Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu

Kia Ora Room 13 @ Kaikohe West, 

We are really excited to be a part of Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu (Write to me write to you) for 2018!  We are a small semi-rural school on the outskirts of Gisborne.  There are about 130 students in our school and we are the senior class.  

Our classes are all named after Atua and ours is Tawhirimatea. We follow the Whakatauki “Hokia ki o maunga kia purea e koe I nga hau o Tawhirimatea” - Return to your ancestral mountains to be cleansed by the winds of Tawhirimatea.  We also have a waiata about this which you will see on our class website!  Our other four classes are named after Atua also - Tangaroa (5 year olds), Rongomatane (Year 1/2), Rauamoko (Year 3), Tanemahuta (Year 4/5).  

This Term we have a busy term!  We are off to a trip next week to Napier to perform our performance Whirikoka in a competition and we will be back at school on Wednesday.  We may be able to show you our performance by then!

Our class focus this term is Science and we are learning about Environmental issues in Farming.  We run our class through an Enterprise where we are the workers in a company.  Our company is called Seeds R Us and we are trialling different grass seeds to see how they grow.  You will be able to see this on our blog as we started last term.  This is a 2 term study!  

Here is a photo of us performing: 

We are looking forward to learning more about your class also! 

From Tawhirimatea and Mrs Hall

Exploring the Living World

Mr Swann introducing us to Tarere

Manaia who is a part of Tarere Iwi

Planting the 250 Trees

Yay we did it!

Tarere is Makaraka School's closest Marae and today we went to visit.  We planted some trees for them along the river to help build up a native bush area.




It was hard work getting the spade down through the grass roots but in the end we planted a lot of trees and then headed back to school for a well earned morning tea.





After morning tea, we ended up at Gray's Bush to explore the bug life a little closer!  We found some interesting looking things!

Material World - Confectionery Candles

Today we had our 3rd science day looking at the properties of materials.  There were some exciting activities! 

Ooblick

Mucus Slime

Glowing Water

Super Absorbant Polymers

Colour Changing Milk

Confectionery Candles

Happy Birthday to you!  It really was Georgia and Isla's Birthday! 

These candles are environmentally friendly and very tasty!  An extra challenge for home is to try different nuts and see how they burn! 

Try them net time it's your birthday!  You'll be a part of saving the planet as well as a healthy fruit addition to the cake! 

Here's what I am working on in Blogging

We used Voki to share our learning... 

What did the Physical World teach us?

Putting the fun in learning! 

As well as welcoming some guest students, we had our first immersion week day.  This was on the Physical World which was all about forces and movement.  We began with a tall tower competition 4 teams!

Students rotated around activities on:

Catapults
Pulleys
Magnets
Light
Floating and Sinking
Electricity

Ask them what they did and learnt!  Some fabulous fun and curiosity shown here!  

A wrap up of Mrs Hall's activities... 

Welcome to our Beijing guests for 2 weeks!

Today we had 6 students from Beijing, China arrive at our school.  Boy did they have an action packed day with our science immersion week! 

If you see them around here are the rooms they are in! 

Room Tangaroa - Leevi 6yrs

Room Rongomatane - Tiger 8yrs

Room Tanemahuta - Kevin 10yrs & Julie 9yrs

Rm Tawhirimatea - YuQin - 'Cutie' 12yrs & John Diao 11yrs

The parents and students bought with them a beautiful waiata to sing from Taiwan which they said has genetic relationships to NZ Maori!

The students and their parents had a great welcome with a Powhiri and morning tea. We then got straight into our week of science. We really look forward to learning more about them and their schooling over in China!

Here is Tiger performing some Kung Fu!  Amazing! 

Everyone was right at home at morning tea! Joining into a football game and having a great time getting to know others! What a fantastic attitude :-)

Morning Tea Footy Game

War Memorial Theatre Arts night

On a starry night by the light of the moon the River and Sea Creatures play together!

Each year students from Makaraka School create something artistic to showcase the performing arts.  This year we created 4 performances in our House groups.  House groups are cross school groups where we do whole school activities.  Each house group took one of our school values and created a performance to show the key ideas of that value.  

Blue House  - Kia Maia, Stand Proud

Red House - Kia Kaha, Be Strong and brave

Yellow House - Kia Manawanui, Have a Heart

Green House - Tuku Patai, Be Hungry to Learn and Have Curiosity. 

After these performances were shown, the Year 5 and 6's performed their Stage Art entry which is going to be in a competition in Napier.  The Stage Art is about a local Whatatutu story depicting a man called Whirikoka and his pet seal Oioi.  The story explains how oil is made and the origins of fossil fuels.  

Here is our performance: