From Grotty to Great: how we made an art gallery in our cloak bay.

That title sounds a bit like a novel title to me, but it's not! It's a great description of the way we worked really hard to take our cloak bay from grotty to Great!!

Here are some examples of the finished art works.  See the reports on our personal blogs to see how the process worked to create these. 😎

Fractions in every day life.

Did you know that fractions surround us in everything we do?

In class today we hunted about to find some, and they weren't hard to find at all! First, Mr Gunn had us get together a group of ten random objects. Then, he had us think about some attributes that could be used to describe the objects in our group of stuff. After that Mr Gunn made us sort the objects into smaller groups using the attributes and finally we had to describe each small group as a fraction. Phew!

On our individual blogs you can see the pictures of our results.

Gardening Galore (from seed to sprouting)

You may remember how last term we grew  a variety of plants from seed. This week, with the expert support of Corban's Nana and Mum, we planted these and some edible plants in our school garden. Nana Maureen taught us how to prepare the soil by leveling and loosening it. We then planned out where each of the plants would go by laying them on top of the soil. Maureen taught us about complimentary planting like tomatoes and basil, and marigolds to deter pests. We all took turns digging a small hole for a plant and 'heeling' it in to the soil. We have set up a team to water the plants three times a day, being careful no to pour the water on directly. Below are the photos of last terms efforts followed by today's awesomeness. 

Spaghetti and Marshmallow towers

Did you know that some shapes are much stronger than others in a building?

The clever builders who made the pyramids knew this and maybe that's why the pyramids are still standing.

In our class this week I set the clever Kea learners the challenge of building a structure using two non-traditional building materials. The aim was to build either the highest, or strongest structure using only uncooked spaghetti sticks and mini marshmallows. Mr Buckingham acted as our judge and the teams used a 200g vitamin container as a strength tester.

I also had a go at making a tower with some success.

We all did some shared research into which shapes would be strongest and we found that putting lots of triangles into our buildings made them stronger. Here are some pictures of our buildings starting with Mr Gunn's.

Rata's Waka (or how we need to look after the environment)

On Friday of last week,  we heard the story of Rata and the Waka. In the story Rata takes a Totara nui to make a Waka. But he didn't pay his respects to the environment so things didn't go his way until he did.

We did some thinking about how we are like Rata today in our society, and then we created a poster in response our ideas. Here are some of the children's slides.
Each child has more on their personal blog.

Describe what is happening in a picture

The Wanderer.

WALT: use a prompt for writing.

WARNING!!

Hey team, you might find one of the following pieces of fictional describe writing a little bit scary!! 

The clever authors in the Kea class were asked to describe what they thought was going on in the pictures below. 

As a description of a moment in time, they had to write as if the events shown in the pictures were occurring in the present. 

They were able to remember that sentences about things that are happening now used the words 'is' and 'are' as well as the -ing ending on doing words. 

Someone suggested that we use the seven servants to help us think of ideas when we look at the pictures while planning what details we will put in our finished writing piece. 

Finally, we talked about using words to create a mood that matched the pictures. Talk about deep level thinking! 

Scroll below the writing to see the picture and comment below about what you thought was the best bits.

WARNING. the following description contains references to supernatural horror and violence. 

While these are usually not appropriate topics for our school, I felt the description was too good not to share. Sorry if it is scary. 

The Mountain-Top Demon

By Ebes

There is a mysterious hooded demon, wearing a purplish-blue robe with a crescent moon shaped power staff, resting on the blinding, foggy and grassy Himalayan mountains. He is sitting on a huge rock which is covered in moss. The hooded demon is resting from the huge climb up the mountain. He is looking for a little cottage to enslave the people living in it and feed on their happiness. 

Picture credit www.pobble365.com/wanderer/

The Bikers.

By Kata.

There are dirt-bikers having a race. They are having a race. They are racing against each other and the green bike is winning. They are ramping over a big hill with dust on their tyres. The red and green bikes are in front and all the others are behind. The ones in front are blazing through the dust.



Picture credit www.pobble365.com/the-race/

We made our own EBooks.

This week in the Kea class we have been learning how to recall stories in our own words. 

To help us to remember the story and then put it into our own words, Whaea Te Ahua showed us a new app called book creator. 

Here is an example of a simple retelling of Maurice Sendak's Where the wild things are, by James and Caleb-Rose

My Special Place

Explain what, where, or whom is your special thing.

Explain why it is so special to you.

How does it remind you of God’s presence in your life?

WALT: Find God every day.

My special place is a back country hut in the northern Ruahine Ranges called Rangiwahia Hut. It is special to me because I have been going there for many, many years and it is a very beautiful place to go to.

Making Avatars!

This week in the Kea class we have been learning all about Cyber safety. We are gearing up to have individual blogs so its really important that we know how to be safe when we are working on the internet. One way to protect ourselves online is to use an Avatar instead of a real picture of ourselves. We are trying to make our Avatar look like us. 

Can you guess who these members of the Kea class are?

Kiwisport with Paulo

 Chain Tag madness with Paulo

 WALT: work together

WALT: evade the chasers

 

WALT: use balance and agility when running

Nau mai, Haere mai! Welcome everyone to the Kea class blog! We are all very excited about being able to share our awesome learning with our family, friends, and the wide world too. Family are welcome to leave positive and helpful  comments about our learning and we hope that you will!