Christmas Talent Competition

Molly, Mia, Nell and Isabel were the judges. We saw each act by act. We judged them on how much courage they had, teamwork, their ideas, their costumes and their performance. All of the performances were awesome. We could only choose one winner from each space.

Autahi

1st place: Zane
2nd place: Charlie
3rd place: Eva

Tautoru

1st place: Coco
2nd place: Marnie, Greta, Rosa and Jasmine
3rd place: Zach, Cooper, Nye and Evan

Mahutonga/ Matariki

1st place: Jessie
2nd place: Edward
3rd place: Ruby

What a great show.

By Nell and Isabel

What a great show!

Teddy Bear's Picnic and Bush Sessions!

We have been very lucky with the wonderful weather we've been having.  We have had our first Bush session and our Teddy Bear's Picnic.

Here was our first bush session crew:

We used potato peelers to carve sticks.

We had ropes to play and create with.

And bridges to run across.

We used ropes to create swings and we helped each other balance, pull ourselves up and swing.

We climbed up the rope ladder having to use confidence, strength and coordination.

 We gathered water from the stream and were careful not to fall in! We had to use balance.

 We built a hut made of logs and sticks.  We used lots of teamwork and talk.

 We climbed on the slack-line.  We had to use balance, strength and concentration.

 We went to the Weta hotel and saw 2 wetas! 

We walked a total of 4k to get there back! We were tired but we had so much fun!

Teddy Bear's Picnic

 We had a shady rest and did some singing under the trees with Wanwan.

 We played parachute games! We threw our teddies on and tried to bounce them.  They were a bit heavy, but when the parachute caught the wind we managed to get them up a little! 

We had such fun! 

Our Inquiry into the powers of nature

We started a new inquiry a few weeks ago thinking about the powers of Nature. 

Our hook was that the power had gone off and the key to turning it back on was frozen in the middle of an ice block.  We got the kids thinking .... what could we do?

It was a sunny day and we thought that our best option was to use the power of the sun to melt the ice so we could get the key out and "turn the power back on."

The class was engaged and hooked and we went outside with our block of ice.  In no time, the ice had melted and we had the key.  Then we started thinking about power.

We had some ideas and some questions.  So we started reading some books and exploring the powers of the Sun, the Wind and the water.

We did some writing about what we knew and questions we had.

We read the story of Maui and the Sun

 Then we started creating our own versions of Te Ra.  We looked at different images and talked about Maori koru patterns. 

 We used oil pastel and dye and talked about colours of the sun.  We used reds, oranges, yellows and golds.

We then got into the wind and started exploring things that can be powered by the wind.  Many people came up with boats, parachutes, windmills and more.  So naturally, we started being architects and scientists.  We made boats and tested them in our water! We made parachutes and tested them out to see if they caught the wind.

We did some writing about our creations as well.

Here we are testing our creations and seeing if we need to make any changes! 

We are still exploring the elements!