We Are Creative!

Creativity and creative thinking  are  essential skills for everyone to develop, no matter whether you want to be a scientist, engineer, medical researcher, business entrepreneur, writer, illustrator, artist, chef, designer, teacher or builder.  Creativity helps us  use our imaginations and to think outside of the square to problem-solve, create and communicate in new and innovative ways.  

Over the last couple of weeks Kowhai have enjoyed opportunities to explore their  artistic sides. 

They have enjoyed creating patterns by drawing and using a variety of lines, shapes and colours.  They are very effective and each one has a unique pattern. 

Crazy Easter Bunnies using felts and pencils!

Beautiful Pastel Love Hearts!

 

Swimming

We have really enjoyed our 2 weeks of the  Wai Swim Programme at Dudley.

It has been great to see the progress that children have been making with such an intensive 2 week block of swimming!  

Next week we will share some of our learning about Anzac Day. 

We will have a school Anzac service on Thursday. 

A busy Friday!

Today we had lots of fun planting flowers and making bird feeders.  We want to attract more nature, especially birdlife to our school so we can observe them.  We also thought that as it gets colder it will get harder for birds to find food!  A big thank you to Deacon and Jo for giving us some pinecones to do this!  We have already seen lots of birds come to our classroom window to have a taste!

Worms and Compost

We have been busy making some labelled containers to help the children at our school learn the correct places where our food scraps should go.  These will be kept by the recycling station and one set by Korimako.

In the worm farm we can put things like apple cores,  banana peel , tea bags and most vegetable scraps.  They don’t like anything acidic like oranges, pineapple or tomatoes. They also don't like bread, meat or dairy products.

In the compost we can put the orange peels and pineapple skin that the worms don't like.  

We definitely can’t put any plastic, glad wrap, chip packets or snap lock bags in these. These would hurt the worms and won’t grow very tasty plants!

We think that we should really try hard not to waste food either. Most of our food should be going in our tummies or be taken home if we don't eat it.

Camp to Pudding Hill- The highlights

We recently returned from a fantastic camp at Pudding Hill.  The aim of our camp was to develop our relationships with each other and develop our  team building skills. We certainly did this and had lots of fun along the way!

Here are a just a few photos and highlights from the children.... If you would like to see more we have a slideshow in our classroom. 

The best thing about camp was walking up the Te Awa Awa Reserve as it was my first time on a mountain walk.  It was fun and challenging. We had to be careful of the big tree roots that were very slippery.  I am proud of myself  for getting all the way to the end. I hope I do it again.    Maisy.

I loved doing the archery and shooting best.  It was lots of fun trying to hit the targets. It wasn't so good though when I hit myself in the face with the scope!  James
Spotlight was awesome because I had never done it with such a big group. It was fun playing it in the dark with my friends without a torch.  Emily.

Archery and shooting were the most fun activities on camp because I had never tried them before.  I managed to hit all the bottles in the shooting but I didn't get any of the targets with archery.  I was so exhausted after camp I slept well.   Lewis.

The best thing about camp was playing spotlight at night.  It was really cool and exciting being in the dark and hiding in lots of different places with my friends.  At first we hid in an obvious place so we moved and eventually Blake found us! Ciara.

The best thing about camp was getting to sleep on the last night! We all started screaming when the lights were turned off and we couldn't see anything.  I also loved outdoor cooking because we got to light a fire and toasted marshmallows!  Carter.

The best thing about camp was toasting marshmallows on the outdoor fire .  Olivia

The scariest thing about camp was when the swings were squeaking when we were playing Spotlight in the dark.  Ceire.
I really enjoyed outdoor cooking because we got to roast marshmallows on a real fire.  They went all sticky and gooey- delicious!  Sophie.

Once again a huge thank you to all the parents who came along and supported us on the camp as "Camp parents" . We really appreciate everything you did to help make this a successful camp for everyone. You rock! 

  Another  massive thank you to the parents who helped get us there and back by providing us with transport! 

And finally a big thank you to everyone for supporting our children and enabling them to come along with us on camp. 

An eggcellent challenge!

As part of our unit on Keeping Ourselves Safe we took on the egg challenge. 

We became the chief babysitters of an egg (we weren't allowed to boil it either! ). We named our eggs and even created safe beds for them!  We had to look after them all the time or find someone to "eggsit" if we couldn't.

The aim of this challenge was for us to learn to look after ourselves and others. We have had to think very carefully about how to keep them safe  and make decisions about how we can do this.   

We have taken this job very seriously as you can see by the photos below.  We understand that we are all very important and need to take good care of ourselves and others. We need to make decisions to keep us safe and to ask for help if we need it.  

It has also hopefully given them an appreciation of the hard work we do as parents.  

We have had lots of fun with this challenge,  not to mention the "eggcellent" jokes and puns that we have had along the way!  Just ask 'Eggbert!