Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Kinetic Art – DEconSTruction to ConSTructioN

Published on May 7, 2012 in Ngaio - rm 8 - Peter Holmstead and Uncategorized. 4 Comments

Early in Term Two Ngaio spent two Monday mornings making ‘Kinetic Art’. This was facilitated by Caroline McGlinchy, who ran our photo/collage exploration last year.

Kinetic Art was defined as sculptural art which had to move for its effect, with the movement induced either by human, motor or wind power. We also added the requirement that the pieces make some kind of noise.

We viewed a range of kinetic art, from Len Lye’s motorised and noisy pieces, Theo Jansen’s wind-powered beasts, to those along Cobham Drive which make up the capital’s wind sculpture walkway.

Len Lye http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE1CRjJxakQ

Theo Jansen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSKyHmjyrkA&feature=related

Wind Walkway http://vimeo.com/11830567

Then we set to work, in groups of four, dismantling a range of defunct video players, CD players and other electronic items picked up from the Happy Valley dump shop. The students found this incredibly satisfying…

The following Monday we had to construct the pieces, six in all.

They say pictures are more powerful than words.

DECONSTRUCTION DAY:

THE COMPLETED SCULPTURES:

Video Movie_0002

Video Movie_0001

Video Movie_0003

Video Movie_0004

Video Movie

Big THANKS to Tanya, Tania, Faith, Jo and Caroline, and those who lent tools!

That’s all folks!!!

Ti Kouka – Term 1, 2012

Published on April 4, 2012 in Ti Kouka - rm 6 - Monica Mercury and Uncategorized. 12 Comments

Tena Koutou Katoa e Nga WhanauKatoa

I have enjoyed this term a great deal, mainly because I have such a great class of tamariki, very supportive whanau and the fact that we have done so many fun activities! In the first week of term, students made ‘Holiday Powerpoints’ to share with the class, which were absolutely outstanding. We also began the term by creating fantastic collage portraits using coloured paper and I am always so impressed at how creative the kids are with the paper and shapes. We also had a great time learning how to write letters. Handwritten letters are fast becoming a thing of the past, so it was nice to have a go at putting their thoughts and ideas down on paper to others. There will be some sent home to family and friends and we have also sent a batch to a class at Nowra Hill Public School in New South Wales, Australia for a pen-pal exchange.

Ti Kouka has done some fun things in maths, focusing on addition and subtraction basic facts and statistics. For statistics, we learnt how to conduct a simple survey, use a tally chart and tally marks and create a proper bar graph with titles to show the results of our survey. It has been a great effort from the class and they are on display in the classroom, should you wish to see them. The last two weeks of term one will be around multiplication and division basic facts and strategies.

It was wonderful meeting up with parents for the Parent Conferences, catching up with whanau from last year and getting to know new families this year. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me.

Cross Country was the physical education focus for the term. Cross country is now an embedded part of the culture of our school and we are always so proud of the way that our children show determination and perseverance with trainings and on the day. Congratulations to those who qualified for the Southern Zone Cross Country event. Kia kaha tonu!

The last part of the term has been centred on the Noho Marae at Tapu Te Ranga in Island Bay. We have learnt about Marae Protocol and practised a mihimihi, (a simple introduction about themselves) and how to say some simple sentences in Te Reo Maori. We have also learnt about the difference between a marae and a wharenui and the correct names for parts of a wharenui. The Noho Marae is such a fun and educational experience and an important part of the bi-annual school calendar.

We will keep you posted about all the other activities for the rest of the year as they arise. Thank you for your continued support.

Hei koneira

Monica Mercury

Pohutukawa Term 1 2012

Published on April 3, 2012 in Pohutukawa - rm 1 - Jill Holmstead and Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Tena koutou katoa! In our first topic Kotahitanga, we have been learning to meet new friends, use their names and greetings in different languages. We found new ways to join in, encourage and help each other and celebrate success.

We played games and made graphs to find out and compare our favourite things. The PowerPoint about Book Bag Colours shows one investigation.

Our Bookbag Colours PowerPoint

Improving the ‘Butterfly Garden’ after the dry summer holidays was hard work. We potted Swan Plant seedlings that Jasmine had in her garden. The Monarch caterpillars grew fatter and changed into chrysalis and later butterflies. There are still more to waiting to emerge and we hope the weather is warm and calm for them.

