The National Aquarium of New Zealand visit!

We had a great time last Thursday. We were greeted by Carol Larsen and her team in the meeting room downstairs. She told us the expectations for the morning and how we would go off in our groups with Carly, Tara, Jake or herself.

The first thing we did was to observe the penguins being fed! it was cool to see one of them dive into the water and eat its food. It was sad to hear that the penguins had been badly damaged because of dogs, rubbish or people being careless...

We thought it was great because not only did we get to make fossils with Carly, find fossils in the rocks with Tara and listen to Jake about fossils in the dinosaur room - we got to have a tour of the aquarium with Carol! We enjoyed seeing the creatures that we studied last term at the rocky shore.

Take a look at our photos from the visit and enjoy the captions!

Wow! Look at those penguins!

I hope you've been brushing your teeth!

Look out behind you......

Fossils, fossils and more fossils!

It was great to have lots of parents there to help us.

You have to follow the instructions carefully

Monie likes the idea of being a Paleontologist.

Jake has so much knowledge about dinosaur fossils

Rosie and her sibling Grace with their mother Jade.

Sarn worked hard to make his fossilized shell

National Aquarium of New Zealand - Dinosaur exhibit

Inside the exhibit at the National Aquarium

We are looking forward to going to this exciting place!

This is where we are going!

Soon we are going to be visiting the National Aquarium of New Zealand. We are going to be visiting the dinosaur exhibit there. 




We will also be lucky enough to see the rest of the aquarium, including the feeding of the penguins. The children are all looking forward to this trip!

Rooms 6 and 8 are going on Thursday 11th June and rooms 7 and 10 are going on the 12th June. We will leave school at 9am on both days and return to school by 12pm. Let us know if you can help!

We get to see the penguins being fed!

Te Reo Kori

Over the last four weeks we have been enjoying Te Reo Kori as a focus for our Physical Education. Our Middle School children have learnt some string games, knucklebones and fast hand games in Room 6, made Poi Toa(warrior poi) and played a game with them that involves expert spinning and throwing and catching of the poi in Room 7, played a game similar to Captain's Coming called Waka in Room 8 and practised their skills with the rakau in Room 10. They are all very enthusiastic and have learnt a lot of new reo and skills while having heaps of fun!!! Tino pai tamariki ma. Karawhiua! Okea ururoatia!

Great concentration to improve rakau skills!

This is fun! Just keep to the rhythm!

Keep your eye on the poi and put your hands up. You might catch it!

Room 10 were positive and encouraging as they taught a new skill to each other

Watch carefully. This is how you do it!

Great focus and careful explaining and the string games become easy!!!

"Now watch this first bit carefully."

Swing it hard and give it a good flick.

Taniwha writing

At Moteo marae we learned about Taniwhas. We listened to some stories and completed some very colourful taniwha faces.

Today Room 8 did some writing about a taniwha we know about...

D I N O S A U R        M A D N E S S!!

There was some very  strange happenings in our classrooms last week. There were loud noises, footprints, strange trees and plastic models littering the place!

We soon discovered what our new theme was to be for the term...dinosaurs! 

We are carrying on our ideas from the rocky shore and talking about animal features and how those features help them to survive and exist. 

There is a problem though, dinosaurs are extinct. We're wondering why or how that happened. Keep checking in to see what we have been doing. Check out some interesting photos to start with.

What is going on - what are these strange creatures roaming around the middle school...

What left these behind we wonder...

Dinosaurs! In New Zealand?

What are you wondering about?

Who knew there were so many about?

Look out! T-Rex is about....