Pink Shirt Day

 Today is Pink Shirt Day to help raise awareness for anti-bullying. Most of our kura wore pink clothes, but some dressed up really pink! They looked amazing. 

Pink Shirt Day raises money for the Mental Health Foundation.

We can show kindness by helping others, complimenting others, letting other people play our games, using nice words, including others, sharing with others, showing our 3rs (respect, responsibility, and resilience), smiling at people, and being polite. 

Every day, try to give someone a compliment and chuck them a smile if they look sad.

Happy Pink Shirt Day

Footprints of Kupe

 Excitement washed over us as we arrived at Manea - Footprints of Kupe, in Opononi on Wednesday.

Our guide took us on a walk through a garden of carved statues. She told us old stories about the gods and how they helped Kupe on his journey to Aotearoa.  Next, we went into the dark theatre where we watched a terrifying but cool show about Kupe and the Giant Wheke. We felt Te Wheke's tentacles touch our legs and some people were very scared.

We learnt that Kupe sacrificed his baby son who became a taniwha in the Hokianga. We thought this was pretty sad. There are 2 other taniwha at the entrance to the Hokianga Harbour their names are Araiteuru and Niniwa. Tumatuenga the God of war gave Kupe strength so he didn't give up on his journey. Kupe had his best friend Ngahue journey with him on the waka Tawhirirangi.

The trip was exciting and fun, even if we did get a little scared. We are enjoying learning about Kupe.

Room 16's New Students

 On Monday, four new students came into our class, and sadly, we moved three of our friends into Room 1.  Our new students are Year 1 students from Nga Rau Rito and one of them is a Year 3, new to our school altogether. 

We are excited to have them in our class and have welcomed them with kindness and lots of help so they know how we do things in Room 16. 

We look forward to working with them for the rest of the year.

Making Waka

 This term we have been learning about waka. We made two types of waka. 

The first waka we made was a waka haurua. We made them out of harakeke stalks, wire, popsicle sticks, and paper. First, we draw, decorate, and cut out our sail. We carefully hot glued the popsicle sticks to the harakeke then we attached the sail using wire and tape. Today we put them in the water to see if they would float and to race them. However, everyone got excited and started splashing them which wrecked the sails. Some of them survived and sailed with the wind. We had heaps of fun making and sailing our waka. Next time, we will be careful and not splash them so they all sail better. 

The second waka was made out of clay. We rolled our clay into a log shape. Then, we carved out the center of our log to make the waka shape. Using the leftover clay we made the tauihu and taurapa. We then attached them all together and smoothed them out. Finally, we carved designs into our waka. We found that task tricky but fun. We are impressed with how they turned out.

We hope you like our waka too.

Room 16's Assembly

 Today, we had our assembly. We had to show our learning to the rest of the school. 

We chose to share what we know about the types of waka and the actions we learnt to help us remember the names. We also showed our artwork that was inspired by Andy Warhol, in a style called pop art. Our next item was showing the school Keyanah's sign language that we have been learning. Our final item was a play called Rātā me te Rākau. It is about showing respect to Tane Mahuta for the gifts he gives us. We should always thank him when we use things from nature.

Next time we do assembly we need to work on talking louder so everyone can hear us clearly and also making sure we are quiet when we are not speaking.

Some of our whanau came to watch, we were proud to perform in front of them. We were a bit shy and nervous, but we still pulled off a great show. 

Two Babies and a Funeral

 Yesterday, one of our class fish passed away. We were very sad. We placed it in a box, on a bed of comfortable leaves and flowers, and wrote messages on the lid. 

Today, we all took turns digging a hole in the garden to bury our fish. We each put some dirt on top and said goodbye, then we sang a waiata. 

When we came back inside we discovered 2 baby fish in the tank. They are so small they are hard to see, but they are so cute! We are excited to watch them grow.

Tsunami Warning in the North

Last Friday, there was an earthquake under the sea that caused a tsunami warning in our area. People next to the water had to evacuate to high ground. We were safe because our school is on a hill, but some of us had to go home so we were safe with our whanau. We felt scared because we thought it could get us if it was a big one, and we had whanau that worked near the water that we were worried for.

Some of us went home and watched the news. Those that stayed at school played and we learned about tsunamis.

We learned that:

1. We are safe because we are up high - get to high ground if you are near water.

2. A tsunami is a surge of water that causes a wave.

3. A tsunami can be as small as 30cm or as big as 100ft.

4. We should swim in rivers or the beach after a tsunami warning as it could be dangerous. 

We felt relieved that it turned into nothing major.

Water Safety

 On Monday we had a water safety lesson. We put life jackets on and learnt how to block our airways as we jumped into the water. We learnt to float in the help position, how to get into a huddle and how to make a chain to move through the water as a group. The non-swimmers had to through the safety line to swimmers who were signalling for help. 

We found it hard to fall back into the water because it was scary. We all achieved it though and we felt proud of ourselves. 

We love water safety lessons and can't wait for next weeks lesson.

Introducing Room 16

In Room 16, we were learning to share about ourselves. We made a video that showed all the things we like to do as a class. We learnt that we had to be quiet when we are recording scenes, and that we had to speak to the camera so you can hear what we were saying. The part we found most challenging was saying our lines at the same time. Next time we are going to practice our lines more together. 

We love our video, we hope you like it too.

Room 16 Explores Kawakawa Primary School

 On Tuesday (our first day back at school), Room 16 went for a walk around the school to show our new tamariki around. We took pictures of all the different places and learnt where to find all the teachers and other staff. We also learnt how to walk quietly with our hands behind our back so we don't touch things as we go. This shows respect.

Here is our video of our exploration.