Welcome back to a new school year!
We hope you have had a restful holiday.

Our concept this term is "Our Story, Our Culture". We will be sharing stories about our culture, families and other groups we belong to.

Next week Room9 starts swimming.
Other junior classes start swimming in week 6.
Swimming will happen on Tuesday and Friday for 4 weeks. Notices will be sent home when your class will be swimming.

We will be collecting can tabs for Kidney Kids again this term so keep them coming!


We hope you have a productive, fun-filled term.

Wacky Hair Day

We had a great time in Room 9 on Wacky Hair Day. It was fun to see all the weird and wonderful hair styles we each came up with!

Room 1 Technology - Treasure Boxes

Our technology challenge was to design a suitable package to protect our prayer stones. First we brainstormed our ideas. We talked about which packaging would be our best option and why. We decided that a cardboard box would be suitable to hold our precious taonga.

Our next step was to find a suitable template. We experimented with some templates found on the internet. Folding the boxes was a real challenge, but we worked together to get them done. When we found the right template, we had to take it home and our Mums and Dads helped us to scale it on to a piece of cardboard.

When our cardboard boxes were finished, we gave them two coats of paint and waited for them to dry before we could decorate them.

We had to draft our designs onto a piece of scrap paper and think about the colours that we could use to make our work stand out. We shared our ideas with a buddy and got some feedback about how we could improve our design.

We used pastels to transfer our ideas onto our treasure boxes. Then we put shredded paper inside our boxes to sit our prayer stones on. We were pretty pleased with our final result ...

PRAYER STONES - OUR TAONGA

As part of our learning about Taonga / Treasure, we made prayer stones in Room 1. Prayer stones help us to focus on being at peace with God during prayer time.

The object of this task was to create a taonga or treasure to give to somebody special, in the hope that our prayer stones will become a taonga to them.

We started with a plain stone. Then we had to choose a colour to paint our stone. Our next task was to think about what to put on our stone ... and we came up with many wonderful words that remind us of God and Jesus - love, peace, hope, trust, joy, care, manaaki, aroha.

Finally, we used stickers and craft bits and pieces to decorate our stones.

The results are amazing ...

Room 4 Treasures

We have been bringing treasures from home that are special to our family. We told the class all about them and why they are treasures to us.

Maths Websites

Here is a fun maths website that we enjoy in Room 9. Parents can use it at home as well. It will be suitable for all levels in the junior syndicate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks1bitesize/numeracy/

Our Dads ... Our Taonga - Room 1

What Is A Dad?

A dad is someone who wants to catch you before you fall but instead picks you up, brushes you off, and lets you try again.

A dad is someone who wants to keep you from making mistakes but instead lets you find your own way, even though his heart breaks in silence when you get hurt.

A dad is someone who holds you when you cry, scolds you when you break the rules, shines with pride when you succeed, and has faith in you even when you fail...

(unknown)

Thank you God for all Dads everywhere

HAPPY FATHERS DAY!

from Room 1

Our Church's Holy Objects and Taonga

For the first half of this Term we are learning about Holiness in Religious Education.

Recently our Junior classes have been visiting our Church to find out all about the Holy objects and Taonga that belong there.
This week Father John showed Rooms 1, 2, 5, and 6 all of these very special objects. We learnt some of their names and what they were used for.

Thank you Father John for giving up your time to show us these treasures.

Here is a slideshow of our visit and some of these precious objects.