Gym Festival

On Tuesday 11th June Year 5 and 6 children joined other schools from the Peninsula Cluster to take part in a gym festival. It was held at the Bayfield High School gymnasium. Everyone had a great time and enjoyed the activities. We had been practising for a few weeks and we enjoyed performing our routines and mixing with children from other schools. Thanks to Andersons Bay School for organising this event and to Bayfield High School students for helping with the activities.

Mat Caird Talks To Us About Volume and How Builders and Designers Use It.

Mat Caird (Ella's dad)came to teach us about volume and how it is needed in buildingjobs.In the first lesson he talked to us about how much concrete was in the slab outside and underneath Room 7.The method we used for this was width x height x length. Next he talked us about how to figure out the volume of a rounded object. We pretended that the box was rectangle and we figured out how much the corners volume was and took it away at the end. We really appreciated Mat coming and sharing his maths knowledge with us.We can see Maths needs to be used in most jobs we might have in the future. By Emmy, Tessa and Emma

Orokonui Ecosanctury Visit

The bus inched up another steep hill. A wooden sign with the writing Orokonui Ecosanctuary started to show through the thick, grey mist.My tummy started to churn as we slowly went down the gravelly road toward the only ecosanctuary in the South Island. All 107 Macandrew Bay senior students scrambled off the bus to be greeted by Tahu and her staff. As we entered the warm, cosy room Tahu told us to grab a snack from our lunch boxes. We watched a short clip about the history of our native wildlife, their predators and why the ecosanctuary was created. After a brainstorm about New Zealand birds and animals, Tahu complimented us on our knowledge. Our leaders were introduced to us and we got into eight numbered groups. Luckily our teachers numbered our hands in case we forgot which group we were in. Excited chatter could be heard as we made our way into the misty blanket that shrouded the treetops.

Volume and Mass - measuring activities

We had to find out how many cm3 would fit in to 1m3. First we made the metre cube.  Then we worked out that there were 1000 cm cubes in the 1000s block. We then worked out  100 1000's blocks would be on the base and there would be ten rows of these. The equation we had to work out was 1000x 100 x 10 = 1,000,000.

We had lots of things to weigh. First we had to estimate the weight and then put it on the scales. We were learning how to read scales. We then use digital scales to see our accurate we were with our weighing. We surprised to find that hand sanitiser weighs more than a metal bell.

In this picture we each had to weigh ourselves and then see how close we were to our estimate. Then we added all of our groups weight together. Our group weighed a total of 174.5kgs. Some groups had time to find out how heavy they were on other planets.

We had to estimate how many ml were in different size bottles. We used 250ml measures and added how many filled each container. Lucky we knew how to add numbers. The biggest container took 4 lots of 250ml which was 1000ml , also known as 1 litre.

In this measuring activity we had to estimate  the volume and then find out how many cups were in different containers. We found in 2 litres there were 8 cups.

Rod Morris Donates Books to Our School Library

In our Monday assembly Rod Morris donated a new book he had written called " An extraordinary Land" to our school for our library. The book is all about New Zealand animals and plants. Three lucky children, Zhemera, Ryker and Lilly were given their own copy of the book because their photo is in the book planting a Southern Rata tree in our school grounds. We are very lucky to have someone as famous as Rod Morris help us in our school. He has also been talking to classes about protecting our native plants and animals form predators. We hope he comes to our class!

Our Health Team Encourage Us to Stay Bug Free

The sneeze safe website

Some members of the health team, Lachie, billy, Aaron, Tessa, Morgan and Ella talked in our Mondays values assembly about washing our hands to keep us healthy over winter. We showed a u tube clip, operation sneeze to the school and then gave each class some posters to put in the classrooms and toilets.
Washing hands  and drying hands after going to the toilet, sneezing and before you eat is the best way to stop your germ going to someone else!
Check out this link to watch the movie

Remembering Lyttleton West School

We all dressed up in red and black to remember our buddy school, Lyttleton West, in Christchurch.

We brought a gold coin donation and will send them the money.

Making Sandwich Wraps

After we had made our pattern we had to pin it on to material, then cut it out.

