Production rehearsals continue in Lockdown!

This year the production may look a little different! Lockdown has put a little spanner in the works! 

 We will let you know how we are going to proceed once we know how much time we have. In the mean time we have been doing online script writing and rehearsals! 

 Those that have joined have been loving it and having a lot of fun learning about the characters.

Lockdown Maths Lesson

This is our maths learning during lockdown!  

Abandoned - the story of the found puppies...

In the early morning dawn I ran along the dunes of the beach.  I do this most mornings.  This morning vaguely made out a mewling sound in the long grass.  Rustling in the breeze was a plastic rubbish sack.  Cautiously I walked over to the sack.  As I approached I could see movement inside it.  Weak movement.  Slight bumps pushing out of the plastic in many directions.  Soft cries came from within the sack almost sounding weaker and weaker.  

Carefully I opened the sack pulling the cords apart.  Oh no, not again.  Anger coursed through me in waves!

Who did this? Why? How can we stop this?

Never fear Tawhirimatea's new mission is to help with this problem! Check out our blogs for the rest of the story.

Can you beat Koka Michelle's maths grid times?

Here is my maths grid results for Term 3.  I got 1 wrong on the first day oops!  I am working on being accurate with my times tables and knowing them off by heart automatically.



This is a graph of my times to see how fast I am at completing 100 times tables!

Panui e hoa - Read with our friends!

Today we started to learn the skills we will need for our Panui e hoa reading programme! 

We looked at:

• How to greet our buddy - with a smile, hug, handshake! 

• How to introduce the book and ask questions about what the story might be about. 

We found a partner and role played this part of the programme.  We found out that it is important to have humour, use patience and ask questions.  Giving hints and lots of compliments are also vital! 

Tomorrow we learn how to ask questions and what are good questions to ask.  We will practice giving compliments!  This is looking like a fun way to get into reading!

Site dances

In Friday Programme we were looking at our special school places.  We really love to show off our school and we decided in groups to create a dance using these special places.  
We used the Pou which are for all our classes, the playground which we love to play on and the cycle track posts to play leap frog on. 

We were learning to include all our group members in our dance and use unison, canon stillness and movement.  We think we did great at all of this! 

The music was added in last to give it a really good feel.  This was so much fun and here are our videos: 

Pou Atua

Playground Fun

Leap Frogs

Central School's Amazing Production

How lucky were we to be invited to Central School's Production - This is Us.  We thought it was fabulous.  They had narrators and lots of interesting costumes and props.  Everything looked just stunning. 

The story was about their journey from the creation of Earth to present day and beyond.  The dancers in the creation did really well and performed to Holst's Jupiter!  A powerful piece of music. 

The giant sized puppets really show cased the European and Maori descendants and the make up of our culture.  It is no mean feat putting over 400 students on the stage and Central did a great job! 

I loved seeing Tim be a part of the show also!  He is often behind the scenes and he would have loved helping his old school!

It was great to watch and we hope we can return the hospitality next year for our production! 

Arohanui Central - Terrific effort!

Tamararo 2018

On September 1 Makaraka School performed our Atua bracket at the Tamararo competition.  It was a great performance and very polished.  These Waiata are named after our school classroom names and are about the Atua and the essence of what they stand for in Maoridom.  

Our class names in the order performed are: 

• Tangaroa - God of the ocean (a moteatea)
• Tanemahuta - God of the forest (Waiata-a-ringa)
• Tawhimatea - God of wind and storms ((Waiata Poi)
• Ruaumoko - God of the underground and volcanic action (Haka)
• Rongomatane - God of peace and land (Waiata-a-ringa)

Here is the video of us performing.  We hope you enjoy it!  

Te Wiki 0 Te Reo Maori

Lily has created a slide for us on the Kopu we learnt today at Te Reo.  Please add in some of your own.

Class Game time!

 This week we have been getting out and enjoying the spring weather!  Our class PE Monitors have been super organised, suggesting games and making sure they are set up ready for us.  

This is Tawhirimatea playing Bench Ball.  It is a game where you have to tag everyone with soft balls and the team with no one left standing looses!  The hard bit is when you are out you go to the bench and then can tag from behind! 

 Watch out the balls come at you from everywhere!  It was fun and we were actually pretty even teams!  

