their parents and other children.

Jack-o-lantern

Les Mills Fitness

On the 25th of September a representative from Les Mills fitness came to our school to get us involved with fun fitness activities. We did lots of energetic dances to great music and everyone had lots of fun!

The World Teacher's Day

The World Teachers' Day is on Friday the 28th of October. The World Teachers' Day was started by UNESCO and was celebrated since 1994.The purpose of this event is to honor the teachers for their special contribution in a particular field area or the community in general. Different countries celebrate the event in a different date and the real date in New Zealand is the 29^th of October.  All the Milford School teachers are looking forward for the day and they are going to celebrate it tomorrow.



The World Teacher's Day Logo



Rugby World Cup Final

Last Sunday was THE final of the Rugby World Cup. It was a very exciting game with practically the whole of New Zealand and France cheering it on for their own team to make sure that their team knew that they were behind them the whole time for the duration of the game.

Unfortunately for France (but fortunately for New Zealand) they lost to the All Blacks with a score of 8-7. When the whole of New Zealand and the All Blacks had found out that they had won they all went hysterical and Christchurch completely forgot about the earthquake because they were so happy about winning! 

My Spine.

During 2011 Milford school has been participating in my- spine. My-spine is a program where you learn about your spine and how to look after it. There are 4 different exercises that you can do to look after your spine. There is also a survey online that we answer questions about if we had any back pain and if we have been doing the exercises. In total there are five surveys that you have to complete. So far we have done 4 so we only have to do 1 more!

The human spine

Deepawali Celebrations

On the 26^th of October, it was the national Indian festival of lights, Deepawali. This festival celebrates the victory of good over evil. Indians light up the entire house with candles and diyas and they do a prayer ceremony.

We celebrated this occasion on the 26^th evening by lighting lots of fireworks and sparklers and having Indian sweets and snacks. We dressed up in new Indian clothes and enjoyed the Deepawali celebrations.

                                                         

The Funky Dan and John show!

On Thursday the 29^th of September, the whole school got to learn how to draw funny cartoons and were told to follow our dreams.

Firstly, John showed us how Dan drew cartoons. Next, they taught us how to draw one of their favourite cartoon characters.

One of them were drawing a smiley face and

The other one was how to draw a monkey. After that some people got to have their autographs. Everyone had a great time having Dan and John come to our school. We all hope that they come to our school again in the future.

Calendars, Diaries or Greeting Cards?

Want a calendar specially designed for you? Well every year in Milford School, we design our own calendar or card. This year, diaries have arrived! The teachers usually give us a picture to do or we choose our own. The calendars include stickers for birthdays and other events. A few of the designs are awesome and a few just look fabulous! So don’t forget to order your calendars, greeting cards or diaries! Priya in Room 5 designed a reflection of herself on the computer!

Tread Lightly Caravan

On 4^th and5^th October, Years 5and 6 did some activities at the Tread Lightly Caravan. The purpose of Tread Lightly Caravan coming was to teach us about recycling, waste of electricity and water. There were 6 activities that made us learn and think. We learned that a lot of electricity and water is needed to power objects.

 When you throw the parts away that are found in computers and mobile phones etc, the mercury in parts could injure and kill someone. We had a competition between groups where we had to match the parts of the computer to a card. The winning group got a prize. We did lots of other activities and we learned that we need to save our environment.

We had lots of fun in the Tread Lightly caravan and learned a lot of new information. 

The exercise bike converted kinetic energy into electrial energy so that we could learn how much energy it takes to power different appliances.

We learned about all the different parts inside electrial goods and that it is important to recycle and dispose of them carefully.

The Chess Team Success

The Chess Team has been competing in several tournaments this year. We have interviewed one of the Chess Team members, Crystal Zhu.

What inspired you to play chess?

My brother’s friend found a chess teacher in the newspaper and then he called us to learn chess with him.

What do you most enjoy about chess?

Winning medals, trophies and certificates.

Which cities have you competed in so far?

Auckland, Christchurch, Mt Maunganui, Melbourne.

