Flower Power

These are the flowers that we have been working on all week. We made a variety of 3D flowers by scrunching up newspaper and sticking it down with masking tape and then papier mâché over top. We have had to work really hard to blend all the colours. There are daffodils, pansies, daisies, blossom, and many others.  We are all very proud of them.

The first person to guess what this flower is will get a chocolate fish but you have to be an adult.

 

Our Koru Art

We began looking at Maori art before we went on our trip to the Marae and how we can represent ourselves and our family.
This is our koru art. These koru drawing reflect our family's and are inspired by the native fern fronds found in our native bush.

The koru is the Maori name given to the new unfurling fern frond and symbolises new growth, strength and peace.

This is Lachlan's Koru - blue: Jessie, green: Dad, purple: Shaun, Red: Lachlan, yellow: Mum, orange: Paul.

This is Harrison's koru art.

Blog written by Lachlan

Fun Flower Art

   

We have being busy over the last three weeks doing art with Mrs Cleghorn we have done awesome  flower, look at some cool art below.

What we needed cardboard,  paint, flour, paste and calico fabric.

What we did: to make the outside frame cut the cardboard 35 by 35, measure 5 centimetres inside the piece of cardboard to create a frame. 

Cut the calico fabric 33 x 33 centimetres. The next step get an A4 piece of paper draw your favourite flower, stick the piece of paper under the fabric, trace the picture on using a black crayon.

Make a paste using flour and water, put the paste into a squeezy  bottle and put it over the lines on the fabric.

Once the paste is dry, paint it using bright colours. 

When the paint is dry pick off the paste and then you will have a cool piece of art work like this.

We have decided to sew it altogether and make a wall hanging for the library. It looks very effective.

Our new art project is making 3D flowers using papier-mâché, they are going to look great also.

Post written by Callum and Laytun

Touch Skills with Grant

Grant from Otago touch came to our school to teach us some touch skills while playing some fun games like candle sticks and racing to the ball.

We played candlesticks to boost our speed, agility, dodging, placing the ball and side stepping.

We followed on with some more skills which focused in our catching, passing, touching, defending and attacking.

Grant thinks that our some members of our class have great touch skills. He spent the rest of the morning working with the children playing touch this year testing and trialling them he is also going to recommend which players should go to South Otago trails. Hopefully some of them get into this team and then go onto represent Otago for touch also.

                                         

Thanks for coming to our school Grant!

Blog written by Brendan

Persuasive Writing

Later today we are going school swimming. For writing this morning we did some persuasive writing on the topic 'Why every child should learn to swim.'

We had to use paragraphs, have an introduction, use 2-3 points with the key words, and make sure we had a conclusion.

Key words were; danger, life skill, important, survive, survival, sport, exercise, fun, rivers, creeks, beaches, lakes, ocean, sea, job, teach

Here are two examples of persuasive text written this morning, they are still in draft form;

Every Child In New Zealand needs to learn to swim

I believe every child in New Zealand needs to learn to swim.

Every child needs to learn to swim because the fun you can have with your friends and family, such as falling off the biscuit, jumping off the wharf and playing in the pool. Also building dams and rafting.

Also another sport you can do even if you don’t want to do swimming it’s still good training for your other sports. 

Lastly New Zealand has lots of water such as beaches, lakes, rivers and creeks, and New Zealand is surrounded by water.

Every child in New Zealand needs to learn to swim. 

Waiting patiently for our instructions

Why every child needs to know how to swim

Every child needs to learn to swim it is a serious life skill and every child needs to know how to swim! 

These are the reasons I believe it is so important. Firstly it is so much fun playing in the water with all of your friends and if all of your friends know how to swim and they love the water you're basically missing out on all the fun. It also means you can do fun triathlons water challenges and go to the beach.

Secondly, it is a life skill. What happens if you are in the middle of the sea and your boat tips? You will have a life jacket on but you will still have to swim or tread water and you will have no water confidence, however if you know how to swim you will have a much better chance of survival than the people that do not know how to swim. If you fall in a 3 meter deep pool and you don't know how to swim you are obviously going to drown and die and if you know how to swim  you could save somebody's life.

Lastly it is great exercise and sport it is a really really good exercise because it does not pressure you muscles. You could get really good job and take your career to the limit and get into the Olympic or Commonwealth Games. 

These are the reasons I believe learning to swim is something that every child in New Zealand must do. What do you think about it?

Blog written by Danyon & Tim 

Science in the Classroom

Today we had a visit from Henrica who is a lead science teacher in Otago. She did some cool experiments with us.

First we did a bubble bomb. We used a similar technique to making volcanoes. First, we got some baking soda and wrapped it in a tissue, then put it in the small snap lock bag. Then we put some warm water in the bag and finally the malt vinegar. The chemical reaction produced foam and CO2, which made the bag expand, and eventually pop.

