It was soooooooo hot yesterday that we went outside for our mahi.

We sat in the shade and cool breeze underneath the trees by Hiki-Hiki as Lisa read stories from the Joy Cowley Anthology.
One particular story, about living in a house made out of a pumpkin resonated with the group… we chatted about how cool it would be to live in crazy houses, so we decided to use the vivid chalks on the paths to create our own unique houses.

There was heaps of korero about what their houses were made of…
lollipop houses, donut houses, Minecraft houses, pumpkin houses, 6-7 houses, and castles.
It was awesome- looking good. Everyone wrote a sentence about their house!           Yay winning!
As it was soooooooo hot, we got some water and paintbrushes to’paint’ over our chalk drawings. The kids were amazed at how painting water over chalk really made it ‘pop’.

and then… we started to cover our hands in wet chalk to make handprints on the path- so far so good..
Next minute, I turn around and the kids suddenly have yellow/green/purple arms and legs!

As they were cleaning up, the cool water felt so good that we ended up painting our limbs. Everyone was thinking this was hilarious!
And it was!

F.Y.I, everyone was engaged/ had fun/ got cool/ AND did the mahi that was planned!-Yay, love teaching outside!

Love the bright chalks from Qizzle!

Whaea Emma’s literacy group have had a blast learning about different animals! We started our journey learning all about the Tuatara and began learning what was required to write an informative report about them. We included their name, where they live, their category, diet, habitat and some fun facts.

From there, we put forward suggestions of animals we were keen to learn about.

After spending time researching and taking notes about our chosen animal, we wrote our own information reports. Finally, we used Book Creator to turn this information into amazing creations. We included pictures, diagrams, text and audio.

We hope you’ve learned something new!

Elizabeth worked with Nigel’s numeracy group and they went on a Measuring expedition!  They ventured outside with their iPads.  They had to find the tallest object outside the studio…find something three times longer than their feet!  Then images were collated using PicCollage.

Whaea Emma’s Maths group have been learning about money! First, they had a blast creating their own shops, attaching prices to different items and then getting to use their own play money to purchase items. Each ākonga had a go at being the shopkeeper, ensuring they were getting the right money for the price.

This week, we continued to learn about the different coins and notes we use in New Zealand. We learned how much each coin was worth, and if I collected two 50-cent coins, they would be worth the same as one $1 coin. Then we used 3 different coins to create a pattern. We repeated our pattern 3 times.

We would love to continue this learning, so if you have any coins at home, let us have a go!

Last week the students from Papatūānuku performed in our school production. We were sooooooo proud of the costumes they made, the kites they created and the choreography of our dances.
There were lots of nervous tummies before we went on stage, (and that was the parents also!).
There were audible gasps from the audience when we revealed our ‘glow in the dark fireworks costumes!!
This was such a cool experience which has inspired some of us to be dancers when they grow up.
Well done everyone!!!