The Manaiakalani Network Blogging
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Before the boy built the wall around himself, he felt overwhelmed, sad and petrified. He felt shattered by the weight of his painful feelings. He carried a heavy sense of abandonment. His joy and happiness had faded away. He felt hollow because there was only darkness in his heart. He felt invisible like he didn’t matter to anyone around him. He felt suffocated by the weight of hurt, loneliness, and isolation. These painful feelings left him defenseless unsafe, and broken apart.
By Samantha
Before the boy built the wall around himself, he felt overwhelmed, deeply sad, and terrified because nobody seemed to care. The boy felt invisible like he didn’t matter to anyone around him and he also felt like he didn’t exist. It seemed everyone had abandoned him leaving him alone to carry all the painful feelings by himself. He felt suffocated by the weight of hurt, isolation and loneliness. He grew hollow inside as his joy and happiness vanished. These painful feelings made him unsafe and defenceless and broken apart.
By Jennica
This week the Calypso group had a play as part of their reading contract. The students worked together each day to decide their roles, practice, add actions and props. Check out what they shared with the rest of the class on Friday!
We are looking forward to welcoming all our whānau and friends to our Art Expo on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th! 
Room 1’s art theme is Under the Sea, and we can’t wait to share all the amazing ocean-inspired artwork our tamariki have created. 
This week, we dived into the awesome book Little Hector and the Big Blue Whale! For our create task, we became marine researchers and designed our very own informative posters using Canva.
We hunted for cool facts inside the book and watched educational videos to learn all about Hector’s dolphins. After gathering our research, we got super creative in Canva to layout our facts and designs.
We are so proud of how our hard work turned out! Take a look at our creations below—we’d love for you to leave a comment telling us your favourite dolphin fact!
For this week’s Letter Ee activity, we made Eggplant Crisps!
To help everyone follow along, the simple recipe steps were displayed on the television screen. Each student participated in various stages of the cooking process, and it is wonderful to see their growing confidence when handling kitchen utensils like graters and knives.
Ka pai Kopa Wha!
Bula Vinaka!
What an epic week celebrating the beautiful islands of Fiji and learning all about this friendly and vibrant Pacific nation!
Fiji is a tropical paradise filled with sunshine, sparkling sandy beaches, crystal-clear waters, colourful flowers and delicious fresh food. Throughout the week, we explored Fiji’s rich culture, traditions, language, art and music. We shared our learning, got creative and celebrated the beauty of Fijian culture together.
Vinaka vakalevu !
This week, our amazing Year 1 and 2 learners took on an exciting challenge to celebrate Fijian culture. Our task was to dive deep into research, discover fascinating facts about the beautiful town of Savusavu, and present our findings in a creative way. We knew we were being judged on three main things: our information, our creativity, and our overall presentation.
Here are some amazing facts that we share in the video:
Crystal Clear Waters: Savusavu has beautiful, see-through turquoise water that is perfect for swimming and diving!
Friendly Dolphins: Playful dolphins love swimming right alongside boats in the bay.
Ocean Pearls: Savusavu is world-famous for growing rare, colourful ocean pearls deep underwater.
Hot Springs: There are natural thermal hot springs right in the town where locals actually cook food in the boiling water!
Cocoa Pods: Bright cocoa pods grow on trees here, which are harvested to make delicious, local Fijian chocolate.
Yummy Food: From fresh tropical fruits to delicious traditional Fijian dishes, the food in Savusavu is mouth-watering!
We filmed a dynamic video that kicked off with the whole class coming together to shout a warm, loud “BULA!”
We learned so many cool facts about Savusavu, and we also had a total ball filming and watching the finished video together.
Check out our video below!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19uDWG2N2SCBG2nZ-G-imyUiAx-mCA6dH/view?usp=sharing
In maths, we learned all about the ‘Unit of Repeat’—the specific combination of shapes or lines that repeats over and over again to create a complete pattern.
Here is how we put our learning into action:
Using whiteboards allowed us to experiment freely, test out different repeating sequences, and make adjustments as we refined our mathematical patterns!
Look at Our Amazing Work!
Vinaka vakalevu to our wonderful students for their focus, creativity, and mathematical thinking this week!
This week we have been celebrating Fijian Language Week!
Our 2 challenges were to create a Masi (like tapa cloth) design, and to make a presentation about the Fijian Island of Kadavu.
Here is Mr Lloyd’s example of a Masi design drawn on Google Drawings! Check out our learner blogs to see our designs and videos!
Today we had the beat station in our class! We had so much fun. Each group chose a band name by picking an animal and then a colour. It was interesting to watch the different groups problem solve when they didn’t agree. Some used paper scissors rock and others voted.
We then got into the music making. There were 4 percussion instruments that students swapped throughout the song. How do we sound?
In the afternoon we designed our band posters on canva! Students had fun picking a background, choosing a font/colour and then selecting the graphics and placement. We are so excited for the beat station to come back to our class!
We have had some wonderful sessions with Kelly Sports! We learnt new games, had lots of fun moving our bodies, and practised working together as a team. It was a great way to stay active, build our skills, and enjoy learning with our classmates!
We have been so lucky to welcome some very special visitors to our school! We had the amazing Joseph Parker come and visit us. How lucky were we! We also welcomed a lovely lady from ASB who taught us about money, saving, and how to save wisely. Constable T also visited our class to teach us about road safety and how to stay safe in the car. What a fantastic opportunity to learn from our wonderful visitors!
In Term 3 our main focus in Kaupapa was The Awa/River with a focus on the local Waitara river. The main concepts we were exploring were:
Understanding that the Waitara River is a unique and precious ecosystem where all living organisms are perfectly suited to their natural habitat. We spent quite alot of time looking at the different creatures that make up the ecosytem, such as whio/blue duck, kokako, tuna, piharau , koura. One of the special taonga of the awa is the piharau and we looked at local videos of how the piharau is caught and processed ready for cooking – these made by local fisherman and included a young boy that was a student at Waitara East some years ago. Piharau
Recognizing how the Waitara River has influenced and sustained local communities over time. We talked about what a river is and how it is used (past and present). We shared our own experiences on the river. I enjoyed sharing about times as a young girl whitebaiting on the river mouth with my dad.
The following is examples of the “kokako” art work created. The kokako are sitting in a pohutukawa tree. They can be found sitting on rocks or trees near the awa.
These are our 2D river diaramas:
Our river mural was completed over the term and included most of the creatures of the awa.
We also did a river landscape
If you have time come along and look at the wonderful artworks displayed in the room. The tamariki enjoyed learning about the awa and visiting the museum this term. We look forward to whats to come in Term 4!
Like all other language weeks, te wiki o te reo Māori was celebrated at our school. First we started with our opening assembly and our senior Kapa Haka roōpu performed. The challenges were announced and everyone had a week to complete them. You can find them on the site here. Here’s our entry for the pukana challenge.
At our closing assembly, our junior Kapa Haka roōpu performed and we found out who the winners were for our challenges. Kia kaha te reo Māori!
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