Today, the Junior School embarked on an exciting journey through space! Students travelled around the solar system in their Kaiawhina groups, visiting different classrooms where each teacher shared fascinating facts about a specific planet.

As they explored, students collected stamps in their very own Intergalactic Passports, marking each planet they visited along the way. From the scorching heat of Mercury to the icy reaches of Neptune, our young astronauts learned all about the unique features of each planet in oursolar system.

To finish their space adventure, students created a fantastic rotating fan that showed all of the planets orbiting around the Sun. It was wonderful to see their creativity and excitement as they brought their learning together in a hands-on way.

The day was filled with curiosity, discovery, and plenty of fun. We are so proud of how engaged and enthusiastic our students were

 throughout their journey across the solar system.

Take a look at some of these awesome photos of our space explorers and their finished planet fans!

The tamariki in Aotahi Studio have been doing an excellent job demonstrating positive behaviour, active listening, and showing our school values every day. We are incredibly proud of the way they support one another, follow routines, and approach their learning with enthusiasm. As a result of their collective efforts, the class has enjoyed several exciting reward and enrichment activities this term.

A highlight was celebrating the filling of our star jar with a classroom disco! The tamariki worked together to earn stars through positive choices, teamwork, and respectful behaviour. Once the jar was full, we turned up the music and enjoyed a fun-filled celebration. It was wonderful to see the children dancing, laughing, and celebrating their achievement together.

As part of our investigations learning, the tamariki created fantastic blow-paint aliens. Using straws to blow paint across the page, they experimented with different techniques before transforming their creations into imaginative alien characters. The activity encouraged creativity, problem-solving, and plenty of conversation as the children shared ideas and admired each other’s unique designs.

We have also been exploring shadows through a range of hands-on activities. The tamariki enjoyed creating shadow puppets and discovering how different hand positions could make a variety of shapes and characters. We then took our learning outdoors, where the children worked together to trace each other’s shadows with chalk. This sparked great discussions about light, shape, and how shadows change throughout the day.

These experiences have been a wonderful way to celebrate the positive learning culture the tamariki have helped create in Aotahi Studio. We look forward to continuing to recognise and reward their fantastic efforts while providing opportunities for creativity, exploration, and fun.

This term in Aotahi Studio, we have enjoyed exploring two wonderful stories: The Gruffalo and Owl Babies. Through these books, we have been developing our reading, speaking, listening, and creative thinking skills.

The Gruffalo:

After reading The Gruffalo, we used our imaginations to design our very own Gruffalo characters. We thought carefully about what made our creatures unique and used adjectives to describe them. We came up with lots of exciting words to help our readers picture our Gruffalos, such as furry, spiky, enormous, colourful, and fierce. It was fun sharing our creations and seeing how different everyone’s Gruffalo was.

Owl Babies:

We also enjoyed reading Owl Babies and learning about the three baby owls as they waited for their mother to return. To bring the story to life, we worked together in small groups to act out the story using puppets. We practised speaking clearly, taking turns, and showing expression as we performed in front of the class. It was exciting to become the characters and retell the story through drama.

These activities helped us build our confidence, creativity, and communication skills while having fun with some much-loved stories. We are looking forward to discovering more books and sharing our learning through reading, writing, and drama throughout the year.

In Aotahi Studio, we have been working hard to grow our writing skills and become more confident writers. We have been learning how to write full sentences by remembering to use capital letters at the beginning, spaces between words, and full stops at the end. We are becoming more independent and proud of the writing we can create.

One of our favourite writing activities was creating our own Gruffalo characters. We used interesting adjectives to describe what our creatures looked like and to make our writing more exciting for our readers. We had lots of fun using our imaginations and thinking of creative words to bring our characters to life.

We have also been learning how to write book reviews. After reading stories, we shared our opinions about what we liked, our favourite parts, and whether we would recommend the book to others. This helped us think more deeply about the books we read and practise sharing our ideas through writing.

Another exciting topic was researching and writing reports about planets. We learned fascinating facts about our chosen planets and organised our information into clear reports. We worked on using facts, headings, and topic-specific vocabulary to teach others about what we had discovered.

We are proud of the progress we have made as writers this term. It has been wonderful to see our confidence grow as we share our ideas, use new vocabulary, and create a variety of different pieces of writing. We look forward to continuing our writing journey and sharing more of our work with you.

During Term 1 in Aotahi, we explored yoga on CRT with Islay. We practiced different stretching poses that followed a story and tried partner yoga with a buddy. We learned how to use our breathing to calm down, and we looked at managing different emotions.

In Term 2, our learning has shifted to the human body. We are now making connections to what we discovered during our yoga sessions!

Ka pai tō mahi, Aotahi!

As part of our Matariki and Literacy learning, we read The Kai Stars of Matariki, written by Miriama Kamo. This pukapuka teaches us the important role that Tupuanuku and Tupuarangi play in determining whether the year’s harvest will be good or not.

Tupuānuku is intimately tied to Papatūānuku (Earth Mother). She represents everything that grows within and upon the soil, e.g. kūmara, potatoes, carrots.  Tupuārangi is tied to Ranginui (Sky Father). He governs everything that grows or lives above the ground, e.g. fruit, berries and manu.

