Waitemata @ Waikowhai Primary School

The Egg Saga This week we started the "Keeping Ourselves Safe' programme. As we learn about how to keep ourselves safe the teachers decided it would be an interesting experiment to see if the students could keep something else safe...an egg. It started off with three breaking before we had left the classroom. There were tears, smiles, lots of love and nurturing and even a funeral. It was a very important lesson on just how hard it can be to keep something precious safe, no matter how hard we try. At the end of a very dramatic week of loss, we had one egg remaining in Room 10. Well done to Mercedes, who managed to keep her egg safe till 3pm on Friday. We were also eggstremely (see what I did there) lucky to have STRIKE the percussion group, come and perform at our school on Tuesday. What an amazing performance! Miss D even got to have a battle against Superman (aka Mr Ross), which sadly she lost due to his drum stick tossing abili...

Some amazing progress in swimming this week. Everyone is making huge progress with their skill in the water. This weeks star is Walid. When he began swimming he wouldn't put his face near the water, now he has not only put his face under but is beginning to float. He is facing his fear, well done Walid In Maths this week we had a table group pattern challenge. Each table had to work out the missing parts of a pattern and recreate it on a sheet of paper. The rules were, everyone on the table had to take part and be able to explain what the missing pieces were. So much fun! Well done to the 4 Fantastics (Mekilini, Zion, Amaya and Walid) for winning challenge 1 and Beachkids (Dazharn, Shiya, Andre, Meleane and Nicholas) for winning challenge two. And finally some finished ART! We have worked very hard building these pictures up in stages. Here is a sneak peak of some of the finished pieces. If you want to see them all you will have to come to our Art Exhibition ne...

In Te Reo Maori we have been looking at traditional games. So far this term we have learned how to use Te Rakau sticks, play Hei Tama Tu Tama and Hipitoitoi. These have been a lot of fun, we now use Hipitoitoi, or Hei Tama Tu Tama to determine who will go first in a game or using a resource, kind of like flipping a coin but much more fun. This week we have been learning how to play string games. This is a traditional game used by Maori during long winter nights. It also helps us improve the dexterity of our fingers. Here are some pictures of us learning how to make the parachute and cup and saucer.

Next term we are holding our Art Exhibition, Room 10 has decided to do beachscapes as our theme. First we looked at different artists for inspiration, we wanted tropical water and sand in our paintings. Miss Daly bought in 26 canvases and we put a base colour down. Next was the sky, we wanted to blend the colours so it looked lighter on the horizon. Now came the fun part, we were using modelling paste to create 3D waves before we painted our tropical water. We used masking tape to create a straight horizon. More fun....sand! Miss Daly had collected some sand and shells on her trip to Great Barrier Island. We layered our canvases with PVA and sprinkled sand on the beach. Once this was dry we painted our beach colours over the top.   But we are not finished yet...now we add detail. Watch this space!