As part of our topic on Oceans this term we realised that we drop a lot of rubbish in our school grounds. We decided to make sandwich wraps  to see if not using gladwrap meant there was less rubbish in our school. We are worried about plastic blowing into the water as it is so harmful to the sea creatures.

We then had to cut out another piece the same size.

This is Josephine's Grandma helping us sew the sandwich wraps.

Sam's mum Kay also helped. She let lots of the children use the sewing machine.

Logan and Liam are cutting out the second wrap we made.

These are the finished product, we are looking forward to using them.

Lan and Olga from Department of Conservation Talks to Us About our Waterways

Lan talks to us about what could be in our waterways

Lan and Olga try to find life in the stream!

Nice and shady here, I wonder what we find?

What a cool eel!

We shared our discoveries with the school after lunch!

We had a great day today. Lan Pham, from the Department of Conservation, came to talk to us about the importance looking after our waterways. She told the whole school about the species we could find in our local streams.Eels, bullies and koura (freshwater crayfish) live in healthy streams. Bloodworms and snails live in streams that are not so healthy. Otago is the hotspot area for the native NZ galaxiids. They were called this because of the star like pattern on them. Room 1 was really lucky because we went down to the stream and watched Lan and Olga use electrical fishing equipment to find if we had lots of life on our waterways. The type of fish we found would tell us how healthy our waterways were. We were excited to find short finned eels, red finned bullies and koura. Lan was really excited and thought our stream was really healthy. After lunch we shared our findings with the school. We hope to work with our school neighbours and plant areas of the waterway that have no shade. This will prevent the weeds and give more shade to the stream which will encourage freshwater fish and plants.

Expert Geologist Talks to us about Mapping the Ocean Floor

Today Rosa's Dad, Richard, came to talk to us. He is a geologist who has worked with scientists when they go out and explore the deep sea. His job was to map the oceans. They used ships with eco sounders to measure and map the oceans.They now map them in 3D.He showed us what the bottom of ocean looked like. It is very bumpy and just like the land surface above water! He showed us photos of fish that have adapted to survive in extreme conditions like the deep sea. Ocean explorers use special boat, Tangaroa,that has a lot of expensive equipment on board to take them to places like Antartica. They also use smaller boats to get into smaller places. They need to wear special clothing to protect them. He said there are a lot of things still to discover about the ocean.

Marine Aquarium Visit

On Monday 11th March Room1 went to the Portobello Marine Aquarium to learn about the MM2 project ( marine metre square) At the moment we are writng recounts about our trip. Watch this space for the best recounts to be published!

Book Character Dress Up Dsy

On Friday 8th March our school held a dress up day as part of our our Scholastic Book Week. This is Room 1 dressed as their favourite book character. We enjoyed seeing all of the other classes as well. Tessa

Marine Biologist Visits Our School

Katrina ( aka Phoebes Mum) came to talk to us today about seaweed and phytoplankton. She is a marine biologist who studies seaweed and algae. Her husband ( aka Phillip aka Phoebes Dad)studies phytoplankton in the open ocean but he was sick today. We learnt there are three different colours of seaweed- green, red and brown. Seaweed is very important because it produces 50% of our oxygen. You might think you don't eat seaweed but it is in ice cream, toothpaste and of course sushi, just to name a few. Seaweed is very important for our marine life. Seaworms, sea snails, fish and other small creatures feed from seaweed. One type of seaweed c.Flexulosum has over 1000 creatures living in it. In fact seaweed indirectly feeds the whole food chain.There are over 330 different types of seaweed in NZ and half of these are not found anywhere else in the world. Katrina also talked about Phillips work with phytoplankton.You can only see phytoplankton in a microscope. Phytoplankton is floating algae. It is also called dytom. Some have glass shells with holes in it so they can breathe. Phillip goes on a special research boat with other scientists. The boat is designed to go through ice.

PALs Games

The children who went to the PALs ( Physical Activity Leaders) training morning have been teaching their classmates how to play some of the games. We have really enjoyed playing Dead Ant and Jail Break!

Buddy Reading With Room 3

We have enjoyed buddy reading each Friday with the awesome Room 3's. They are great readers and we are looking forward to sharing our learning with them and learning from them.