At the end of the pukapuka, the people of Te Mata Hāpuku had a hākari. We learned what a hākari was, talked about who we would invite, and then we planned our own, including our favourite kai. First, we planned our kai by drawing it, then we got a pereti and created our favourite kai. Then we used Explain Everything to share and explain what we included in our hākari.

What kai would you bring to a hākari?

Meet Marley. He came to visit us in Term 2. Thanks Summer for sharing your special friend with us.

Last week during CRT with Islay, the tamariki in Rongomātāne began exploring the amazing inner workings of the human body. We learned that the brain is the ‘boss’ of our system, requiring the left and right sides to co-operate perfectly to keep us moving and balanced.

To challenge ourselves, we’ve been practicing ‘brain gym’ exercises – including the ultimate test of teamwork: trying to walk in perfect sync with a buddy.

We also got creative by sculpting detailed mini brains out of clay, which sparked some great conversations about the squishy, “weird” texture of our creations!

Ka pai tō mahi, tamariki! Thank you for bringing such fantastic focus to our learning.

A couple of weeks ago during CRT with Islay, Ata Hāpara teina dived into the world of mandalas!

We started by learning how mandalas use repeating patterns to create beautiful, eye-catching images. Then, it was time to get hands-on. We gathered natural materials like leaves and flower petals, carefully arranging them on paper to practice our symmetry skills. Once everything looked perfectly balanced, we glued them down with PVA. Check out some of our amazing creations below. Ka pai tō mahi, teina!

Whaea Emma’s pangarau rōpū have been learning about measurement. Yesterday, they learned about perimeter and that to find the perimeter, you needed to measure around the object. We practised measuring with non-standard units. We used popsicle sticks, cubes and post-it notes. We then recorded our findings and compared them. We learned that it was important to make sure your units were touching so you could get an accurate measurement. Are you surprised by any of our results?

Yesterday during CRT with Islay and Caroline, we became bone experts! Did you know that a human body has 206 bones, and 27 of them are just in your hand? We learned how bones keep us strong and how to look after them. To celebrate our learning, we traced our hands to make awesome ‘high five hands’ to share with each other. We also put our teamwork skills to the test by building a full human skeleton puzzle. It was so fun figuring out exactly where each bone belonged!

During CRT with Islay, Papatūānuku has been learning about the human body. We discovered how the brain acts as the ‘boss’ of everything we do and explored how the right and left sides of our bodies work together.

For the last few weeks, we have used our ‘brain gym’ to practice tricky exercises, like walking in sync with a buddy. We also got creative by sculpting mini brains out of clay and building moving hand models using straws and string. It is amazing to see the fingers move when you pull the strings!

Our resident scientist (Lenny’s Grandad, John) came to visit our studio and showed us his homemade telescope. We found out how a telescope worked and then scanned the sky for objects. We also learned about the night sky and what we could see at the moment – Jupiter, Venus and of course the moon – it is a half moon at the moment!

Then, last Friday, John returned for rocket launching – what a great event! We mixed baking soda and vinegar together to make the reaction that launched the plastic bottle into the sky! It was amazing and some flew very high! You could watch this video and try it for yourself.

We had a great time discovering lots more about space.



This week, we have been learning about the different planets in Space. After learning about Te Marama and the phases, we wanted to investigate what else was out there. Whaea Koha read us information about the 8 planets, and we had so many questions. We found that 4 planets were rocky and 4 were made of gas. They all look so different and are different sizes. We are practising learning the planets in order from the Sun. We can’t wait to continue this learning this week!

We have had so much fun today during choice & challenge! Thank you to our tuakana who ran mau rakau, poi, play dough making, maker space & colouring. We also had pink shirt day today to stand together against bullying, remember if someone is saying mean words or trying to hurt you, say stop & tell an adult!

Today’s morning CRT session was full of creativity, coding, and conservation. We worked with Elizabeth and started by listening to the story Somebody Swallowed Stanley by Sarah Roberts. It’s a powerful (and a bit heartbreaking!) tale that helped us investigate what happens when para (rubbish) ends up in our moana. We learned that many of our beautiful sea creatures mistake plastic for kai.

Bee-Bots to the Rescue! To put our problem-solving skills to the test, we used Bee-Bots (which we called “Moana Bots”) and moana maps. The mission? Operation: Ocean Clean-up.

We came up with our own games: some programmed Moana Bots to collect para or rescue a Hector’s dolphin. We had to watch out for the Taniwha, Lion’s Mane jellyfish, or seaweed! For every successful mission, we used sea pennies as rewards.

After a quick break for morning tea, we had our first Lego Robotics session. For most of us, this was a brand-new experience! The room was full of the sound of Lego rummaging as we searched for the exact pieces we needed. We worked with a buddy, followed instructions, and collaborated to build our very first vehicles.

At the end of Term 1 we remembered the events of Holy Week and took part in a recount of the events leading to Jesus’ crucifixion. The Year 7 and 8 students read through the Stations explaining and helping us reflect on what it may have been like if we were there. It was moving as the students reverently walked through the different freeze frames. Thank you to Mrs Gannaway, Mrs Hanne and the intermediate students for their hard work.

Every Monday Justina comes in and shares her knowledge of Korean culture and language. This week we enjoyed a spicy treat. Apparently it was the second cup that really hit the spot. The drinks were close at hand!