The Butterfly Garden 2012 PowerPoint

We are excited about our visit to Tapu Te Ranga Marae and have learnt waiata, poi and weaving. We will have a hangi lunch at the marae and have learnt about wharenui and hangi from websites. We have compared different ways of cooking and the making a hangi seems a lot harder than making jelly. It will be interesting to taste when we go to the marae.

Jelly – Website Version

Jill Holmstead and Pohutukawa students.

Harakeke Term 1 2012

Published on March 26, 2012 in Harakeke - rm 5 - Liz Chalmers and Uncategorized. 6 Comments

Collaborative Graphing

carefully measuring his bars

Time is flying this term and man are we having fun! In Harakeke we have been working so hard. We have been working on surveying our classmates, gathering our data and creating bar graphs from our information. Throughout our work we have also been focusing on being helpful members of Harakeke in which we work together when a classmate is in need! As the weeks go on three children have to pick a member of the class for the Kete Aroha award and so we are paying close attention to what being a good friend means. We are a friendly and helpful bunch. We have also been working on creating self portraits. We learned where the different parts of the face sit on the head and we used mirrors and pencils to sketch our faces. We learned about paint mixing and then mixed paint to match our skin colour as best we could. We then water-coloured our faces and backgrounds and used a black sharpie to create the distinct outlines of our faces. We have also been learning about weaving. We used different paint techniques to make our paper strips and then created woven pieces intertwining all of our lovely painted strips. We now have beautiful bits of artwork that have small pieces of all of our hard work!

creating picture frames on our portraits

after carefully choosing his pieces he is now weaving them together!

We have also been learning our mihimihi and creating powerpoint visual mihi in preparation for our trip to the Marae. I am so impressed with the class’s work on these and the new found confidence we all have with computers and power point. We are looking forward to the trip this week where we can share our mihi and feast on a hangi. I can’t believe how quickly this term has gone, I am so proud of you Harakeke for all your hard work and I will miss you while I am gone. But now that you are all so technologically savvy I expect heaps of emails! Ka pai Harakeke!

Sincerely, Gillian

Kowhai – Term One, 2012

Published on March 26, 2012 in Kowhai - rm 2 - Lara Nemet and Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Tena Koutou, welcome to Kowhai 2012.

We are all pleased to be back at school after enjoying a fun summer holiday and are already over half way into the first term. We have been working hard to establish class routines and settle into the start of a new year. Together we have made a class treaty that will help make Kowhai a safe, fun learning environment. We have all agreed to abide to the treaty.

Every afternoon for the first four weeks we trained for the HVS cross country. We worked towards achieving personal goals. On Tuesday 6 March we held our school cross country. The children ran their best and tried to reach their goals. Lots of mums and dads came to cheer. It was a great morning and I am very proud of all of Kowhai! We have also enjoyed learning tennis skills every Wednesday morning and have got very good at balancing the ball on the racquet strings.

Kowhai’s environmental responsibility is ‘Birds of the Valley’ and being responsible for the care of our school chickens. Dave has been sharing his expertise about chicken care with us and we will buddy up with Rm 3 children to learn about feeding them. The children were each given an egg to sample before we started selling the eggs to the community. Our HVS Rainforest Free Range Eggs are now on sale. You can come to Room 2 on a Monday or Friday with your money to order delicious eggs.

Despite the windy weather we had a fun day out at Lyall Bay beach. We walked to the beach on Friday down the zig zag paths and steps. Some of the children had fun playing in the surf, a bit too cold for me! The wind picked up after lunch so we cut our trip short and headed back to school.

We are looking forward to our Marae trip this week and eating a hangi lunch. We have been practicing our mihimihi and have started making a digital mihi on powerpoint. We will share these when we have finished.

Come and have a look around the classroom at all the wonderful things your child has been doing this term. It is hard to believe the term is nearly over.

Lara Nemet

Karaka Term One 2012 – Kia ora!