Do you want to be a professional chess player when you are older?

No because it is really hard being a professional player.

Do you actually enjoy chess? Why?

Sort of because sometimes it can be fun.

Thank you for your time Crystal.

Auckland Primary School Chess Champions!  Crystal is on the right.



GATE Art

At Milford School, we have an Art GATE class. In Term Two, students learned to create and paint a Papier Mache bunny. These are the steps to make one:

1.   Sketch the bunny how they want it to look like.

2.   Colour the sketched bunny with pastels.

3.   Collect newspapers, tape and string.

4.   To roll the newspapers and create body features of the bunny- Head, body, feet, ears, arms, eyes and paws.

5.   Tape the body features up together.

6.   Rip the newspaper and stick it to the papier mache bunny.

7.   Repeating the process with newspaper four more times.

8.   Repeating the process with white paper two more times.

9.   Paint the bunny to the according colours you planned.

10. Dry the bunny with a hairdryer.

11. Present it in GATE sharing assembly.

Wonderful art work in progress!

Milford Merits

Milford merits are a system that students use to display the key competencies. The key competencies are Learning to be, Learning to do, Learning to Know and Learning to live together. When students display the key competencies or do outstanding work they receive a merit on their merit sheet. When a student receives their tenth merit they get a VERY special certificate and that gets presented at a sharing assembly. I myself received my tenth merit just on Monday and then on Tuesday Alex Crowe got his tenth merit so there are going to be TWO certificates presented on Friday. WELL DONE!



Ukulele Festival Rehearsal

On Saturday 17^th September the Milford Ukulele group went to the Rugby World Cup Water front 'Cloud' to have a rehearsal for the Kiwilele Festival which will be on November. There were lots of ukulele players! The members of the Kiwilele went up the stage and all of us played through the song books which were handed out at the beginning of the year. Some rugby supporters were there and because of the big rugby match that was on that day (Australia vs. Ireland). Some ukulele players from our school were on the 3 News channel. All the players had a great time strumming, singing and some dancing and they are all working hard for the real festival in Term 4.   

     

The Milford School Disco

The Milford School Term 3 Disco was on the 30^th September. Unlike most other discos in the past, there was a Masquerade theme! Prizes were given to the best hat, mask or costume. The prizes were $10.00 Warehouse vouchers, PRIZES WORTH GETTING!!  

Best hat went to…

AMBER ELLINGTON, ROOM 4

Best Costume…

DEXTER BRICK, ROOM 1

Best Mask…

LYDIA SHERRY, ROOM 4

Best homemade hat/mask…

ELIZABETH VAUGHAN, ROOM 1!

At the end of the school year we will be holding a special year 6 social!

We are all looking forward to that a lot and we will update you about that soon!

                                                                       

Win it or lose it? Gold Coin Raffles have arrived!

Great prizes to be won! Over the past few days, Milford School has been selling raffle tickets to fundraise for the End of Year 6 end of year Social. $1 is for 1 ticket and $2 is for 3 tickets. What an offer! Room 4 has been selling the tickets and the line has been very long since the first selling day. The prizes are worth spending just a few gold coins for example, a family pass to Snowplanet (2 children and 1 adult), ice-blocks for the whole class on the last day of Term 3, 2 hour kayak hire and more! Inmoo from Room 2 said, “I hope I get a prize with 15 tickets!”



The Zooming Cross Country!

On Wednesday the 31^st of August the Pupuke held a Cross Country. Firstly the teachers had to choose the fastest people in their class. The people who got in the finals got to go in the Cross Country. Harrison came 1^st and got in the finals but couldn’t go because he had the ski champs. We interviewed Anna who came 5^th out of the Year 6 girls. We also interviewed Maxine who came 3^rd out of the Year 5 girls.   

Anna: “I was proud of myself when I went in the finals”.
Maxine: “I think I did pretty well”.
People who did the Cross Country all said, “We enjoyed it a lot!”

