Spectacular Six

On Friday Jess brought  her baby guinea pigs in to meet everyone in Spectacular Six.There were two, a ginger one and a black one. They were only a week old and they were very cute! Now we all want a pet guinea pig!

This week we have been making name labels out of dough. Miss Crawford gave us each a lump of dough. We designed a fancy name label and then tried to make it out of dough. Miss Crawford baked the dough labels in the oven. When they cooled down we painted them.We threaded string through them so we can hang them around our necks. We will wear them at our Little Businesses Market Day on December 10th.

We are having lots of fun learning about and making comics, cartoons and animations. We are researching the backgrounds to some famous comics and cartoons, finding out about their creators and how they got their ideas. Some of us are having a go at making our own comics. Some of us are working on animations, using ‘I Can Animate’ and ‘imovie’. There is a really spectacular ‘Sylvanian’ movie being made. There is also an outstanding ‘Keynote’ presentation about the creator of “The Simpsons”, Matt Groening.Here we are at work:

On Tuesday we had the privilege of visiting Te Rangimarie marae at Rangiotu.The meeting house was built in 1858. We were called onto the marae by a karanga given by Mrs Te Awe Awe. Tia gave her karanga in reply and we moved slowly forward. We were standing in the shape of a waka [canoe]. Halfway we stopped and bowed our heads for a moment to acknowledge the people who had been here before us.

Once inside, Mr Te Awe Awe gave the Lord’s Prayer in Maori and then welcomed us, the manuhiri [visitors], in Maori and English.

Mr McCarthy gave a speech in reply and then we all supported him by singing our waiata. We gave a koha and then lined up to hongi.

Mr Te Awe Awe told us the history of the marae and then some of us introduced ourselves with our mihi.

In the afternoon Mr Te Awe Awe and Mr McCarthy taught the boys the haka. The girls made poi and learnt an action-song. Both groups went outside and showed what they’d learnt!

We had a great day!

On camp we visited lots of places. Here we are at Nga Manu, learning about the amazing life cycle of an eel. We also identified lots of NZ native birds there. Bruce showed us some albatross wings, they were enormous!

Down at the beach we made sand sculptures of Formula One racing cars.

On Thursday we went into Wellington for the day. We had a fantastic morning at Te Papa and saw the Colossal Squid, Our Space and the Formula One exhibition. We all learnt a lot and had a great time.

In the afternoon we went to the Island Bay Marine Education Centre. What an incredible place! We could pick up lots of sea creatures. We also used nets and buckets to collect hermit crabs and other interesting marine life in the rock pools at Island Bay.

Back at camp we had a concert! There was a lot of talent!

We ended our camp with a visit to M.A.V. Tech in Foxton. This is a museum of audio-visual gear. We went upstairs to the old movie theatre and watched some really old films, such as ‘Tom & Jerry”. They were still very funny.

We got back to school very tired on Friday afternoon.

We had a really good time at El Rancho!

Today Mr McCarthy built a sawdust kiln in the ground outside our classroom. He placed all our pottery in layers of sawdust and then lit the top layer. As the fire burned through the sawdust in the pit, it fired all our clay!  At the end of the day he dug up the pottery and then tipped water on the kiln to put out the fire. Here are some photos of the day:

This week we’ve had some fun with clay. We began by experimenting and exploring, finding out what we could do with the clay. Then we chose something to make. Many of us made Maori flutes. Some experts from Supreme 7 came in and showed us what to do. We left them to dry overnight and then decorated our flutes with koru and kowhaiwhai patterns. We used a nail to do this. Now we are waiting for some fine weather to fire our pottery. Mr McCarthy is going to make us a sawdust kiln outside our classroom. We will leave the pottery in the kiln for several hours.

This week we have been making the most of the sunshine and getting outside!

We practised our spelling with chalk on the concrete outside Spectacular Six.

We’ve also taken maths outside, taking part in a ‘Maths Week’ treasure hunt in the school grounds.

Our gymnastics skills are really developing. We are fearless on the vaulting box and we’re becoming very graceful on the beam. Today we had fun making human pyramids…. here are the photos!

This week we are learning how to re-tell a Maori myth or legend. We are making puppets to help us tell the story. Here we are making our puppets and props: