Reflecting on a busy term

 Here at the Autahi Blog HQ, we wanted to take a look back at lots of the amazing things we got up to over this term and highlight some cool things you might have missed. So sit back and let us take you through our third term of the year.....

The Arts Celebration

It all started with some Taniwha. Exploring the story that lives right on our doorstep was such a rich and powerful motivator for learning more about the performing arts.

We have covered many areas in the Arts including the giant visual art piece that currently resides on our back wall. 

Come and relive the journey from inception, to creating soundscapes, to blocking out movements and finally to our big performance for our school community. With an added bonus of a tour of some of our local ECE.

Taniwha in Autahi

Learn more about the story we used here: Ngake me Whātaitai

Relive the night of our big show

And check out the Taniwha on tour

Quite the fellowship we have going to visit our friends at Miramar North Kindergarten and Tuatara Kids!

Brain Science

Another theme this term was learning a little bit about our brains and how the Arts help us to spark our brains into action. 

We explored some of the science behind having a Jam (in the musical sense) and how it builds up our sense of teamwork.

Creativity and imagination played a big part in our learning this term. You can check out more about some of the many ways we can foster a sense of imagination in this blog.

Shared Writing

The Arts isn't all we have been up to. Come and check out a particularly noisy poem we created that was inspired by one of the amazing picture books we had been reading.

Wow! We had a lot going on and this barely covers all of it. We hope that you all have a great Term Break and we look forward to exploring more learning in Term 4!

Taniwha on tour!

We love to take any opportunity to visit our friends at our local kindergartens and ECEs. New students in Autahi bring with them rich experiences, stories, relationships and knowledge that they have gained during their pre-school lives. We know that our students have so many happy memories of kindergarten and treasure the relationships they formed with their teachers. Our hope is to continue this learning journey in Autahi.

Having worked hard on our taniwha story for the Arts Celebration, we felt that we had something worth sharing more widely, and decided to take our taniwha on tour.

If you were out and about locally this week, you may have glimpsed a taniwha at large in the streets of Miramar!

Swishing our cloaks was a lot of fun!

Our first visit was to Miramar Central Kindergarten. 

It was a good challenge to perform our show in a different space. We certainly brought the drama!

Next stop, Kidz Corner.

Then, a well-deserved snack on the field and a chance for the taniwha to run wild in the sunshine!

Sharing our taniwha has been a wonderful way for our students to stay connected with their kindergartens. We are very grateful to Miramar Central Kindergarten and Kids Corner for hosting us and giving the Autahi children such a warm welcome. Our students have had a real-world experience of Positive Purpose: sharing something they have made with others and getting to hear the kind and encouraging words of their audience in return. It has also been a chance for some of our students to make a return visit their own kindergartens, bringing their school class with them, which is pretty special.

In week 10, we'll also be paying Miramar North Kindergarten and Tuatara Kids a visit. How exciting!

The Big Night of the Show

 This week we celebrated our learning through the performing arts at our annual Worser Bay School Arts Celebration. 

In the lead up we showed some of our work leading up to the big night and I encourage you to go back and read into those posts.

Some of the children reflected that they had felt scared about performing for others but were proud of themselves for giving it a try. We talked about the Strength of Bravery and how sometimes we use Bravery to feel the fear but do it anyway. A good lesson for us all about taking risks and giving things a go.

Here are some pictures of our Autahi performers.

Act 1 - Te Ika a Māui

Act 2 - The Three Taniwha

Act 3 - Breaking the Jawbone and the Spirit of Whataitai

We hope that you enjoyed our show!

Arts Celebration: behind the scenes!

 

We're just days away from the Arts Celebration and Autahi is practising hard to make sure we know all our moves!

Our presentation brings together many strands of learning and creating. It has grown out of the deep learning we have done about our local story of Ngake and Whātaitai. We have also been building our musical skills, learning about rhythm, dynamics and playing as part of a group so that we can perform and record a soundscape. More recently, we have spent time working on our movement and performance skills so that we can bring the story to life for our audience.

Here is a sneak peak behind the scenes at the Autahi rehearsal studio. We hope you will enjoy seeing the serious fun we have had putting our part of the Arts Celebration show together. We are excited to share it with you!

Poised to record part of our soundscape.

Thanks to Vigo, who shared his drumming skills with us and helped us keep the beat.

Ngake preparing to bust through the jawbone of the fish.

The jawbone of the fish, full of kaha!

The Whātaitai group working on springing up as the great fish spits them out of his throat!

Working out our choreography and practising moving as a group.

The jawbone of the fish.

Māui and his brothers haul up Te Ika-a-Māui. Heave!