Goodbye from Weka 2021

What a crazy and wonderful year we have had in Weka this year. We are all proud of our learning and have done so many fun things! 

What We Have Been Doing In Term 4

We have been very busy at Kaniere School this term with lots of different things. We thought we would take some time to put slides together of our favourite things so far. 

Lockdown Books

Our writing for the last 2 weeks of the last term, we wrote our own books all about the lockdown. We shared what we found hard, what we enjoyed, what we missed and more. 

We designed, wrote and illustrated them and displayed them on our classroom wall for everyone to read. Now we are taking them how to share with our whānau. 

We also created some 3D houses using only paper and glue. We first planned them and then step by step, put them all together. We were very proud of how well they turned out. 

Our Dream Playgrounds

All Dressed Up!

 This week we stepped it up with our themed dress-up days. Here are our awesome costumes. 

We had a movie character and animal day. 

PJ and onsie day.

And the best one for the week was dress like your Dad day.

Our Clocks

 This week for math we have been learning all about how to tell the time so that we could make it to our Google meets on time. For this, we had to make our own clocks out of things we could find around the house so that we could practice telling the half past and o'clock time. 

Lockdown Themes

Wow! What a week we have had online learning while in lockdown. 

Each day this week we had a different theme. 

On Tuesday we brought our pets online to say hello. 

On Wednesday we had our favourite teddy or toy learn with us for the day. 

On Thursday we had a crazy hat day where we all wore something on our heads. 

And today we all dressed up in yellow to celebrate Daffodil day. 

Stay tuned for more posts about our week of online learning fun! 

Matariki Celebration

 Over the past 2 weeks, we have been learning all about the Matariki star cluster and the Māori traditions that take place during Matariki. 

We chose to celebrate Matariki by coming together with the other two junior classes, learning a Māori local story and creating a beautiful artwork to share with our community. 

We learnt about the legend of Poutini which is a story about how pounamu came to be in the rivers of the West Coast. 

We performed a retelling of the story for our kura and whānau and created a large mural of the story which is being shown in our town Matariki exhibition. 

We were also asked to paint one of the 9 stars to be hung in town. We were given Ururangi, the atua of wind. We all had a go at painting a part of our star and are very proud of it. 

Our final big Matariki activity was learning to weave harakeke baskets. The senior students supported us with this and while it was challenging we were proud of our final baskets. 

Term 2 Reflection

As it is coming to the end of the term we are starting to reflect on our learning and achievements from term 2. 

We created a video each sharing something we are proud of or have worked hard on. 

Here is our video. 

St John Visit

 

Shape Scavenger Hunt

 Last week in maths we had a shape scavenger hunt. We had to choose 3-4 shapes that we knew and insert the shapes onto an explain everything project. Then we had to search around the classroom to find things that would fit into those shapes and take a photo of them. We found out that there are shapes everywhere around us. Have a look around where you are and see what shapes you can spot. 

Matific Challenge

 Thursday and Friday this week we are involved in a math challenge. 

We are competing against schools in NZ and Australia to get the most amount of stars on the Matific app. 

Yesterday we dressed up as monsters and worked really hard to get as many stars as we could. We had lots of people on the leaderboards and are currently holding 1st place out of all year 2 classes! 

Bring on another great day today!

Lets go Ruma Weka and Kaniere School! 

Cross Country 2021!

 Last week we competed in our school cross country. 

We had so much fun running through our fort and around our school.

Congratulations everyone who raced hard and who gained placings for their year group. 

Connecting To Tāne

On Friday we learnt about Tāne Mahuta and that he is the atua of the forest. We had a chance to see what it would be like to be Tāne for a little while. We chose a tree and stood or sat quietly at the trunk for a few minutes. We used our senses to imagine what he would be able to see, hear, smell and feel. Then we came back into class to draw a picture of our tree and write what we learnt. 

We loved being outside connecting with the environment for outside classroom day.

Creating a Character

 

We have been learning how to create a character for a story. We watched a video on Class Dojo about the Night Zookeeper. He taught us about what key details we need to include when introducing a new character. 

Here are our animals that we created to live in the night zoo.

Our Lego Writing Creations

 Last week each class in our school was given a tub of lego to use as a creative station. We chose to try it out by creating our own lego creations. Then we wrote a story about it and recorded ourselves reading it using explain everything. 