Cricket Coaching

For the last few weeks the year 6s have been doing cricket training with Takapuna cricket coaches. We played a game called Non-Stop cricket. It was very fun and most of the people loved it. The cricket coaching was very exciting. We can practice cricket at Takapuna Normal Intermediate School. We really loved cricket.   

Milford School’s rugby world cup displays

A few weeks ago some classes at Milford School have been putting up displays for the Rugby World Cup. We are really excited about this. The wonderful displays are improving every day with new and fresh work done from the hard-working classes. Take a walk around the classes to see these terrific displays!

Here are some displays from the classes.

Our adopted country is France.

Check out this amazing diorama.

We are keeping a close eye on the draw so we know when to watch the games.

Netball

At Milford school we have a lot of different sports for students to play and one is Netball. Team 1 and Team 2 are the Year 6 teams. We have just had a prize giving for the Team 2 Netball team. They had it at McDonalds in Akoranga Drive.  The score for the game was 12-12, a draw! The netball team was SO excited! Priya said, “The netball game that we had was the last and it was a great way to end the netball season!”

                                                          

Rugby Black and White Day

Rugby World Cup has arrived and Milford School has been dressing up to the colours of our favourite team. Nearly everyone had dressed up for the All Blacks and quite a few were going for France. There were different teams like Scotland, England and Georgia. Rhiana Merota from Room 2 said, “It was really exciting to see everyone dressing up as their favourite teams". Some people dressed up for fun to go for all the teams.

Geoff Fergusson - Our Guest Inventor

At Milford School we had an inventor called Geoff come to talk to all of the Year 6's.  He has explained how his amazing inventions work and he told us about his inventor’s life. One of his inventions is a non-toxic pest trap.  It is called 'Atractem' and the yellow plastic attracts whiteflies which can get stuck on the cooking oil it has been dipped in.  This pest control system is environmentally friendly as it can be washed and used over again. It stops harmful chemicals from needing to be used on tomato plants which whiteflies damage.  His inventions were very interesting and useful.  His family are inventors too and he showed us a book of inventors including his family and himself.  We gave him a warm welcome to the Milford Primary School.

The Ski Team’s Triumph

Every second Friday the Milford School ski team goes to Snow Planet for ski training. Last week, five of the best skiers went to Mt. Ruapehu for the North Island Ski Championships. They came 9^th in their heat and 29^th out of the 128 schools competing. They had a great time and are looking forward to going to Ruapehu again.



Mini Rugby World Cup

On 9^th September the Milford School Rugby World Cup competition began. This idea came from some rugby fans in our school. This time, the students got to choose their own team and country team name. Some students went around the school and asked some good rugby players to join their team. The rules were that each team needed at least 2 girls, 2 Year 5’s and 2 Year 6’s. The number of players in each team is limited to 10. After the teams and the schedules were chosen the first game was held on Friday, the opening date of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. The first games were against Argentina VS England and Fiji VS Australia. The results were England and Australia winning. Lots of games were postponed because of the terrible weather. Milford School is hoping that no more games will be postponed. The reason why Milford School is holding this event is the real Rugby World Cup has begun but the important reason is to have fun!  

The haka before the game started.

A try about to be scored. Go Finn!

Fun had by all.

 

Milford's Got Talent!

Over the next few weeks at Milford School is having its yearly Milford’s Got Talent! The event consists of a few categories; Instrumental, (Group and solo) Variety, Singing, (Group and solo) and Dance. The competition began with the auditions for instruments, followed by Variety, Dance and then Singing. When all the auditions are over a 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd for each category and the winners will go through to the grand final where an overall winner will be decided. Janice Lim said, “I think the performers are very talented people”.

Jump Jam

Brett Fairweather has made an exciting
resource kit called "JUMP JAM".
It is especially for primary and intermediate
school children.

"JUMP JAM" is simple for teachers to learn and loads of fun for both boys and girls to join in with.The Year 3&4’s at our school (Milford Primary) always do Jump Jam every week. Priya says “I like Jump Jam because we get fit and have fun.”

Maybe you would like to start Jump Jam at your school soon!