After that we did an experiment called candle and water. It involved a bowl half full of coloured water, a small candle and a jar. Henrica then lit the candle, waited for it to burn for a few seconds for it to warm up, then covered the candle with the jar so that the lip of the jar created an air-tight seal around the water. The candle quickly flickered and went out. But when the candle went out, the water got sucked up into the jar the equalised the pressure of the air outside. 

Finally, we did an experiment called the floating tea bag. Henrica emptied the contents of a tea bag tube and put the empty tube on a saucer and then she lit the top of it. The tea bag burnt quickly and when the flame was almost extinguished, the tea bag flew up to the ceiling because of the hot air rising.

We are focussing on using key words to explain what happens and draw diagrams to help show the process. This is an area that we all need to develop so we can be ready for Science at High School.

By Scott & Morgan

This experiment was to show us that warm air or water rises above the cooler air or water.

This was to show us how air heats up and expands. 

Candle and Water experiment

Puketeraki Marae Visit

Yesterday we went to Karitane to visit the Puketeraki Marae, once we had all arrived we grouped by the gate and then the caller started talking, we walked slowly up the path and then Alex called back on our behalf, we took off our shoes and entered the Marae.
We sat down, females at the back, males at the front, Kane (a man at the Marae) said a speech, Alex answered and then we stood up and sung "Ko Te Roopu Tenei", a few more short speeches were said and then we went into the kitchen and had a piece of fruit and a biscuit to wrap it up.
We then split into our classes and went to three different workshops, poi and te rakau, flax weaving, and a martial arts game, we have a few reports below describing these.
We then sung Ko Te Roopu and E Toru Nga Mere and then left, going home with many memories of a great day at Puketeraki Marae.

Cyber Safety

Today at school we were learning about cyber safety, we even had some parents at school learning  and working with us on Google Docs.  It will be really helpful for everyone at Warepa School to learn about how to be cyber safe and how to look after the schools ICT equipment.

We worked in partners to make a shared presentation on how to be safe while we are on the internet at school and at home.

The main points today are:

• only go on the internet when you are allowed 
• give all of your passwords to you parent and teacher 
• do not give any of your passwords to your friends
• always get permission to put a photo of someone on the internet, blog or youtube.

By Macleod and James.

Mandarin Lessons

Every second Friday we have Mandarin lessons with Alex, today we played a game with the Chinese animals.

Alex gave as a picture of an animal we had learnt. We had partners and she played some music and when the music stopped we turned towards each other and had to say the animal that our partner was holding in Mandarin.

We slowly eliminated people and Tiana was the winner.

Other things happening in our class today.....

There were three awesome runners who went to Otago Cross Country today, they are Macleod, Danyon and Jack. They all did very well and we are very proud of them # awesome.

By Isla & Vaughan

Mini Master Chef

Today for food technology the year 6's had a mini master chef.

We were put into teams and given a range of ingredients to use to create a dish. Mrs Hyslop gave us some ideas that were easy to cook. 
Fried rice, mac & cheese spaghetti and fruit crumble with chocolate banana custard were on the menu for today.

Everyone was doing something, there was absolutely no chance of sitting down to relax.

Knives were chopping, dishes were rattling, people were panicking.

Everything was plated up and ready for the judges who arrived at 12pm.

Some of the judges comments were:

"Look great! Love the colours"

''Great sauce - nice flavours"

"Nice berry mix!" 

"The mint was a pleasant surprise"

While the judges were tasting our masterpieces we had to give each team member a score from 1-4 on how well they worked as part of team.

We are now making our own recipe book using Google Docs it will have all our recipes in it.

We can't wait to see what our next challenge is!

Fried Rice Team

Fruit Crumble Team

Ham & Cheese Spaghetti Team

By Jack & Blake

Our Memoirs

Writing 
Today we wrote memoirs for writing. A memoir is a story of a memory you can remember. We did some brainstorming first and then began writing our own memoir. Here is an example of a memoir: 

JACK'S MEMOIR

"Henry, Henry," I whispered. 
"Errr," he groaned.
"Henry, wake up! We should go and get some lollies from the kitchen," I yawned.
"Fine then," he added.
"Henry, can I have a moro bar?"
"Okay." 
SMASH!!! The glass bottle hit the ground. 
"OOOOWWWW get down from there right now!!" roared Carl.
"Henry you blew our cover," I  snapped at him.

We know we have written a good memoir when the reader can see, here and feel the experience because the writer has used good descriptions.

By Tiana and Curtis

Speech time!

Today the senior class had their speech competition. Our three judges were Mrs Bissett, Mrs Wilson and Mrs Hyslop.  It took us two and a half hours for everyone in the class to present their speech.  
The Middle and Junior classes came to watch so they could get some ideas on how they could write their speech and also how to present them.
We were marked on the introduction, ideas, research and conclusion. We were also marked on our voice, stance and use of our notes.

The people who made it to the Rotary Speech competition are Cameron, Tiana, Holly and Brendan.

The results from the year 6 students are; Tom (5th),  Lachlan & Jack (4th), Danyon (3rd), Isla (2nd) and Macleod (1st).

By Cameron & Tom