Finished Artwork

We have finished our interpretations of 'How Maui fished up the North Island'. We applied the process of 'overpainting'. This has added texture and depth to our paintings. We hope you like them.

Here are some of our stunning artwork

Te Reo

We are learning our Mihi this year. We can introduce ourselves, whanau (family), maunga (mountain), and awa (river). Today Whaea Jane taught us how to say what we are good at - He toa au ki te_______ (I am good at_______). We can also tell you what somebody else is good at - He toa a_______ ki te_______  (______is good at_____).


These are some of the maori verbs we came up with:
oma - running
peke - jumping
tuhituhi - writing
waiata - singing
kaukau - swimming

Whaea Jane teaching us reo

Visual Art

Today we read a Maori myth about how Maui fished up the North Island. We selected a scene from the myth to sketch. The next step in the process was to choose three basic shapes from our sketch and draw these on to a larger piece of paper. We explored primary colours and how we can mix these to make secondary colours. The painting process in the photographs is called under-painting. We have painted our three basic shapes today and tomorrow we will add detail by over-painting. Watch this space for our finished artwork.

Caring For The Environment

Litter is not cool!

Bradley and Zivian's reading group read an article about rubbish recycling. They noticed that the water race outside the school gate had some litter in it. During reading time Bradley and Zivian designed posters to encourage our school to do the right thing and not litter.

As a class, we have been wombling this week to collect rubbish found throughout the playground. We are pleased to report that it is getting harder and harder to find rubbish.

Discovering Technology

Miss G took us into the library today for a very exciting lesson about food packaging. In groups we explored different ways manufacturers package food. We were interested in the way nature also packages food too. For example, a coconut has a hard shell on the outside, so that when it falls to the ground it is protected.

Back To School

Early Morning Discussion about Earthquake

It is great to have almost all of us back at school today. Everyone had stories to share. We discussed the importance of reacting to aftershocks safely and sensibly.

We then practiced our "Earthquake Drop" in the class.

The children know to listen to my instructions. I will call out "Earthquake Drop" and then we -

Drop, Cover and Hold!

DROP, COVER and HOLD! We moved quickly and quietly. We all know what to do if we have another aftershock.

We also discussed how to be safe and sensible outside if there is another aftershock. We even talked about what to do if we are on the toilet.

A Quick Run

After all of that discussion we had a run around the court.

It is great to be back!

Daily Fitness

With the spell of good weather were able to go outside for 10 minutes fitness. Today we completed a circuit of running, climbing and stepping stations so that we could increase our heart rates. Once we had increased our breathing and our heart rates we checked our pulses to see whether their rhythm had increased or not. We were all able to locate our pulses in our necks and we discovered that our heart rates had increased. 

Science: Fizzing and Bubbling

We continued this afternoon with our science experiments. This afternoon Room 4 made sherbet. We predicted what we thought the sherbet would taste like when we made. Some of the children remembered that when you add acid to baking soda it will fizz. Some children tried the sherbet without flavouring and discovered it was not to their liking.

Bradley: When we got lots of different powders when we were at Science Alive. We found out that adding baking powder to acid made it fizz.

Caius: The saliva caused it to fizz. the citric acid made it sour.

Our Blog Begins

Welcome to our Room 4 blog. Our plan is to use the blog to keep up-to-date with happenings in the classroom.

We hope you will use the blog to find topics to discuss with your child over dinner. As the class learns more about blogs we will be changing the look of the blog to best suit our needs. Please tell us if you can think of great ideas for how we can improve our blog.