24 Jul 2017

Puriri Term 2

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs | 0

Airport Visit

On Tuesday the 21 June Puriri went on a class trip to the Classic Flyers Museum and Tauranga airport. We went in the Catalina flying boat and saw a spit fire. We saw an Air New Zealand plane take off and a big yellow fire engine. It sprayed water out of a big hose and from the bottom too. We saw a skeleton of a glider plus a plane that looked like a shark. We had an awesome day. The class rode on an old fire engine for a tour of the airport. We also saw lots of planes that were being repaired.

By Denley, Lily and Keyarn

Buddies

Every Friday we get together with our Buddies from Year 7 & 8 (Kauri). This term we have been doing experiments about flight and playing Rippa Rugby with them. We have a lot of fun with them.

By Matilda, Olive and Bella

Cross Country

Every year we do a cross country race. The year 1-3 children run at school and the year 4-8 children run at Wakamarama School. We practise on the farm and orchard next to the school. Only Lily and Gabe were in the Year 3 race as everyone else was sick.

In the Year 4 race Polly came second. It was a really hard race across paddocks, up hills and through the bush and gorse bushes.

We were very tired at the end.

By Isabel and Abygale

Archaeological Dig

At lunchtimes we can go to the archaeological dig area. The dig site is where can dig up cool stuff. You need to get a kit with spades, sieves, trowels and brushes and then can pretend to be archaeologists and find treasure. We have found lots of interesting items.

By Mila and Asha

Go For It

Go for it is where we get to learn lots of fun sports. This term Sandy came to teach us soccer, volleyball and tennis skills. It is a lot of fun and we have learnt lots of new sports.

By Polly, Nikora and Gabe

Inquiry

Our inquiry for term 2 has been about flight. We did a lot of experiments about air pressure, lift, thrust, weight and drag. We made all sorts of flying ‘machines’ and had a paper plane completion. We had to make one paper plane that could fly a long distance and one that could stay in the air a long time.

Denley’s plane flew the furthest and Isabel’s stayed in the air the longest.

By Emma-Poppy and James

Insect Art

During our inquiry unit we some pastel and paint insect art. We think our artworks are awesome.

9 Jul 2017

Pohutukawa Term 2 Reflection

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs | 0

Term 2 has been fantastic, we have had lots of great opportunities to extend our learning. Here are a few of our highlights.

Cross Country

Breaking news! Today year 4 to 8 students will be competing in Small School’s Cross Country at Whakamarama School. For some a chance to prove their athletic ability but for me living nightmare!

We all did really well, our class’s best placed athlete was Jesse who came 12^th. As for me I helped out one of my classmates who was injured and came 39^th aka 2^nd to last, but I know I did the right thing.

By Daniel

Inquiry

Our inquiry this term was

Examining evidence form indigenous cultures provides insight into how and why they have changed in response to their environment.

To start our investigations we went on several trips

Waikato Museum. Here were discussed their Maori artifacts, learnt about the creation story and about Matariki. We saw a 200 year old waka and a very technical bird snare.
Katikati Museum. We saw the Samuel Middlebrook exhibition, there were lots of interesting Maori artifacts to investigate; a Maori anchor, whale bone mere and some beautiful woven kete and pois.
Historic Otumoetai Pa site. Here were thought about the way Maori lived using their environment. We talked about the changes that happened when Europeans arrived.

We then investigated a Maori object that interest us.

By Serene, Isaac and Flynn

ePro8

BREAKING NEWS!!!!! The ePro8 Challenge was on the 16^th of June. 2 teams from our school went to take on 10 of the best teams from other schools. The ePro8 challenge is a problem solving, engineering challenge. Some of the challenges were hard like the balloon fly challenge, where you had to fly a balloon 2.4m high.

Our teams had great ideas, worked well together and were placed 3^rd and 6^th.

By Leo and Alexander.

Starlight Express

At the start of term 2 the Year 5’s to 8’s went to St. Peters School to see their production Starlight Express, an Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical. It was not just any musical but a musical on roller skates!

The story is about a big train race between many engines including Greaseball, a steam engine, Rusty, a coal powered train and Electra, a modern electric train.

My favourite part was the final race between Rusty, Greaseball and Electra where they were fighting for first place. It came down to Greaseball and Rusty.

The costumes, makeup and music were extraordinary.

By, MICHAEL

Amazing Race

The amazing race was held at Mount Drury this year. It is a problem solving, running event. It was challenging but we made it to the end. The team was Isla, Serene, Bradley, Michael, Jesse and Louis. We learnt that it was important to listen to everyone’s ideas and we needed to stay together as a team.

By Bradley

Maori Art

Over the term we have studied a variety of Maori art forms and artists. Tracy Tawhaio inspired these pieces of art. We used chalk pastels on black paper.

6 Apr 2017

Pohutukawa Term 1 Review

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs, Pohutukawa yrs 5,6, Puriri yrs 3,4 | 0

We have had a fantastic term of learning in Pohutukawa class. Here are some of the students highlights.

BREAKING NEWS!

Early this term Pohutakawa went to camp at Aongatete Lodge. We did activities like rock climbing, challenge course, dodge ball and archery. It rained, sometimes heavily, but that didn’t stop us.

We learnt how to be safe in the bush, about the plants in the bush and how to use the bow and arrow correctly.

By Bradley and Serene

Swimming Sports

On Monday and Wednesdays, Matahui School travel to Dave Hume pool in Katikati to practice our swimming strokes, survival skills and improve our dives. The year 5 and 6’s then went to Omokoroa No.1 School for Small School’s Swimming Sports. Our whole class participated and did very well in their chosen events.

By Isla

INQUIRY

Our inquiry for this term is “The interaction between living things and earth depends on a complex web of processes”.

We have learnt how the earth orbits around the sun, giving us day and night, the seasons and a year. We have also learnt about the earths four spheres; geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere. All these spheres interact with each to make life possible on earth. Sometimes these interactions are positive and sometimes negative, such as weathering and erosion. We found out about this in the sandpit.

By Alexander

Literacy, Writing Recounts

Room Pohutukawa learnt about figurative language and how to use different types to add description and depth to our writing some examples are; simile, metaphor, alliteration, personification and onomatopoeia.

Next we used this knowledge to write interesting recounts about camp or boat day.

Here are some of our favourite snippets.

Maths

This term we have learnt or perfected various strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems including; place value, family of facts, tidy numbers and column addition and subtraction. Here is one example of how we can solve a problem.

TOP SCHOOL

Breaking news. Today Matahui year 5 and 6 students participated in their first top school competition. There were a range of interesting challenges such as leaky bucket and horizontal bungee. We had to work together to complete the challenges.

By Daniel

Boat day

Boat day is a very special day for Matahui School. It was my first boat day and I loved it. There where heaps of different activities including sailing, tubing and fishing but my favourite was kayaking. I learnt how to paddle and steer the boat really well.

By Louis

Shave for a Cure

Early this term I decided I would like to raise money for the leukaemia shave for a cure. I wanted to to include the school in my fundraising so I talked to Mr Muller, our principal. We organised a food stall, had a wacky hair day and Denley and I shaved our hair at assembly. I had spray in my hair so it hurt a little when it was being shaved. I feel really great because I have never done this before and it feels good to be helping others. So far we raised $950.

By Leo

Art gallery and library

When we went to the Tauranga Art Gallery there were beautiful works of art made by Richard Orjis that looked exactly photos of plants.

Then we sketched some plants and used water coloured paints to add colour. When we went back to school we used our art gallery experience to inspire our own water coloured paintings

Happy holidays everyone. I wonder what we will be learning next term?

15 Aug 2016

Matahui Basketball Training

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs, Kauri yrs 7,8, Pohutukawa yrs 5,6, Puriri yrs 3,4 | 0

Today we had Luke from Tauranga City Basketball take training sessions for all our basketball teams.

The children learnt and practiced a variety of skills.

dribbling and protecting the ball while dribbling
correct shooting technique
running onto the ball
defending the opposition by using your body

12 Aug 2016

Matahui School, Financially Literate Children

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs, Pohutukawa yrs 5,6 | 0

Over the last few weeks the children in class have been earning money in their online Banqer accounts.

