Book Week

Athletics Day 2010

Here is a video made by Dominic of our fabulous Athletics day last Wednesday. Our class did really well achieving some great personal results and a number of students are off to represent the school this week at zones.

Hanmer Springs Forest Camp

In week 2 of this term we headed up to Hanmer Springs for 3 days of fun, adventure and teamwork at the Hanmer Springs Forest Camp. Room 22, 23 and 24 all went together with their teachers plus Mr McKenzie and lots of great parent helpers.

We were split into 6 tribes to rotate around all the cool acitivites. There was orienteering, mountain biking, Conical Hill walk and hot pools, rock climbing, mission Impossible and Games/Free time at camp. Here are some pictures of these activities.....

The first evening after dinner we played Spotlight which was a lot of fun. On the second evening we all went down to the hot pools for a nice relaxing swim........

Jim did all the cooking and the parents and teachers helped serve it up and did the dishes for us, weren't we spoilt! We had 4-5 kids in each bunk room and some of us got a lot more sleep than others. It was a great camp and we were lucky to get fine weather - not like the 3 days of rain we got at Wainui last year!

Cullen's Earthquake Photos

Last Week Cullen brought some earthquake photos taken in the Pines Beach district where he lives.

Liquefaction & Sewrage

Ruined Roads

Adventure Based Learning

On Wednesday the thirteenth of October a group of girls in their last year of High School came to our class to play fun games with us because it teaches us how to work in a team and it teaches them to work well with kids.

Some of the games were 'Chuck-the-Chicken' where (as it says in the name) you have to chuck the chicken away from the other team. Another game is 'Human Knot' where we tangle our arms up and we have to work together to untangle our arms.

Blowing up baloons

'Drop-the-Sheet'

'Human Knot'

Long Jumping!!

We have been preparing for our upcoming Athletics day. Today was long jump. Check out some skillful jumping styles. . . . . . .

Earthquake art

Here are some of our finished pieces of art.

ART with Rhondda Greig

During the last week of term 3 Room 24 were very privileged to have famous New Zealand artist Rhondda Greig visit. Rhondda was once a pupil of St Albans Primary School and after the recent earthquake she decided she would like to work with the present students to create some art work to reflect the children's personal thoughts and experiences of the big quake.

Rhondda shared her paintings and drawings with us, showing us the detailed process she goes through from first sketch ideas to published books. You can see many of Rhondda's fabulous art works on her website www.rhonddagreig.com

After viewing Rhondda's work we discussed the the sounds, feelings and colours that they associated with the 7.1 magnitude earthquake. We came up with ideas such as ' like a train crashing through the house' and 'it sounded like a thousand jets flying over my house.'

Rhondda also showed us many different techniques to experiment with using the paint and pastels .

The class set to work creating a mixture of artworks using oil pastel, chalk pastel, paint and paper cut outs. The art wok took many attempts to get to a final stage with Rhondda giving each class member plenty of ideas and tips to create something they could be really proud of.

Check back here soon to see some photos of our finished work.

Commonwealth Games Day

On Wednesday Room 1 and 24 teamed up to represent 'ENGLAND' at our School Commonwealth Games Day. We had already met together a couple of times to organise wearing our team colours of red and white, to recite our team song 'Oh when the Saints' and to paint flags and banners. Team leaders, Emily and Ben were chosen and both classes were split into an A and B team.

At the opening ceremony we proudly chanted our way round the court and sung our team song loudly, then onto the competition. It was great fun participating in all the activities especially the tug of war and the obstacle course. As well as getting points for winning each event we were awarded points for demonstrating respect, manaakitanga and fun.

ENGLAND did extremely well in all areas and came 1st place so Miss Tuxford and Miss Lythgoe were very very proud of all the kids in Rooms 1 and 24.

ICT Presentations

This term we have worked so hard researching our chosen mammals and writing reports then producing an imovie or video clip with the information we discovered. It has been a great process and we all learnt so much - lots about mammals, lots about time management and team work and most of all lots of ICT skills.

Check out a couple of our finished presentations.......

This imovie presentation was made by Connor N and Tom

This imovie was put together by Satori, Jordyn, Jackson, Emily and Te Iwa

This video documentary was made and presented by Olivia, Aimee and Bridget

Week 9 Summary

The first week back at school after the earthquake has been busy as usual. It's been great to be back with friends sharing stories and experiences from the previous week. The majority of us were so lucky to escape with out any major damage to our home or its contents. But our thoughts are very much with Bridget and Harlen and their respective families who suffered a great deal of loss and damage in the quake and its nasty aftershocks. We hope life can return to normal for you as soon as possible.

We have practiced our earthquake drills and although many aftershocks took place during school this week it made us realise just how well built and safe our new classroom is, as we barely felt most of them.

Cole bought along his pet guinea pigs, Mohawk and Elvis. We were very happy to meet them but we don't think they shared the feelings! Elvis tried desperately to escape the circle of students keen to meet him! Thanks Cole, it great to see you learning how to take care of pets.

On Wednesday of Week 10 we will be taking part in the School wide Commonwealth games day. As part of this topic we did some sports silhouette art. We chose a sport from the Delhi Olympics website and copied it 4 times in a grid. Then coloured it in with pastels using bright contrasting colours. We are representing England for the school games day so please find all the red and white gear you have at home and come along dressed to get be a 'POM' for the day.

EARTHQUAKE

Hi Team 24

I have been thinking of you all such a lot over the last few days and wondering how you are. I hope that you and your families are ok and didn't suffer too much damage in the big quake. It has been a very scary time. My girls and I are fine, though rather nervous still! I just wish these after shocks would stop!

I have been into school and the classroom is fine, just chairs and books all over the floor but we have tidied it all up. The field is a bit of a mess! It will be nice to get back to school next week and see you all and try to get our lives back to normal.

Take care over the next few days and try to enjoy this extra time off! My girls and I are watching lots of DVDs and enjoying lots of board games and sleep overs in the lounge together!

Big hugs

Miss Lythgoe

Week 7 Summary - Tie Dye

CHECK OUT OUR AMAZING PILLOWCASES

During Week 7 we have been doing tie-dye with pillow cases and painting on fabric as part of our Antarctica study.

The first step is choosing which design of tie dye you want to do.

We all chose our designs, some scrunching their pillowcase up and some making circles or using pegs to make stripes.

Aimee used a fan fold and pegs to end up with a striped tie dye

Te Iwa tied lots of little circles

Next we had to choose an Antarctica animal, a penguin or a whale to paint onto a small piece of calico fabric.

Jordyn paints her penguin

Ben adds some background detail to his penguin picture

Then we put our designs in the blue dye and waited for the dye to soak in.

Emily gives the dye a stir to ensure it covers everyone's pillowcases evenly

Hanging the pillow cases out on our balcony to dry

When the pillowcases had dried we needed to iron them and also the fabric painted picutres needed to be ironed for 2 minutes to seal the paint. Our animal paintings were then sewed on with the help of Miss Lythgoe's Mum and Ben's Mum.

Jackson enjoyed ironing so much he wants to do all the ironing at home Mum!

Connor is another keen contender for weekly ironing duties!

Trish helped Heke complete his pillowcase by sewing the whale painting on

Josh waits patiently as Kate sews on his painting

Here are some examples:

Aimee's,Emily's and Renee's Tie-dye

Heke's Tie-Dye

Written by Connor N