A Day Of Awesomeness!

Special Project

We were involved in a special creative project at school today.  We came across the concept of fence decorating earlier in the year and decided to beautify our swimming pool fence!

Jorja, Madison, Blair, Darian, Jordan, Jago, Trevor and Quaid came up with a bunch of different designs.  Once we had chosen our favourites, we divided up the colours and placed out the cups in a 'practice design'.  We took a photo of this and then used the photo to get the design on the fence right.

After that, we dunked the plastic cups in hot water to soften them up.  Some people had to pull the fence tight to make it easier to squeeze the cups into the holes.  This was really difficult.

When we had finished, we thought the fence looked magnificent!

Photographer:  Mrs Simpson

We were pretty proud of the finished product - our fence looks awesome!

Weird Insects

We've been learning about lots of different weird and wonderful insects.  After doing lots of research, we used Popplet to identify the Top 10 facts.  Check out these great examples from Sophie, Ffion, Kyle and Jasmine:

Skype Session

Today we had a Skype session with Kotuku Class from Mahana School (Nelson).  Their teacher, Whaea Jane often comments on our blog and so we thought it was about time we made contact with her class.  Unfortunately our Skype connection wasn't great, but it was still fun learning a little bit our South Island friends.  It was especially awesome when we found out that someone in their class was reading 'The One And Only Ivan'!  We're hoping to Skype them again soon!

Mahana Kotuku Class Blog - Click Here

 

Mahana School Website - Click Here

Tennis - Week 2

We had our second session of tennis today.  After doing lots of individual practice of different skills, we moved onto the team challenges.  We learnt about the VOLLY shot - something you need lightning fast reactions to perform!

New Zealand Insect Word Clouds

Did you know that there are around 20,000 insect species in New Zealand?  Did you know that of these, 90% are native to our country?  We've been finding out a bit more about these creatures (lets face it, we share our lives with them) and have created word clouds to display the names of lots of different New Zealand insects.  Check out these cool examples by Blair, Trevor and Kyle:

ICT - how much is too much?

Today we discussed the issue of ICT, specifically how much is too much?  Some people think kids our age spend too much time 'plugged in'.  We viewed the issue from six different perspectives and came up with the following opinions:

• We agree that homework/getting organised for school should come before ICT and that we should go to bed at a reasonable hour.
• Most people agreed kids our age should pay for their own ICT use.
• Parents should be monitoring how much ICT we use.
• ICT should be used for positive things!
• Family time is more important than using ICT.
• It is really important for us to have a BALANCED life style.  Using ICT is okay, so long as we get plenty of exercise and participate in other activities.

Japanese

Each week we have Japanese with Miss Campbell, the Japanese expert!  We have crammed heaps into our first two sessions and will be able to speak fluent Japanese in no time!  This is what our whiteboard looked like this afternoon!

Library Book Survey (Fiction)

Please complete the survey by clicking on the link below:

LIBRARY BOOK SURVEY - CLICK HERE

Te Reo - Week 9

Hoi hoi!
Quiet!

Kei te mahi au!
I am working!

Trail Ride

Today was the Halcombe School Trail Ride.  This event is held every year and is organised by our PTA, with the support of loads of other people.  Thank you!  It is always lots of fun watching the riders prepare for the track and then hooning off around the paddocks.  It was great to see so many Room 6 kids helping out too.  Awesome!

Swimming Sports

Today we finally held our Senior Swimming Sports!  We still managed to get through our usual list of events, even though we held the races inside.  We were all a bit nervous before our races, but relaxed once we got started.  Congratulations to all students - it has been awesome to watch your swimming skills improve over the last seven weeks!

A special congratulations to our swimming champions for 2014:

Senior Girls:
1st - Ffion
2nd - Jade
3rd - Hannah

Senior Boys:
1st - Jago
2nd - Cody
3rd - Blair

Winner of Barnett Cup: (fastest 50m swimmer in the school)
Ffion

House Relays:
1st - Matai
2nd - Rimu
3rd - Totara
4th - Kauri

Overall House Points:
1st - Matai
2nd - Kauri
3rd - Rimu
4th - Totara

 

 

After the sports had finished, we had time for a quick free swim!

 



Tennis - Week 1

As part of our small ball skills unit, we've signed up for tennis lessons!  In our first session today, we learnt how to do a correct forehand shot.  We also played lots of fun games and competitions! 

Twitter Magnets

This week we've been experimenting with this cool website called Twitter Magnets.  It gives you a bunch of random words and the challenge is to build sentences that make sense! 

 

TWITTER MAGNETS - CLICK HERE

Here are some of the sentences we've come up with:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We've just started learning all about insects.  The famous book, 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' gives a wonderful example of the life cycle of a butterfly.  After reading the book (we are definitely not to old to read picture books!), we created our own caterpillars.  Cool aye?

Buddy Class - Small Ball Skills

This afternoon we practiced our small ball skills with our buddy class.  After working on our throwing and catching, we had some crazy relays.  Next we were divided up into teams and played Rob the Nest.  Despite some questionable tactics by some teams, it was lots of fun!

Interschool Swimming Champs

We are the champions!  Tonight our school relay team, made up of Jade, Danielle, Ffion, Jago, Blair and Cody, won the Country Schools Relay - for the second year in a row!  We raced the fastest races of our lives and dominated right from the start. 

