What a wonderful time we had in our school garden today. We had lots of energy because our sports day was postponed. We decided to weed our garden. We pulled out the old plants and weeds, chopped them up, and put them in the compost bin. We turned the compost bin , putting the fresh weeds on the bottom and forked the rotting compost on top. At the bottom of the compost heap was lovely, nutritious soil. We spread this compost around the plants in the garden to feed them. We also watered them with our famous worm juice! Our garden looks lovely and we are now ready to plant more spring vegetables.

Room 1 and 7 went to Pilots Beach to weed and plant for the Little Blue Penguins as part of the Kid's restore New Zealand programme. There were aroubd 150 plants and we planted the majority of them. We also planted and camouflaged some special penguin boxes that the penguins could live in. They looked for comfy, for a penguin of course! Sally Carson , who was in charge of the programme, said that we were the most efficient school that had planted at Pilots Beach so far. That night Sally and Olivier went back and saw a few penguins living in the new boxes, this was very cool. We look forward to returning over the years and watching the trees grow and knowing that we have played a part in restoring the penguin habitat.

Packing and Delivering our Christmas Boxes

As a result of our fantastic fair fundraiser we were able to purchase enough things to fill 27 Christmas boxes for Operation Christmas Child. These photos show us packing our box. Each box had a soft toy to love, a tennis ball and a small toy to play with. They also three books for the children to write in, a pencil case with pens, pencils, a rubber, pencil sharpener and coloured pencils. We also included a face cloth, toothbrush and soap. Each child also included a photo of themselves and wrote a letter. We paid for the postage on line and pasted our barcode on so they could be tracked. We think they are going to Papua new Guinea. Four children were chosen to take the boxes into town ready for delivery. We found out that this will be the only time in their lives the children will get these boxes.We felt very proud with our efforts. By Ben

Room 1 Class Fair

Room 1 children ran a class fair to raise money to buy items to fill boxes for Operation Christmas Child. The fair had a toy stall, cake stall and book stall as well as some games such as Guess the Lollies in the Jar, Throw the Sponge. All of the Year 6 children worked on a stall and they also helped the younger with their shopping. The fair raised $550 which was an amazing amount for a fair run by children, for children.

New Zealand's First Medal

New Zealand equestrian team won a bronze medal, our first medal for the 2012 Olympics. They won in the showjumping event at Grenwich Park in London. Germany won the gold medal and Britian won the silver medal.

Rowers Take Away Our Second Medal

Women's double skull pair Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown paddled their way to New Zealand bronze medal of the 2012 Olympics. The pair were second until the last 500m when Australia broke away and beat them by a narrow margin. Great Britian won the race, their first gold medal of the Olympics.

Sound - Get Your Message Across

As part of Term 2's topic " Get your message across" we learnt about sound and how sound travels. The photos are of us doing experiments and finding how sound works. We made tin can telephones and found that when the string was tight the vibrations traveled along the string and vibrated on the tin can and then the sound went into your ear. Another experiment was making rice bubbles jump by shouting through a paper megaphone. The vibrations from our voices made the vibrations go through the gladwrap and the ricebubbles dance. We had lots of fun finding out about vibrations and sound.

Making Soup and Bread for the Shortest Day

On the 23rd June Room 1 children celebrated the shortest day (or the longest night) by making vegetable soup. Everyone brought along one vegetable and we cut/ grated them and put them in a pot. Max brought along some lamb shanks so we had one pot with meat and another without. We also used our measurement skills to make bread rolls. The soup was very tasty and the bread rolls delicious. It was also a beautiful day and we ate it outside, even the seagulls enjoyed some soup!

Book Character Dress Up Day

On Friday we celebrated book week with a book character dress up day. The whole school gathered and each class went up and the children introduced themselves and shared the character from the book they had dressed as. The teachers dressed up as well. Room 1 was especially lucky as Willy Wonka brought in chocolate from his chocolate factory to share! Yum

Dot the Bay

We were really lucky to have Kerry and Pamela, visiting artists, come to teach each class in our school. We went outside and and looked for colours that represented how we felt about "The Bay". In our sketch books we drew patterns that inspired. We were given three colours - white, blue and yellow, as well as a colour of our choice to paint the background on our a spot. The next week we transferred our favourite pattern onto our spot using the techniques of impasto and scraffito.
We looked at the works of Yayoi Kusama who uses colour and pattern in her works.
We took our spots outside and made an art installation. Can you spot where we dotted our spots!!

School Mural Project

 On Friday 17th February our school joined together to  Thank the artists, Simon Kaan and Martin Poppelwell who have worked all week to create our lovely new mural. We enjoyed going out to watch the progress. Simon and Martin were presented with a Rata tree each.

Kelly Sports

 We really enjoyed the Kelly Sports people coming to show us some of the skills and games they teach in their after school programme.
We had lots of fun!!

Signing Our Class Treaty

On the 10th February 2012 Room 1 children and teachers signed the class treaty. By signing we agreed to obey our class rules. We signed it on our school flag.

Treaty of Waitangi

 

Monday 6th February is a holiday to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.  We had a scavenger hunt to find out information about this historic event. The Treaty of Waitangi is a document for the agreement of partnership between the Maori and Pakeha people. James Busby and William Hobson, wrote the treaty. It was translated into Maori by Henry Williams, a missionary. A lot of debate went on about what was in the treaty. The treaty was signed initially at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands on the 6th February 1840. Hone Heke was the first to sign. It was also signed at Otakou on June 13th and many other places around New Zealand. After the treaty was signed their was a lot of conflict around the translation of the treaty from English to Maori.

Year 6 Class Photo

Hi we are the Year 6 class for 2012. We have 22 children and two teachers. Mrs Hawker teaches on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Mrs Ward teaches on Wednesday. We also have a 3rd year teacher trainee, Ms Crompton.
We are excited about the year ahead and looking forward to being the role models of our school.
Keep reading our blog and find out more about what we are doing in Room 1.