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.