Ffion competed in the 100m race and came second (out of 35 swimmers!)  Ffion and Greer also competed in the Penhey Cup, where swimmers are judged on their swimming technique.  Ffion came second in this event too.

A massive congratulations to all our swimmers and Ffion in particular.  Thank you to our awesome parents and supporters for all your encouragement.  What a great night!

Te Reo - Week 8

Kei te pehea to ra?
How is your day?

I pehea to ra?
How was your day?

Pai marika taku ra!
It was awesome!

Salad Time

After harvesting a lot of produce from our garden, we had salad for morning tea today!  The lettuce, cucumber, eggs and beetroot were all delicious!

Rippa Rugby

In a couple of weeks, we have the Interschool Rippa Rugby Tournament.  Many of us have signed up to participate in this awesome event.  Today we had a training session with Nick, from Manawatu Rugby.  It will take us awhile to get used to the differences between rippa and touch, but we'll get there!

Te Reo - Week 7

Kua kai ano koe? 
Have you had something to eat?

Kao - no
Ae - yes

Manawatu Interschool Triathlon

Today many of us were involved in the Manawatu Interschool Triathlon, held in Palmerston North.  It was a REALLY tough race, starting with a 1.5km run, followed by a gruelling 4km bike and finishing with a 150m swim.  We gave it our all and Miss Simpson reckons we should all be super stoked with our efforts!  Thank you so much to the parents who provided transport and all our wonderful supporters.  What a great day!

A special congratulations to Ffion, who came third in the Year 7 Girls race.  Awesome Ffion!

Music Time

Mrs Langtry, the music master, taught us how to play the recorder this afternoon!  Check out the musical harmony in the video below - outstanding!

Small Ball Skills

Our PE focus for the rest of this term is on SMALL BALL SKILLS.  Here is what we're aiming to be able to do:

• catch a ball that has been thrown from 20m away
• throw a ball at least 20m
• pitch or bowl a ball accurately
• hit targets on the full from varying distances
• apply our skills in game situations

Today we tested ourselves on the first two points!

Skyline Art

On Friday afternoon, we completed our Skyline Art.  First we used water colours to create either a sunrise or sunset scene.  We found the water colours a lot easier to use than paint!  Next we studied lots of different 'real' skylines from cities around the world.  We used these for inspiration as we sketched out our own on black paper.  Finally, we glued the skyline to the background and BOOM, we created this awesome art!

Koru Art

Touch Time!

We are now half way through the touch season.  We have lots of students in our class who play touch each Friday night.  We've had some really tough matches so far, but are learning lots and are getting better each week.  Thank you to all the parents and supporters who come along and cheer for us!  Thank you to Mr Ricketts and Mrs Langtry, our hard working and patient coaches!  Keep up the great work everyone!  Here are some action shots from our games tonight:

Key Competencies In Action

This week we've been working on a Comic Life display that shows how the Key Competencies link to the activities we do at school.  Our task was to find photos that showed a competency in action!  Check out these awesome examples by Hannah, Luke and Victoria:

 

 

Puzzling Mathematics

With Mrs Simpson as our maths teacher, we were given the ultimate puzzle to solve today.  The challenge was to arrange the parts so that each shape and colour were in both the vertical and horizontal rows (maths is all about patterns!)  It was tricky and some groups were still trying to work it out after 45 minutes!  Congratulations to Hannah, Jade and Jorja - the puzzle champions!

Here is what the finished puzzle should look like:

Fun Swimming Sports

The Fun Swimming Sports were awesome!  This annual event was held this afternoon, the final swimming event on our calendar (other than the yet-to-be-organised-rescheduled-swimming-sports).  We competed in lots of weird and wonderful events, aiming to have fun, encourage our team mates and show excellent house spirit!

The house captains and other members of the Student Council did a wonderful job of preparing for the event and showed fantastic leadership skills throughout the afternoon.

 

Corn!

At the end of 2013, we planted some corn in our class garden.  This week it was finally ready to eat!  First we picked the corn:

Next we admired our massive pile of corn!

After that we shucked the corn:

Finally.... we ate the corn!

Flippaball Finals

This afternoon, we had the flippaball finals!  Totara faced Rimu in the play-off for 3rd and 4th, with Rimu coming out on top.  The final between Matai and Kauri was a very physical match, with both teams trying their hardest to score points.  In the end, Matai took the win!  Congratulations Matai!

The End Of Class Swimming!

Today was the final day of class swimming for 2014.  Despite the FREEZING conditions, we did a quick practice of our events for the swimming sports tomorrow.  After this, we had heaps of fun with the tyres!  The challenge was to work together so people could stand up on the tyres!

Cybersafety

Over the past two days, we've done a lot of talking about cybersafety.  This is all about how we can keep ourselves safe while online, as well as when we're using ICT equipment.  Today we discussed our school Cybersafety Agreement that we have signed.  It was definitely a good idea to review this, because it reminded us about some important rules we'd forgotten.  Here is a copy of the 'rules' for future reference!

Week 6 - Te Reo

Here are some sentences to learn this week:

Tino pai to mahi - You have done a really good job!

Kei te whakahihi au i a koe - I'm really proud of you!

Ka rawa hoki - That's fantastic!