Visual arts in our local environment

 

In Autahi we have been exploring our local environment as an inspiration for our visual art. As we work on building up the different parts of our project we have been doing some observing of our local environment and the things we find living in it. We practised sketching the different kinds of leaves that we have found around our school and used these to frame our piece of art.

Next we added a dye wash after outlining our leaves with oil pastel. We chose green and yellow as the children thought these best fit how we see our local environment when the sun washes over the trees.

This required some pretty big brush strokes as we had to cover the entire big piece of paper.

Our final piece was to use our powers of observation to help us sketch some of the creatures that live in our local gardens and bush. Using some amazing big books as inspiration we made a few critters to crawl or fly around our art.

We can't wait to show you the finished products when all the pieces finally come together. Our plan is for these to go up just in time to brighten up our classroom after the school holidays. We hope you will come in and check out our hard work and get a taster for our Arts Celebration later this year.

Recounting our trip

This week, Autahi went to Ākau Tangi with Tautoru and the year four students. There was lots of learning - and fun - on the day. It was a chance to build our Worser Bay whānau relationships, with students buddying up with people they might not usually work with, supporting each other and making new friends. We worked on being good sports people, using our Strengths of Zest, Perseverance and Teamwork. And, of course, we were coached in some sports skills: gymnastics, netball and all-round ball skills. 

And the learning didn't end there. Real, shared experiences are fertile ground for developing our writing skills. They give us lots to talk about, building rich oral language that we can use in our writing. Our trip also gave us the chance to create a recount text: telling the story of our trip, one event at a time. 

We began on arrival back at school by capturing our four highlights from the trip by drawing them. We asked our students to retell their highlights to us, making sure that they sequenced the events correctly: what came first, next and so on.  

Having captured these ideas while they were fresh, we were able to use our drawings as a guide to writing our recount the next day. We tried to write a sentence to go with each picture.

The plans helped us to include extra details in the recounts, and also make sure that we were telling the story of events in time sequence. With lots to share, many people found that they were able to write more sentences than usual, too. It's exciting to see our writers' skills and independence growing!

We are counting on you (a blog about counting)

 

Earlier this year we were reflecting on the work of Professor Ruth Merttens when thinking of the ways we teach place value in maths. Place value in Autahi is centered around learning that numerals have different values. We start with numbers to ten using lots of materials to show how numbers get bigger as we count forwards. 

Next we tackle the teen numbers by showing that we have a group of 10 and another group of extra ones.

So if you hear your child say '14 is a group of 10 and 4 extra ones' then they are practising one of the ways we have been exploring these numbers.

One of the aspects of Professor Ruth Merttens work is around the memorisation of facts. These memorised facts become quick to access when we are solving problems within mathematics.

Many of the children in Autahi have a counting goal around counting forwards to and backwards from 20. here are some of the ways you can help them towards this goal of memorisation.

A calendar is a great way to count up and down each day. In Autahi we keep track of the month and days each morning.

A number display. In Autahi we have a display which shows how many days of school their have been so far this year. When we reach 100 we will have a celebration. Always a good incentive for counting.

Common household items also can help us practise counting. The trusty microwave has a built in Maths function, great for counting down to a delicious bowl of porridge!

Building our artist's toolkit.

In Autahi, Creativity is a Character Strength that we see on a daily basis. Our children are never short of ideas for things they would like to make, build and draw. Our role is often to provide opportunities for all our students to develop specific art skills that they will be able to use to enhance their creations. We are also keen to make sure that everybody, wherever they are in their development as an artist, has a chance to create art that is fun to make and satisfying to look at.

Our latest project in Autahi takes inspiration from Kandinsky's Circles. Our artists' first challenge was to draw the concentric circles that form the basis of their art piece. Drawing large circles is tricky! We practised on our whiteboards and then, when we felt ready, used our soft sketching pencils to draw the circles on paper.

Once we had our circles, it was time to consider our colour choices. For this, we needed to use our artist's skill of observation. We looked at some photos of the bush and noticed the colours that were there - and those that were not. We created a colour pallet for our work by marking these on a colour chart.

Now, time to make our colours. We practised making the greens, browns and oranges that we needed by mixing together the primary colours of red, yellow and blue. Colour mixing takes practice, especially to achieve very specific shades.

Now time to paint! We had to be careful to keep inside the circle lines that we had drawn so that the layer by layer colour rings could be seen. We also had to make careful choices about colour combinations. 

We are pretty excited by how our art looks so far.

The next step will be to create a background for our circles and combine the individual panels.

Watch out for our finished art piece in Autahi soon!

Mihi Whakatau and Hīkoi

 

Thursday was a big day for us; all about connecting!

Firstly, Mihi Whakatau was connecting with our new whānau and staff. It is always a real highlight of our annual calendar and a real celebration of our special place up here on the cliff tops. This wāhi tupuna, or place of the ancestors, is really significant as we know it is the first permanent Pā site in the Te Whanganui-a-Tara area. We are connected to the past, we are connected to the sea, the wind and our wider environment. With Mihi Whakatau, our new students, families and teachers become tangata whenua and, as such, belong here. Connected as part of our Worser Bay Whānau forever!

In the evening, we had a hardy group join together for the Hikoi. Tāwhirimātea was out in force but were we daunted? Not a chance! We told the stories of the past, from the legends of the great Taniwha, Kupe and the giant wheke through to the stories of Taranihoniho and the early settlement of the motu, Te Motuwhetukairangi.

Thanks to all of you who participated in these events; it was fantastic to connect with you all.

Hīkoi

Getting outdoors

 

This week we stepped outside the classroom to start exploring our local environment. The weather was kind and we managed the 1.6km walk to visit Centennial Reserve.

The goal of this trip was to learn about our local area and the kinds of things that live in and around it.

Our Autahi and Tautoru explorers took full advantage as they quickly found plenty of cicada shells and brightly coloured funghi.

Many built huts and nests for the birds. Their were a few fairy gardens made but sadly we didn't spot any while we were there.

This exercise also was an opportunity to grow our resilience and that even though the walk was hard in some places we still kept on going. In Autahi we say that we give everything a try.

Our trip has also been great inspiration for our writing this week as we all talked about the different things we saw.

This will be the first of many adventures out to explore the local beauty all around us.