These are a few of the creations made by our class. 

Be Bright, Eat Right Magic Show

Today we went to watch a magic show called Be Bright, Eat Right. We learnt that fruits and vegetables should cover half of our plates. We learnt that we shouldn't drink fizzy drink every day because it has lots of sugar which is not good for your teeth.

We found out that when you have too much sugar and fat you can get sick easier and we need to eat things that give us nutrients and vitamins. 

We all really liked when he turned the fire into a pigeon and then the pigeon into a rabbit.

Luke liked it when he made flowers grow out of a pot. 

Ollie and Kobe liked when he made one big dice turn into lots of small dice.

It was lots of fun! 

 

Our Natural Easter Eggs

For our easter creation last week we made a natural easter egg using things we found in our school environment.  We may have used harakeke, stones, leaves, flowers, twigs, grass, bark, berries and seed pods. 

We thought the eggs looked great, surprising, creative, a little like a garden and we are very proud of our creations.

Our Kawa of Care Song

 For the last two weeks, we have been writing and practicing a song on the ukeleles all about the different rules we follow when using our iPads. 

We worked really hard coming up with the lyrics to fit them to 'The Wheels On The Bus' tune while also trying to share as many important rules as we could. We practiced singing lots first and then we added the ukeleles to it. We found it difficult remembering to strum at the right time while we were singing but Miss Pugh tapped her hand on her knee in time which helped. 

We finally got to perform our song in assembly on Friday for all of our family and classmates which was a lot of fun. 

Here is the video for you to enjoy. 

We also celebrated Tara, Caleb and Kobe for their amazing job at showing our Kaniere School Values. 

Ka pai team. 

Our Grass Heads

This term we have been learning what plants need to grow. To test it out we made our own grass heads and have been looking after them. 

First, we put grass seed and soil in an old stocking. 

                                      

  Then we made them round and tied a knot in the end.

Then we added faces to them and put them in a cup of water on the windowsill so that they could get some sunlight. We watched and waited and finally, their hair started to grow! 

We gave them a few haircuts and watched how the quickly grew back. 

After their final haircut on Friday, we got to take them home so that we can continue to look after them.

 

Our Busy Friday!

We had a big day on Friday last week. 

We had our swimming sports which were lots of fun! 

Then we had our assembly where we awarded Emilee, Ryker and Max for showing the school values.

We also welcomed Beau to our class who had started with us on Monday. 

Sustainable Planting

 On Friday Weka and Weka Tēina planted some kōwhai seeds. 

We wanted to do some sustainable planting. This means that we could use seeds from plants that we found in our own school gardens.

We spent some time with the tamariki in Piwakawaka collecting seeds from trees around our school and then separating them from their pods. 

First, we had to put them in boiling water for 24 hours because the shell was too hard and it needed to soften. 

In peers, we got a seedling tray and we filled each little part halfway with soil. 

Then we got 2 kōwhai seeds and put them in each part. 

Next, we put more soil over the top of the kōwhai seeds. 

We then made sure the seeds were in the sun and gave them some water. 

 https://enviroschoolskaniere.blogspot.com/2021/03/sustainable-planting.html

Ukulele with Naomi

 Today we had our second Ukelele lesson. We are learning the C and G7 chords. We worked really hard and tried out singing the colour song! Here's a video of our first try.

Celebration of Achievements

At our school assembly, every fortnight three of us are rewarded for showing the school values and being great learners. 

There are 2 value certificates and 1 star of the week certificate. 

On the 12th of February, these were awarded to Max, Indi and Finnian. 

This Week they were awarded to Louis, Luke and Meia. 

Tau ke koutou! you are all great at modelling our Kaniere School values. 

Our Statistical Investigations

Over the last three weeks, we have been learning about creating graphs and the different features you need on them. 

We started by making a few simple pictographs as a whole class. 

We then learnt about the important labels they need to be able to read the graph. 

Then we learnt about how to make statements about what we have learnt from a graph. 

Finally, we got into pairs and conducted our own statistical investigations from start to finish! 

These were the different steps we had to go through.

1. pick a question

2. create a tally chart on explain everything to survey on

3. collect the answers from our classmates

4. total up the answers

5. create a graph to share the information on. 

 Then as a class, we made some statements about what we have learnt from the information. 

We are very proud of our final graphs!