Published on March 22, 2012 in Karaka - rm 4 - Claire Rowat and Uncategorized. 2 Comments

We have had a fantastic start to the year. In Karaka we are an enthusiastic and positive bunch! Karaka have been particularly welcoming to me as a new teacher to the school. They have taught me a lot about how the school works and where to find things that I may need.

We started the year by setting our class rules. We are focusing on three main areas of safety; safety of our bodies, safety of our feelings and safety of our belongings. The class wrote the rules as a group and agreed to them by signing an agreement which is hung on the wall in our room.

Our class environmental responsibility is looking after the worms and composting. Dave has been into our room and shared lots of new learning about how we can keep the worms healthy and happy. Each day we empty the lunch bins and when the bins are full we layer the compost pile. We have learnt that we need to layer the compost to keep it alive. We first put paper towels in and then all the delicious food scraps followed by mulch to give the compost pile its structure like the bones in our body give us our structure.

Our class art has been a highlight. We have been learning about portraits and where the features on our face are positioned. We then learnt about Modigliani who is an artist who paints portraits. We used his ideas of do a Modigliani style portrait. They have come out amazingly.

We have got into the flow of full on reading, writing, maths and topic. We have been focusing on descriptive language in writing so our written work is interesting and paints a picture in the head of the reader. In maths we have just finished statistics. We have worked particularly hard on tally charts and bar graphs. We are also learning about the Marae in topic so we understand as much as we can before our visit in Week 8 which we are all looking forward to.

I was a proud teacher on the day of Cross Country. It was fantastic to see everyone in the class put their best effort into the event. I know that everyone pushed themselves hard because we were exhausted for the rest of the day.

We have been watching the caterpillar chrysalises closely. Hopefully we will have a butterfly soon!

What a fantastic start to the year we have had!

Ngaio Happenings – EMR 2012

Published on March 19, 2012 in Ngaio - rm 8 - Peter Holmstead and Uncategorized. 3 Comments

Kia ora and welcome to the first blog of the year. Please feel free to leave a comment or a question and I will try and answer it asap.

We have had a busy term, getting straight into Experiencing Marine Reserves (EMR) in the first week. After the classroom session, where Zoe Studd from EMR introduced the programme, we were straight to the Kilbirnie Pool for snorkel training. This involved learning the safety signals, being fitted for the 7mm wetsuits and practicing swimming around using boogie boards and identifying sea creatures. Big thanks go to the parents for transport and assistance.

Then the next week it was off to Island Bay to study the rocky shore creatures such as the crested blenny…

plus do a beach tidy up and survey the bay for specific sea creatures. The weather was a cracker!…

We were counting the numbers of blue moki, spotties, banded wrasse and paua…

Some students were so happy to be there, but the water temperature soon sorted that…

We also visited the Marine Education Centre (Bait Shed) and enjoyed holding many creatures in the touch pool. We also saw some amazing things such as the Cook Strait spider crabs, which had their own extra cold (7 degree) tank. These were awaiting research as some fishers were beginning to target them for export…

Now we are following up the research with Action Projects. We need to share our knowledge with the wider community by creating posters, brochures, websites and PowerPoints. Some groups are also fundraising money for the Marine Education Centre and Hector’s Dolphin Trust, and another group created a marine reserves board game.

We hope to share our Action Projects at an EMR Celebration Day, March 30, 1.30 – 2.30 at the Island Bay Surf Club rooms. This is the day of our Noho Marae at Taputeranga Marae. I hope a few students can stay awake enough to share their projects. There were 200 students from Wellington taking part in EMR this year – amazing!

Please leave a comment, and have a great Easter holiday

Peter

Mahoe Term One – Kia ora!!!

Published on March 9, 2012 in Mahoe - rm 7 - Lizzy Luman and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Kia ora and welcome to Mahoe in 2012.

We have had a busy term so far and the class is working well together. We have been working hard at getting the classroom routines going and have made a class treaty which we all put our hands prints on as an agreement to this.

We have started to find out what a Marae is and the parts of a Marae? Next we are going to learn to say our Mihi’s and learn what the kawa/protocols/rules that need to be followed on the Marae. This is the lead up to our Marae trip to Noho Marae in week 8.

