A Hangi lunch

We finished our celebration of Matariki this week with a Hangi lunch. Two of our parents Chase and Bex organised a steam hangi for the whole school. Thank you to all our parents / whānau for helping out with kai and for serving the hangi to our tamariki.

Discovery Time / STEAM - Coding #3

More students were introduced to 'loops' in their 'Coding' session today and some found it to be quite challenging. Most students learned to use the virtue of perseverance.

Matariki - Tamarereti waka and stars art

We started to celebrate Matariki and watched a Matariki myth movie. At the start of the movie the sky was black, there were no stars. Tamarereti went out fishing in his waka. He caught 3 fish but then the wind died down and he fell asleep. The wind carried him to the shore. He made a fire and cooked his fish. Tamarereti saw some rocks that were glowing. He got into his waka and threw them into the sky. They became the stars of Matariki.

Students' pictures

Cultural Festival

Our Junior students performed their waiata at the yearly Cluster Cultural Festival.  This was the first time our tamariki performed in a large hall and in front of a huge audience.  They used the virtues of 'Excellence' and 'Courage’ and we are so proud of them. We all had a great time and at lunch time some of us had hangi.

Thank you to Matua Grant who tutored them during the weekly Kapa Haka practices.  Thank you to all our parents who came to support us.

Discovery Time / STEAM - Coding #2

Students continued their 'Coding' session today where some of them (as each one is working in their own pace and ability level) were introduced to 'loops'... They worked on 'procedures' 1 and 2 without the mentioning of their usefulness for patterns...

Students collaborated and worked individually.

Number ID, Counting and Grouping

The students in Room 4 are learning to ID numbers and to use a range of counting and grouping strategies with whole numbers. They are learning to generalise that the next counting number gives the result of adding one object to a set and that counting the number of objects in a set tells how many there are.

How are seeds important to us?

Students brainstormed how important seeds are to us and how we can use them. People also plant seeds to grow trees, the wood from the trees are being used to make houses. 

Students were asked what comes from seeds. General answers... vegetables, fruit... 

Micayla: "You can also make a tree house from the wood"

Zavier: "You can make a fence"

They learned that people also make paper from wood and that some of our clothes come from the cotton plant. From plants people also make soap and hand cream.

Students then wrote their stories...

Micayla

Zavier

Poppy

Milton

Hiria

Shape Collage Art

Students were provided with one sheet of white paper each, a variety of shapes in different sizes. When drawing their picture, they were encouraged to overlapped their shapes.

They used pastels to colour in their shapes...

Students were encouraged to discuss their work and the work of others and to change their designs as their ideas developed.