Checking the Hive

Over the long weekend Matua Trigg came in to help us open up the hive to check for potential swarms and to look at the general health of our hive. What a buzz it was for me!! Our bee suits had just arrived on Friday, so I put mine on and watched what Matua Trigg did to check the hive. First he pulled all the layers off to expose the frames. I could't believe how many bees were in there! He then pulled out each frame to check them and pointed out the brood cells (where the eggs have been laid - they are the browny coloured cells), the pollen cells and nectar cells. A very healthy mix of all three. He lifted each frame until we found the queen. She is like a tank, pushing through the worker bees and much easier to spot than I thought. Can you spot her in the video? He then put the hive back together and closed it up. Apparently we are ready for 2 more frames and a honey box to put on top. Very exciting stuff. I can't wait to be confident to do it by myself with the kids helping! Thanks heaps Trigg!

 

Our Bee Garden Update

Our bee garden is finally complete and we have our hive in. How exciting! We had a working bee in the holidays to get it finished and the students and adults who came to help did an amazing job! Our hive arrived on the last night of the school holidays which was a nice surprise for our class.

 

Then and Now Videos

In week 5, we had our grandparents come in to school to tell us about their childhood lives. It was so interesting making comparisons to how we live today. We take for granted things like power and telephones, even cars and t.v. were luxuries in the 'olden days'.
We made some videos to show what we learnt, enjoy.

FUN RUN 2019

This week we had our school fun run. We caught the train to the United Kawakawa Rugby club for our fun run. We had races in each age group. There were lots of fun activities to do during the race and we managed to find some mud. Check out our video below.

BEE GARDEN

Yay, we have finally started our bee garden this week. We are super excited to get going on this. We marked out our garden areas and have started digging them out.  Here is a look at one of our afternoons working.

Doctors Office

On Friday we had our assembly. We had some fun with this skit called Doctor's Office. We hope you enjoy it. 

The End of our Rocket Challenge

Our rocket challenge has come to an end, but what a fun and engaging journey it was! We learnt all about aerodynamics, Newton's laws, forces and thrust. We worked together to create rockets and had a blast launching them. We also entered into a competition to show what we learnt, here is our video entry.

Here are a few pictures and some videos of our experience. Room 6 has some epic videos which they will post later.

Bee Garden

We are finally on the path to getting our bees! This term we researched bee friendly gardens and created some designs for our bee garden. We put together the ideas from all of our gardens, discussed new ideas, and came up with our final design. Next term we will get to work putting our design into reality and then purchasing our hive! Our space will be very cool, with hexagon shaped gardens full of vegetables and flowers. Bird baths, fruit trees, manuka trees and pebble pathways. Watch this space for updates :)

Raranga Matakiko - Exploring Scratch

This week Rooms 5 and 6  have been very fortunate to be apart of the Raranga Matahiko program with the Waitangi Treaty Grounds Education team. They came to school with all their flash devices for us to use and taught us how to use Scratch for coding. We were given specific instructions that had to be part of our code, took photos of ourselves to add as a Sprite, taught how to create a backgrounds in Paint 3D and upload that into Scratch to use, and finally how to add sound bites too. We worked in partners and were allowed to be as creative as we wanted.
Thank you heaps to Whaea Kerry and Whaea Monika for your patience and support with this. We are very much looking forward to our trip to Waitangi later in the term to create our real projects.

Here are some of our creations, we hope you enjoy. Check out our individual blogs to see the rest of our projects :)

Class of the Week - Week 3

Last week Room's 5 and 6 were given Class of the Week for our awesome behaviour. We were stoked to get this award and the treats that came with it. We have been watching very closely to see who will get it this week. (Room 6 was a bit busy when Whaea Dana remembered to get a photo so Room 5 is representing this time)

Module 3: Test Launch

Room 6 had great fun doing test launches with Matua Pete. We looked at the variables we could change such as the amount of water in the rocket and the air pressure. The rocket went the highest when the water level was 250ml and air pressure was 60psi. We look forward to designing and making our own rockets. #TheWonderProject

Rocket Challenge: Module 2: Solving the Problem

This week we started Module 2 of our Rocket Challenge. It was all about safety and recognising the hazards that could take place during a launch. We decided that in order for us to be safe, we must stand well back during the launch (have a coned area to stay out of), wear our protective gear (safety goggles and vests), and ensure we do not go over 60 PSI when we pump it up.
We also looked at the engineering design process: Ask, Imagine, Create, Improve. We asked the question 'I wonder how to make my rocket fly?' and will be brainstorming some ideas for what we think our rockets will look like.
We are one step closer to the build and can't wait! Next week is all about force.

Assembling the Rocket Launcher

Today we had a bit of time put aside to assemble our rocket launcher for The Wonder Project's Rocket Challenge. A small group of eager boys worked together, using the video to guide them through each step. It was a challenge and they displayed great resilience and persistence, committed to finish even though the lunch bell rang.
We hope we have constructed it correctly... time will tell. :)
Keep following our Rocket Challenge posts to find out.

