Cultural Learning

On Thursday last week the Karawha team went to the Ko Tāne Experience at Willowbank.
We were welcomed onto the 'marae' and we listened to the kaumatua as he greeted us in Te Reo Māori. We loved listening to the group sang waiata, did a haka, performed with poi and ti rakau.
Then it was our turn.
We learned how to use a poi.

We learned how to use the ti rakau

Then, we had to perform in front of everyone.

After that we had lunch. We went with our small groups and explored the rest of Willowbank and all of the wonderful animals there. We had a fantastic day!

Science

Wow! It’s Term 4 already! We have just completed two very busy weeks of swimming lessons at Aquagym. All of the children who had swimming lessons have learned so much and gained lots of confidence in the water. We will be ready for the Summer.

We have also been learning a lot of new and fascinating things to do with Science. Our student teacher, Mr Colvin, has been taking us for these lessons.

We had two bottles that were joined together. The bottom one was filled with water. We tipped the bottles upside down. The water went through slowly because big bubbles of air slowed the water down. But when Mr Colvin turned the bottles around some thing really amazing happened.

The spun around and made a vortex (tornado).  The water passed through very quickly. It was amazing! We learned lots of new words – vortex, air pressure, water pressure, displaced and hypothesis.

Learning as it Happens!

Early in Term 3 Jay brought in a very strange looking cocoon. It looked very old and we all thought that it was dead because it rattled.
Mrs Geal put it safely on the desk and we all forgot about it.

This is what it looked like.

In the last week of the term Mrs Geal and Mr Colvin found this big beautiful moth in the classroom. We thought it must have hatched from the cocoon. We could not find the cocoon anywhere!

It was really big. We did some research online and found out that it was a female Gum Emperor Moth. They live in Eucalyptus (gum) trees. We called her Mikayla.
We found out that she would only live for 3 or 4 days and that she would not eat anything!
Mtrs Geal set her free the next day because we thought she was dying. We hope she flew to the nearby trees to lay her eggs.

Mrs Geal found the cocoon. Mikayla must have had to wriggle very hard to get out and the cocoon fell down behind a book on the desk. You can see the big hole where she came out.

We were fascinated and did a lot of learning about the life cycle of moths and butterflies. We also wrote lots of stories in our exciting week.

The Culture Festival

Last week the Senior School Cultural Groups performed at the Christchurch Primary School's Culture Festival. Two children from Room 5 were chosen to join the groups.
Lyrik and Elsie were very excited but also very nervous about performing before such a large audience. It was a marvellous show. You can watch it on http://www.youtube.com/culturalfestivalchch.

Elsie in the school hall all ready to go to Horncastle Arena.

Lyrik is practising her pukana before we left school.

Learning about Change

We are very excited about our Inquiry. We are learning about Change and we are looking at it in a scientific way. The change we are learning about is not natural, it happens when we humans experiment with things we use or see every day.

We put some white daffodils in jars that had food colouring in them.

The daffodil in the blue colour looked like this two days later.

The daffodils in the green colouring looked like this! What a big change!

This is what happened to the daffodils in the red colouring. This was the biggest change for us. 

Colour

We have been doing a lot of learning in our Writing about colours. We have learned how we use colour to define our emotions
 - blue for sad / cold
 - yellow for happy
  - red for angry / hot
We read the book "I'm NOT Just a Scribble" by Diane Alber. This book helped us how to relate to our emotions and how colour is a way of our showing how we feel.

We are now reading "Sky Colour" and learning that the sky is not always blue - it is often a mix of many colours.

The children had a lot of new learning (and fun!) using a prism in the sun to learn about how colours are made - the rainbow. 

Can you see the rainbow?

Two rainbows.

We had so much fun learning about colour, the rainbow and the SPECTRUM.

Anniversary Day - 110years

On Friday 3rd August Linwood North had its 110th birthday. It was a very big day for the whole school and we celebrated by having the official opening of our beautiful new hall.
In Room 5 we had an old fashhioned school day. We did our learning in a way that the children would have done 110 years ago.

We did handwriting with loops and curls. It's called cursive handwriting.

We drew and wrote on slates.

We used stencils to help us draw.

Lyrik was in the Kapa Haka group that performed in the anniversary ceremony. Look at her amazing pukana!

Elsie was in the Pasifika group. 

We were so proud of everyone on Friday.