The other games we played was capture the flag.  This is a fun tag game and you have to get the 'flag' back through the taggers over your line!  Well done to all the risk takers who powered through the lines!  They got super fit in the jail!  Press ups, star jumps and shuttle runs were the punishment for being tagged!  Again we were pretty even!  4 points to 5! 

Lunchtime Disco a great hit!

The grand finale to our Planet Sunshine fundraiser was a huge success today!  Makaraka School Community is a fantastic supportive bunch and we have really outdone ourselves.  

Here is the rundown of the fundraising: 

Pyjama Movie:  $435.90

Bake Sale:  $300.10

Disco:  $490.70

Making a grand total of $1226.71!!!!!!  

Wow the sick children of Gisborne are going to really benefit from this and Georgia and Tom are truely proud to be taking this giant cheque with them next week to their Aurora meeting.  

I wonder who will win the guess the lollies competition?

To be announced at assembly tomorrow...  

Some lucky person will be getting 480 lollies! 



From the bottom of our hearts - Thank You! 

Bake Sale for Planet Sunshine!

We had our second fundraiser on Thursday last week - a delicious bake sale!  Tawhirimatea out did themselves and baked up a storm!  

There were some delicious items such as fudge and lolly cake.  We also had popcorn and many types of slices and cakes!  Well done to the whole school who supported this worthy cause and bought some money for their morning tea!  We made over $300.  Makaraka School is awesome!  

Don't forget our finale FUNdraiser this Thursday - a lunchtime disco!  Lots of glow products for sale as well as drinks and lollies.  

$2 entry fee. 

Stage Art in Napier - Senior Camp 2018

What a fantastic time we all had in Napier!  After loading the bus with all our food and gear we were excited to be off performing in a big Stage in Napier our Whirikoka performance.  

Travelling on the bus was fun watching DVD's! We stayed at Kennedy Park and did loads of things:

Sunday 5 August:

When we arrived at Kennedy Park, we set up our cabins ready for bed.  After lunch we headed off to Laser Strike.  This was awesome!  Even the adults had a go! 

That evening, after dinner and singing to Jahdin (whose birthday it was), we went off to bowling in Hastings!  This was awesome.  Some of us had never bowled before and we really enjoyed it!  

Bowling was awesome!  We were tired by 9pm though! We were straight home to bed!  After all there was a big day on Monday at the Theatre!  

Monday August 6: 

We arrived at the Napier Municipal Theatre.  This is a really cool Art Deco Theatre in the middle of Napier.  We got straight into a warm up and workshops.  Here are some videos of our first 2 workshops: 

           

After a break from dancing and a walk on the beach we began to get ready for the big performance.  We were first up!  Lots of us were nervous but we had done it before so that helped us to know what we were doing!  

Our parent helpers were amazing at hair and make-up and we really enjoyed the hype of getting dressed up for a performance.  

Here is our performance: 

It was really neat to see Gisborne intermediate School's performance also.  They performed the Wizard of Oz.  Theirs was different to ours but that's what live theatre is all about - seeing different things!  

We got a certificate for our Year 3-6 Entry.  

Tuesday August 7: 

Another birthday on camp!  Happy birthday Levi! 

Our last day was spent at the chocolate factory having a treat and then the playground for lunch.  We were all so tired and Mrs Hall lost her voice!  What a great experience - something we will never forget!  

Makaraka School - Making Memories! 

Let's help Planet Sunshine!

We started our fundraising with a whole school Pyjama Day!  We had to dress in PJ's because that's what kids in hospital have to wear all day!

We had a great time making the most giant tub of popcorn thanks to Mrs Alan's water trough!  We also put the lollies out and then we were ready for the rest of the school!

The tub of popcorn was gone before half way through the movie! We were all so amazed at the huge tub!  Some people exclaimed that they had never seen so much popcorn!








We were really relaxed and enjoyed watching "The Secret Life of Pets".  It was really funny!







What an enjoyable fundraiser!  We raised over $400 for Planet Sunshine!  We can't wait till the next fundraiser on Thursday the 16th - A bake sale!  Yum!!!!

Thanks Makaraka!

Term 3 Maths Grid Results

Here is my maths grid results for Term 3.  I am getting so much better at my times tables!  I have had my highest score yet just today!



  This is the times I am taking to complete my grid.

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!