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.

Room 5 at Raranga Matihiko

 On Monday Room 5 went to Waitangi to participate in our last Raranga Matihiko lesson. We learned about electrical circuits and how they are required to power electronics, we also got to make a simple circuit to help us understand this better. 

We then learned about microbits (little computers that are inside all electronics) and used makecode.com to program it. Our task was to first program the microbit to show our name, this was pretty easy and we completed it quickly. Two of us even managed to program it to sing happy birthday to Whaea Christina as it was her birthday. Our final task was to imagine the special taonga in the museum. We had to write a code that would make the mircobit send an alarm sound and write a warning, that would alert security if the item was picked up. There were some very interesting ideas for what we wanted the warning system to be!

Finally, we got to walk around the museum, looking at how a microbit can pick up temperature and light in the museum to protect the taonga. 

We had a really awesome day and learned heaps!  Massive thanks to Whaea Kerry and Whaea Christina for helping us through the world of block coding. We look forward to using the programs more in our learning.

Typing Practice

Last week I introduced the typing programme  https://www.typingclub.com/ to Room 5 to help them practice touch typing. The engagement in this task is phenomenal! They all worked hard to master the levels and challenged each other. One student got 100% and 76 words per minute! Outstanding!
I have put the challenge to my class that the top 3 typists at the end of the year will receive a lunch shout. They are pretty eager to win and are practising at any chance they get. Our teacher aides are also getting involved and pretty competitive haha.
The goal is to be able to type quickly, without much thought, so that ideas can flow onto the page more easily. I look forward to seeing how fast they get!

Kawakawa Balm Packaging

Last week we finally managed to finish our kawakawa balm packaging and we are pretty proud of the results! I am even very impressed with the creative way that the kids took photos of their finished product.
We made nets using Google drawings, and learnt how to make the shapes even sized using format options. We added pictures, natural colours and information to the boxes as you would expect to see when you buy a product.
When they were printed out, we glued them onto card, cut them out, folded along the lines, and put the box together. We learnt that it is not easy to fold card and we should have used cereal boxes which is a bit thinner. We also learnt the importance of cutting and folding tidily and ensuring our net was fully glued on. When we did this they boxes came out tidier.
We also made a label to go on the balm container. These had to be tiny, so we had to adjust the Google drawing size and view it at 100% to allow us to get the right size. We then increased the view to 200% to allow us to work on it. These were printed onto labels and stuck on.