The children have been writing lots of stories about the fun that they had in the summer holidays, Lyall Bay Beach Trip and Cross country and have published these on the computers. These are on our back wall in the classroom.

Also the children have been creating some fantastic art work making body portraits, buddy portraits and beautiful weaving.

The children are enjoying leaning about statistics especially when they could bring in their favourite toy. They are also learning how to add and subtract with small numbers using materials and their hands.

What a great start to the year!

Lizzy Luman and the children of Mahoe.

Kowhai Term 4

Published on December 16, 2011 in Kowhai - rm 2 - Lara Nemet and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Term four is coming to an end – time sure does fly by. This is the last term the children in Kowhai will be Year 2’s! We have had a very productive year learning lots and having fun with our friends.

We ended term 3 on a high after the school production. The children worked very hard to learn all the words of the songs and their dance steps. I was very proud of how well they danced on the nights and they all looked fantastic in their costumes. They had lots of fun designing and making our scarecrow props, I’m sure Ma’a Nonu would be very impressed!

We enjoyed making cardboard bird houses with Caroline during our art session and some children made bird food with Jo. Ren’s mother helped us put our bird houses up in the rainforest, so keep an eye out for them. We climbed trees to find just the right spot. We made them to attract birds to the school and we hope the birds will like them! We were also fortunate enough to do some bird banding with the ‘Birdman’ Peter. The children’s faces said it all, they were delighted to be able to hold and let the Yellow Eyes free after Peter put bands on their legs.

A highlight of the term three of course was the unexpected SNOW! We wrote some wonderful Haiku poetry about the day it snowed at school. We have started this term off by training for our school athletics. This involves throwing, running and jumping.

This term we have been learning about ‘Our Amazing Bodies’. The children have come up with some very interesting questions. They have learnt to gather and use information from different resources to write explanations and reports to answer their questions. We had a very exciting visit from the Life Education Caravan Harold the giraffe and Charlotte. We helped Harold do his homework and learnt all about ‘Air to Live’. This term has filled with lots of fun learning. We are all looking forward to our summer holiday. Thank you to all the parents in Kowhai for their help and support throughout the year. I wish you safe and enjoyable holiday and a happy New Year.

Lara Nemet

Nikau Happenings Term 4

Published on December 6, 2011 in Nikau - rm 3 - Matt Titcombe and Uncategorized. 2 Comments

This term has flown by and Nikau have been busy doing lots of different things. We have really enjoyed our study of “The Body’ – we have discovered a lot of facts about how our bodies work. We have studied bones, blood, kidneys, the heart, the bladder, lungs and so much more.

In pairs we created some skeletons of a body. Here are a couple of the finished products!!

Created by Ned and Ossian

Created by Ella and Riley

Here are some interesting facts we wanted to share

-we have 206 bones (Tamrah)

-the heart pumps blood all around our body (Ned)

-we have 700 muscles (Ella)

-the kidneys work like a washing machine cleaning our blood (Tasmin)

-a broken bone can heal by itself usually (Miha)

-your blood goes around your whole body in 1 minute (Flynn)

We have written a report each about our digestive system.

Here are a couple:

Miha’s explanation report

Do you know where your food goes?

It doesn’t just fall down a big hole and come out your butt! It’s much more!

First you chew up the food. Then it goes down the oesophagus into your stomach which mixes it up. Then to goes into your small intestines. The good stuff soaks though into the body. The waste goes into the large intestines and comes out as poop!

So now you know all about it.

Joe’s explanation report

This is your amazing digestive system!

First it starts in your mouth where your food gets chewed up by your teeth.

After that your food slides down your oesophagus to your stomach. Then your stomach grinds up your food into an even SLOPPIER substance!

After that your small intestines suck out all the fibre and the waste goes into your large intestine.

Then your food sits in your large intestine for a few days. Finally your food goes out your rectum as poo.

You see –it really is amazing!!

We have also spent quite a bit of time in the school veggie garden. We weeded it and cleared our all the old plants.

We experimented and made ‘broad bean dip’ with the broad beans we grew. There was definitely a mixed response to that!!!! We have planted beetroot, leeks, spring onions, lettuces, courgettes, cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, and tomatoes. Think that’s everything!! Most things are really taking off.