Today we had a discussion about expenses, that in the real world while we earn money we also have to pay money for different goods and services. In this discussion we also talked about the difference between paying rent and having a mortgage.

When I told the class that they would have to pay rent on their desks, $5 per week. One of the students immediately thought that this was not on and that they would like to purchase their desk. The cost of purchase was set at $1,000 as these desks are very high quality.

This same student came back to me later in the day to say that they think they will save up enough so they could buy two desks and then rent one out and at a lower rate than I was.This student displayed innovated and creative thinking.

Next week the student will be given the opportunity to create their own business. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

12 Aug 2016

Matahui Paper Mill

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs, Pohutukawa yrs 5,6 | 0

This week in class we have been investigating the properties of paper; translucent, strong, insulator, non magnetic, flexible, thin, floats…..

Then we learnt the processes involved in making paper from trees.

From this discussion we then started our own Paper Mill.

First we shredded the paper.

Then we blitzed the paper in the food processor to make a pulp.

We added a lot of water to this pulp before using our screens to make our first sheets.

We then taught our buddies how to make paper too.

I wonder what other materials we could make paper from?

28 Jun 2016

States of Matter

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs, Pohutukawa yrs 5,6 | 0

In class we have been learning about the different states of matter with our main focus being solids, liquids, and gas. We have been learning about their properties and how some materials can change from one state to another. Today we made ice-cream in a bag. Our focus was how liquids can change to a solid by the removing of energy in this case cooling. We discussed that the particle within the milk are becoming less energetic and merging together to form a tighter bond. Here are some photos and the recipe we used.

DSCI0180 DSCI0194 DSCI0195 DSCI0196 DSCI0197 DSCI0198

DSCI0191

What you’ll need:
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup milk or half & half
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
6 tablespoons rock salt
1 pint-size plastic food storage bag (e.g., Ziploc)
1 gallon-size plastic food storage bag
Ice cubes
How to make it:
Fill the large bag half full of ice, and add the rock salt. Seal the bag. Put milk, vanilla, and sugar into the small bag, and seal it. Place the small bag inside the large one, and seal it again carefully. Shake until the mixture is ice cream, which takes about 5 minutes. Wipe off the top of the small bag, then open it carefully. Enjoy!
Tips:
A 1/2 cup milk will make about 1 scoop of ice cream, so double the recipe if you want more. But don’t increase the proportions more that that — a large amount might be too big for kids to pick-up because the ice itself is heavy.
Ice Cream in a Bag!
By: Nicole at kinderconfections.blogspot.com

20 Jun 2016

Room 5 Assembly

by alisonc | posted in: Class Blogs, Pohutukawa yrs 5,6 | 0

Room 5 presented at Assembly on Friday. We learnt how to play the song Seven Years and adapted the lyrics.

We adapted the story “It’s a Book” written by Lane Smith into a short play.

We also present our ‘Selfie” art of what we did in the holidays.

Playing football for Barcelona.

Kakapo Ranger with winning trophy.

Winning the recent quidditch game at Hogwarts.

Winning gold at Royal Ascot.

Getting caught by a creeper on minecraft

Feeding an angle fish in Fiji

Preparing for battle against the dark force.

Watching an eruption while in Hawaii.

Sinking a hoop when training with the Tall Blacks.

What a talented bunch of children!

6 Jun 2016

Matahui Magic Basketballers

by alisonc | posted in: Pohutukawa yrs 5,6 | 0

On Friday the Year 5 and 6 basketball team was looking pretty magical with their new uniforms, thanks to our kind sponsors.

For many of the team this is their first season playing basketball. Already ours skills have greatly improved from our first game. We are now passing with greater accuracy, have more control in our dribbling and displaying great defensive techniques.

Our game against TWS Lightning Bolts was very close in the first two quarters with each team scoring goal for goal. In the third quarter the Lighning Bolts charged ahead. We came back in the last quater with the final score being 24 – 10 to the Lightning Bolts.