Today we were given some lovely quilts.  Some lovely ladies sew together pieces of small fabric to make the quilted blanket.  It takes a lot of hours for them to make the quilt.  Whaea Vicki said it takes two weeks to make one!

These quilts are kindly donated to the tamariki at our school.  We were the luky class to receive them this time.

Eraia said” I like my one because it’s made into a picture”.

Jackson  said “My one has purple flowers”.

“I like mine because it has cats”, said Harleigh.

Daniel likes his because it has Christmas on it.

Team Kērērū say a big thank you to the lovely ladies who made the awesome quilts. We are going to treasure them for life.

Throughout term 2, we have been learning about fire safety. This has covered the important topics of safety with matches, candles and lighters, what to do in an event of fire, smoke alarms, and safe meeting points for whanau. 

Kērērū had a hikoi to the Waitara Fire Station today. Fire safety is important so we don’t get hurt, and so we know how to behave around fire. We know how to be responsible around matches, lighters and candles by giving them to adults and keeping them out of reach for younger siblings. 

By watching a scenario on tv, we saw how fast a fire can travel.  It started from a lit candle.  The window was open and the curtain was swaying in the breeze.  This caught on the lit candle and became alight.  It only took 3 minutes for the whole room to be alight and smoke to fill the room.  It was scary to watch.  The smoke alarm detected the smoke within seconds in the second scenario which showed how important it is to have smoke alarms in every room. 

When we went outside, we went into a smoke house.  Here we had to look for all the safe exit points of the smoke house.  Once the smoke house was filled with fake smoke, the smoke alarm wen off and we all GOT DOWN, GOT LOW, AND GOT OUT!  We met at the letterbox which was the safe meeting point.  Where is your safe meeting point at home?

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Inside the garage were two fire trucks.  We sat inside a fire truck.  This was really interesting as we saw all the walkie talkies, buttons and even a big screen with the Waitara road map on it.  

A big thank you to Julie, Chris, Melissa and Tiny for taking the time to help educate us on our fire safety journey!

Team Kērērū had an amazing trip to Puke Ariki.  Our first stop was at the New Plymouth library.  It was a massive space full of not only books, but many awesome activities.  We met Matua Greg who taught us what a tokutoku pattern was, and what they represent.  After looking at different formations, we had the chance to create our own tokutoku pattern.

After the Library, we walked across the overhead tunnel and into the Puke Ariki Museum.  Here we learnt about how Maori trapped and caught kai.  They also ate kai that we no longer can, like kērērū. We also looked around the exhibitions that showed old artifacts from the 1800’s.  Did you know that they didn’t have any power? They also kept their kai in a whare up high so that rats couldn’t get to it.

Go have a look at the exhibition and have a walk around the library.  There is so much to do and see!

Team Kererū have been reading the BFG. The BFG is a nice giant that blows good dreams into kids rooms at night. He caught a little girl called Sophie.  The BFG took her back to giant country, where Sophie thought he was going to eat her. He turned out to be nice and he was her friend.  In the giant county there were other giants.  These were…The Bonecruncher, Bloodbottler, Meatdripper, Fleshlumpeater, Manhugger, Childchewer, Gizzardgulper, Maidmasher, and The Butcherboy These giants ate children!! Sophie was very scared! The BFG does not eat little children, he only eats Snozzcumer which taste horrendous! He liked to drink Frobscottle, which made hs fart and made him lift up like a rocket.  Sophie enjoyed that part.  Sophie made a plan.  She planned to capture all the bad giants, but she needed the Queens help.

Team Kererū created a wall poster. On our poster are all te mean giants and some snozzcumbers.

Meadow says, “The BFG was an awesome book because i was very interesting”

Odin said, “There was a giant who visited Wellington, New Zealand”

Faolin said, “I thought the book was very cool because there were lots of different giants”

Harleigh said, “I like the BFG because he is kind”

Jaxon said ” Whaea Danielle used different voices for each person or giant, who was talking”

Team Kererū recommend you read this book because it is interesting, has cool characters and it is easy to read.

We have been learning about telling the time on an analog clock. This is my photo below. I created this by using an analogue clock with two hands. I am proud of myself because I can read whe it is o’clock and half past. Something I found quite challenging was putting the hands in the right place. Next time I might try ask someone next t me for help. My tips about telling the time are the big hand always goes on the 12 for oclock.

Kia ora to all our whanau.

This week we are going to tell you about Maths Buddy. Maths Buddy is a fun, online maths program, that we all use everyday. Whaea Danielle, sets up tasks for us to complete each week. here is also maths games for when we finish our tasks. Maths Buddy is fun to use.  Most of us find it easy to use but if it is hard, we can watch the video that explains how to work out problems. We can use the number to help us as well.

Also this week, our school MANA focus is Ngakaunui: being a Green Warrior.  This encourages us to look after our environment. We discussed making our lunchboxes rubbish free, by putting our food in containers rather than bags. We talked about where our eating places were and not to put rubbish and food in our pockets because they could fall out. We can use reusable bags for our food. One of our tasks this week was to make a poster about what a Green Warrior looks like. Let us know what you think of them.

Hello there whanau and friends!

This week we have been learning about Odd One Out.  This is where we see 3 pictures and we choose one we think is the odd one out.  Then we have to write a reason why. All the pictures look different in their own way. When we finished making our own odd one out, we had to take a screenshot and put that onto a slide. Some of us thought it was easy, some of us thought it was hard. We had to hold down ctrl, shift and the box button at the same time. Then we had to paste our screenshot onto our own slide. It was fun to learn and create something new.  Click on the slideshow below to see our end project.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1uhctgHVt7l8F5NNsrG2venDhTSrpRjjKoRx6iHhYcUk/edit#slide=id.p

It has been exciting to come back to school.

Waitara East had a powhiri on the first day of kura to welcome new students and whanau. It was a long time but we were quietly waiting.

Our class is learning how to use a chrome book for the first time! We learnt how to log in with our password, then we looked around our class wesite:

https://sites.google.com/waitaraeast.school.nz/whaea-danielle-year-1-2/home

Then we learnt about how to use Math Buddy.

On Thursday it was Waitangi Day. We didn’t come to school. Waitangi Day is about the Māori and British people who signed a piece of paper that was a treaty to live together.

Whaea Danielle is reading to us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It is a cool book.

We are learning about Ko Wai Au – All about me.  We are colouring in hoodies to represent ourselves. We also coloured a feather which is going on our class treaty.

The pool was warm to get in to. We have only been for one swim so far.

One of the old trees has fallen down.  Two are now being cut down for safety. It is sad because we used to go under it for shade an find lots of leaves and cicada shells.

We were shown how to create pixel art.  First we made our names in to pixel art and then some of us made artwork.  It was easy to do once we started to get the hang of it.  We learnt how to create multiple pixels at one time!  It was fun and we will do it again!

Team pōhutukawa have been working hard creating slide animations.

We start off by thinking of a storyline.  We then take a photo of ourselves, and anyone else we want to have in it.  After that, we remove the background using remove.bg.

What do you think of our storylines?  All  tamariki have worked very hard on their storylines, doing something they have only just learnt.  I am super proud of everyone!