Cross Country

We had our annual cross country this week. Aside from the race, we had other activities to help promote health and fitness, such as skipping, an obstacle course and goal shooting with a football. 

Students made great efforts with their run and Masi from Haumia achieved 2nd place in the Year 4 Boys race...well done!

Cultural People

As part of our Inquiry and Visual Art this term we have been looking at different cultures around the world. Each class has been given two countries to create a painting of a boy and a girl dressed in typical or cultural clothing. 

Many are still underway in one of the empty classrooms and they are looking awesome...

Haumia has been given the responsibility to paint a Burmese boy and a Samoan girl. We worked hard to complete these during the week when the seniors were at camp. After some research into what clothing they could be wearing, we drew around a template, adding the shape of the clothing, painted in the base colours, then used masking tape and stencils to add colours and patterns on top. Every student in our class contributed to our paintings. Here are our finished products...

Burmese Boy

Samoan Girl

When they are all completed the plan is to have them cut out and attached to the fence alongside the playground.

Geometry

After discussing symmetry we brainstormed ideas about what kinds of things around us might be symmetrical, then we created our own symmetrical pictures by folding and tracing. 

Here are our finished products...

...pretty impressive!

The next step was to use these images to show how a surface can be covered by shapes using translation (sliding the image), reflection (flipping the image) and rotation (turning the image). We did this digitally, using scanned images of our pictures. 

These show TRANSLATION...

These show REFLECTION...

These show ROTATION...

Squash

We are learning to play squash for PE this term. We have a portable squash court set up in the hall and our squash instructor, Jude, has taught us about the lines on the court (the top line is the outer line, the bottom line is the tin line and the middle line is the serve line). We have been practising our serves and rallies. It's trickier than it looks! 

Here are a few photos...

Symmetry

We have been learning about symmetry in maths. Shapes can have an axis (line) of symmetry if you can fold them in half and they match up on both sides. Some shapes have more than one axis of symmetry. 

We created our own symmetrical shapes by folding and cutting paper. Here are some of the results...

What do you think?

Litter Blitz

Our whole school set out to make a difference in our community this week. Along with the support of the Tread Lightly Caravan and Be A Tidy Kiwi we took to the streets to pick up as much rubbish as we could. Each class had a different route and was armed with a litter kit (including gloves, high-vis vests, litter grabbers and rubbish bags). 

Haumia are ready for action

Along with teachers and some adult helpers (including workers from the local Z service station) we set out into the local neighbourhood collecting things like soda cans, cigarette butts, bottle tops, food scraps, old wet fliers and food wrappers. 

There were some items that were simple too big to put into the rubbish bags (a sofa, an exercise bike, some shelves) and surprisingly, when we brought back what we could to school and weighed it all, we found that the school had collected 32 bags weighing a total of 200kg!!!

It's nice to think we have made a difference in our community.

Matariki

As part of our learning about Matariki, Haumia has been looking at deep space images of the Helix Nebula, the Pinwheel Galaxy and the Butterfly Nebula.

We used chalk pastel on black paper to create our own star systems.

(Thanks to 'Your Matariki Kete' published by Stardome for the idea)

This amazing art is on display down the hallway from our classroom...you should check it out!

We have also joined in with the rest of the middle school with learning sessions that focused on Matariki.

In one session, students created stars by weaving flax...

In another session, students were able to learn about the game Mū Tōrere as well as traditional string games from Maori culture and create their own patterns with string...

And in a third session, students were read the book 'Matariki' by Melanie Drewrey. 

During this time, students learnt that there are different stories about the stars in the Matariki constellation.

Some people say that the stars are:

- seven sisters

- houses of the gods where the spirits of the departed go

- seven chiefs looking down with one eye open each

- the prow of a giant waka in the sky

- a mother and her six daughters

- a star that Tane became jealous of so he smashed it into seven pieces

...these stories became inspiration when creating a feather for a korowai...

What an awesome time of learning it has been!