Happy Holidays

Hi All, This is the last blog post for 2015. I would just like to thank all the Room 11 whanau for their support this year.

Room 11 have been an amazing bunch of students and have grown so much this year academically and socially.  One highlight for me was their performance at the Taiopenga,  and the confidence and pride this brought out in all of them.

Thank you so much for your wonderful gifts, Larrissa and I were very spoilt!

Enjoy your wonderful children over the holidays,  all the best for 2016!

Regards Sonja Zydenbos

Our fun board game session.

We are having fun with our board games. We all played and learnt a new game today.

Rest Home Visit

On Monday we had a lovely morning out.

 Our value for this term has been compassion, and we wanted to do something kind for others. We walked through Oliver Park and went to the Redwood Retirement Village, where we sang Christmas carols, decorated the tree and gave the residents a Christmas decoration for their door.
We enjoyed chatting to the residents and they loved our singing.

We hope they have a lovely Christmas!

Swimming on a beaut Marlborough day!

We had a lovely swim with Room 10 this afternoon. The pool was a very warm 28 degrees. We are soooo lucky to have a school pool.

1st swim for the summer!

Tapa Art/ Celebrations

We learnt about White Sunday as part of our celebrations inquiry. It is a special celebration in Samoa held on the second Sunday in May and October. Children dress in white clothing and read a verse from the bible in church.  

Something we noticed was that Tapa cloth was often worn as clothing, or was in the buildings, in the pictures and books we looked at. Miss Z got a big Tapa mat for us to touch and we looked at the patterns on it.

We watched some videos about how the special Tapa is made from the bark of a Paper Mulberry Tree. Tapa cloth is made into clothing for special occasions or given as a gift at  births or weddings.

We are talking about the patterns on the Tapa Cloth.

We are using vivid and crayons to design our Tapa art.

We had to screw our art up! We didn't think that was a good idea!
Then we painted dye over top of our art, it went into the cracks of the crayon.

We made a frame on black paper with white crayon. We glued our art into a square.

We put our names on.......

Hooray! Our very own class Tapa Mat! We think it looks amazing!

Kapa Haka Photo

Hi Everyone,
Here is a copy of the Kapa Haka photo that Ricky Wilson kindly took for us. Please let me know if you would like me to email you a copy.

Rooms 8 and 11 ready for action!

I was so proud of your children at the Taiopenga, they were so confident and performed beautifully. Enjoy the great photo, Sonja Zydenbos

Rongoli Patterns

We followed a video clip on our laptops to make these patterns.  Rongoli patterns are used in the Indian celebration of Diwali to celebrate the Indian New Year. 

People have these patterns in their homes to welcome visitors.

10 years of edible gardens

Last Friday we had a wonderful time celebrating 10 years of edible gardens being run at Witherlea School. To celebrate this Mrs Wentworth (our edible gardens teacher) organised some super fun activities for us to rotate around. These included relay races involving passing a cauliflower and using a cucumber as a baton and doing a spoon and egg race where the egg was replaced with broccoli. We also got to plant our own seeds to eventually take home. It was super fun!

BRAVE singers!

Miriana and Jen did a wonderful job today singing BRAVE in front of a big audience. You sang beautifully and were so confident.  Ka Rawe! Awesome!

Diwali Art!

We have learning about the Indian celebration of Diwali during our inquiry this week. We made Rongoli patterns like the ones people display on the floor of their homes during this celebration. They are made to welcome visitors into peoples homes.

School Art Display

We were lucky enough to have some amazing art on display in the hall for arts week. 

Here are some of them.....

Gymnasts!!

Wow! Ka Pai Riley, Charlotte, Hayley and Willow for your outstanding gymnastics display at lunchtime. You had some great moves and good timing with each other and the Footloose music. You did a fabulous job in front of a big crowd. Awesome!

Athletics day 2015

What a magical day we had on Friday at our 1st ever Athletics day. It was a fantastic day spent in the sun competing in the 5 different events. 

A big congratulations to Hayley who was one of the top scorers in Year 2 girls!