Young Leaders Conference

On Wednesday our group of Kaiarahi (our school leaders) went to Auckland to be part of the National Young Leaders Conference. They listened to many inspiring leaders and came away realising the importance of having actual conversations with people and being positive in life. Take a look at the important messages they heard in the presentation below. This was shared today in our class' assembly.  

Term 2 Week 2 Assembly

Today we were up again to host our school assembly. We shared some of our work on voyaging and our Kaiarahi shared a presentation on their trip to Auckland for the Young Leaders Conference. We got to showcase our beautiful singing voices when we performed the song "Homai to Poho", a song we learnt in just one week. Finally, we had some fun with a carpool karaoke. We hope you enjoy our items. Homai To Poho Carpool Karaoke Bloopers

Voyaging

Last term we learnt a lot about voyaging, especially early voyaging and how they navigated their way across the seas. For one of our assembly items today we decided to share some of the information we learnt. We each had to make our own DLO to show our learning so watch out for them on our individual blogs.

Rocket Challenge - Day 1

This term we are so lucky to be part of The Wonder Project's Rocket Challenge! This is an 8 week programme that uses STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) to learn about how rockets work and then design, construct and launch our own rockets.
For our first session we got to meet our ambassadors; Matua Peter and Matua Troy. Both work as engineers in Northland and have given up their time to share their passion and guide us through our rocket challenge learning.
We got to open our rocket and see what was inside - a parachute man, safety goggles, high vis vests, a clipboard and most importantly... the launcher (which we need to put together still).
We formed our 'crews' and researched different jobs that are associated with rockets. We learnt about 21 different jobs and thought about the ones we liked the sound of.

Next week we learn about rockets and the engineering design process - we may even begin designing our own rockets! Watch this space for Day 2 of our rocket challenge!

Excellent attendance

Well done to everyone who received an Excellent attendance award today. 4 or less days absent this term. Attendance = success. 

School Swimming Sports

On Friday we had our school swimming sports at the college. Here is a little video of our day. We had lots of fun and we all tried so hard in our races. Some of us are off to inter school swimming sports this Friday to compete against the other schools in our area. Enjoy our video.

Are We There Yet????

This term we have been very fortunate to have gone on the Women's suffrage journey with School Kit. Our students have learnt how important this movement was for our country and for women in general. They have written poems, found out about some of NZ's most influential women and interviewed a woman in their lives. I am beyond proud of the thought, creativity and effort that most put into their presentations and know they are very proud too. They learnt so much about their interviewee and were stoked to have had the experience. Thank you so much School Kit for opening our eyes to a part of our history we have not looked into yet.
#arewethereyet #schoolkit

Here is us sharing our learning in our assembly.

Week 8 Assembly

Today Rooms 5 and 6 hosted our second assembly for the term. This assembly had a slightly sombre approach as we dedicated some items to the victims of the Christchurch shootings. We managed to lighten the mood a little with our dance - a challenge by Whaea Sally and Nga Rau Puawai accepted. We also shared some mahi we did on Women's suffrage, thanks to School Kit, and presented the song 'Shallow' with our very talented Carney playing the guitar. We were fortunate to have Kelvin Davis attend our assembly as well and speak to the school. Whaea Dana and Whaea Jess are ridiculously proud of our kids, they blow us away with their talent, confidence and resilience to overcome their fears of speaking in front of an audience.

Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti

Last week we were very fortunate to be given the chance to learn about and board Sir Hector Busby's waka, Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti. It is an exceptional, double hulled waka built with traditional rope lashings and made out of kauri timber. It is a thing of beauty. We also learnt some waka drills and about how those who journey on this waka use star navigation or way finding on their voyages.

It was an amazing opportunity and we are so thankful to have had that experience.

Switch it up challenge

Another item from our assembly was ' The Switch it up Challenge'. Satyn, Ocean and Tunisia learnt the dance themselves off You tube and performed it. What a great effort girls. Who is going to take up the challenge next?

Treaty of Waitangi

These are the facts we shared at our assembly. We each had to find a fact that we thought was important for people to know about the Treaty of Waitangi.  We are also doing projects with more information we will share these when we are finished.

E Ngaki

Another one of our assembly items was one of our favourite songs we learnt last year ' E Ngaki'. We learnt actions for it last week and then performed to the school. Hopefully we will teach the school the actions this term.

Welcome back to 2019

Welcome back to 2019. We have been at school for 2 weeks and are starting to settle into our new classes.  We had the challenge of being on the first assembly this year. We used what we had been learning in class about our school values and  The Treaty of Waitangi for 2 of our items. Here is our video showing the wrongs and rights of our school values. We hope you enjoy it.