Big Buddies

Last Friday we had our first meeting with our Year 6/7 buddy class. Miss Hollitt’s class are our buddies for 2014.

We can’t believe it’s taken until week 7 for our first meeting!! Today we found a big buddy (who we’ll work with for the whole year) and did some reading together. We got to read lots of Dr Seuss books as our class has so many of the Dr Seuss books. Next term our school is performing Seussical the Musical.

Here are some photos from last Friday’s reading session-

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ELC – Environmental Learning Centre

Last Friday we went out into the ELC with our buddy class. We had a great time clearing the garden of big branches, bark pieces and rubbish. We also did some weeding and got the garden beds ready for some planting. We are going to plant carrots, snow peas, broad beans – just to name a few veggies. Each week we are going to go out with our buddies to do the weeding, watering and check our garden bed.
Here’s a few photos of our morning.

Can you suggest some Winter vegetables that we could plant in the ELC?

Buddy Class Activity

Over the last two weeks our class has worked with our older buddies on a Design and Technology project. Our task was to design and make a chair for a teddy bear. The structure needed to be stable and to be able to hold the bears from our class.

We had lots of great ideas and a huge amount of fun working with our buddies to create many different chairs – most were very successful at holding a teddy bear.

Here are the finished chairs. Thanks to our buddies for their support and guidance – we love working with you.

 Buddy class activity – Make a Chair for a Teddy Bear on PhotoPeach

Easter Egg Rolling Championships

One of our Easter activities was the “Egg Rolling Championships” with our Year 6/7 Buddy Class.
Our task was:

  • Design a ramp that will roll your boiled egg as far as possible.
  • You can only use the materials provided – newspaper, cardboard, paper, cardboard cylinders, plastic rods and low melt hot glue guns.
  • Each group needed to provide a design of their ramp and had 45 minutes to finish their ramp.
We held the rolling event on the court outside the Year 6/7 building – we thought a basketball was a great surface to roll eggs on!

Here are the 2012 Egg Rolling Champs – Will and his buddy. Congratulations boys on a HUGE ramp!!! A great team effort!

Here are lots of photos of our creating and making session and then the rolling event.

Egg Rolling Championships on PhotoPeach

What do you think of our ramp designs?
There were a lot of points to consider as we made our ramps – the higher the further the egg would roll!

Our first buddy class visit

Every class at Craigburn Primary School has a buddy class. This means that each class has a buddy class to meet with during the year. It’s a great way for the children to care for one another and support each other, both in the classroom and outside during break times. Buddy class activities provide for older children to be mentors and positive role models for our younger students and our younger students are given guidance and help if needed. It’s a highly regarded programme in our school.

On Friday we had our first visit to our Buddy class. This year our buddies are Mrs Robertson’s Year 6/7 class. They work in the Middle Year’s Unit with 3 other Year 6/7 classes and a Year 5/6 class.

For our first visit we met our buddies and worked out who we would each have for a buddy. We work with our buddy for the whole year. Then we played Buddy Bingo – each buddy pair had a chart of questions to answer. We needed to move around the room and find out information about our buddies. Some of the questions were: find someone with blue eyes, find someone who is learning the drums, find someone who loves pizza, find someone who loves going to the beach. Each buddy pair needed to list as many names as possible in each square. It was lots of fun finding out information about each other!

Our classes will meet every Friday just after recess. We are really looking forward to doing lots of activities with our buddies. We already planned lots of activities that we’ll enjoy together – like reading, board games, outdoor games, cooking, gardening – just to name a few!
Here are some photos of the buddies in action!

 
2012 Buddies on PhotoPeach

Do you have a Buddy class? What type of activities do you like to do with your buddies? Please send us your ideas – we might be able to try them!