Our Te Tuhi Trip

As we arrived at the Te Tuhi Art Gallery in Pakuranga we were greeted by Salome who was to be our teacher and guide for the day. We had already viewed the slideshows providing us with a background on tapa cloths that are made from the bark of the mulberry tree. Tapa is found in the islands of the Pacific Ocean and each island has its own style of decoration.

It was good being able to see and feel samples of tapa and to see the designs close at hand.

We so enjoyed using crayon and dye to create our own paper tapa using symbols that tell about our own families, culture, interests and homes.

Our Spring Play

To celebrate the arrival of Spring we performed a little play to show how Mother Nature waved her wand to make this a happy season of the year.  She awoke some hibernating animals, arranged for the trees to blossom, invited birds to return home and build their nests and she attempted to get the flower seeds to make their appearance. They were too sleepy so the sun and the clouds did their part to awaken them. Once the flowers were blooming, the bees buzzed around with the butterflies and ready to take on the all-important job of pollinators. Mother Nature didn't fail to remind us that springtime is a good time for baby animals to be born. Well done, children. You entertained Room 6, Room 16 and Room 32 with great aplomb! We all enjoyed your lovely play and you did a great job of making your own costumes.

Planting Seeds

New World kindly gave our class a set of the Little Garden pots and we happily planted our little seeds today. We'll take turns to water them and have put them in a nice sunny spot in the classroom. Its going to be a treat watching them grow at different rates. Some seeds will take longer to germinate and once they starting sprouting we'll transfer them to larger containers.

Many thanks to the staff at New World Botany for these!

Officer Matt's Firewise Visit

It was so enjoyable and interesting having Fireman Matt here today. He reminded us of the following important fire safety ideas -

• Smoke is fire
• There are good fires and bad fires
• We need to get down, get low, get out fast!
• We need to practise our fire safety plan at home and that includes getting out of windows by ourselves
• We need to get to the safe meeting place (our mail box) as quickly as possible
• We need to have a smoke alarm in every bedroom, the living room and the hallway
• The new smoke alarms can talk to each other and go off together

Fireman Matt showed us a video of a candle that sets the house alight in just a few minutes. He read us a book about Effie who gets out of her house by herself when a fire started. He showed us different kinds of smoke alarms and he spoke about ways we can keep safe and firewise.

Happy Spring

We enjoyed our Spring Walk on the first day of September - yay! As we did so we used all our senses to look, listen, touch and smell all the beautiful plants and trees in our surroundings. We used our whiteboards to take notes as we wandered through the Hive and the playgrounds.

Happy Father's Day

We enjoyed making cards and writing stories about our wonderful dads and no doubt, each of our wonderful dads enjoyed reading them. Here are the stories the Fantail group typed on their Google Docs.

Junior Assembly

We were very proud of Lachlan and Ayla who were the presenters for Junior Assembly. They spoke so well and did a marvellous job of introducing each item. Well done, too, to Dylan who introduced our class item and to Chloe and Ryan who read their very special stories that described their Dads and how much they meant to each of them. Ka Pai to Room 5 as well for the beautiful collage portraits they had created of their dads. They looked lovely!