Fun And Education Galore!

We've been really busy again! A couple of weeks ago we went to art classes with Graham Braddock and we had to draw a possum. We had to draw it in a few easy steps:

First set the limits
Next draw the big shapes
Then draw the sub shapes.
Then draw the little shapes.
Then add the detail.

Here is a picture of our finished products -aren't they amazing?








Graham Braddock usually comes to our school every year in February, he's a pretty amazing artist.

Last week we spent 2 days participating in Team 5 Outdoor Education Activities. There were 4 different activities; Bush Craft, Orienteering, Problem Solving and Water Safety.

For Bush Craft we watched a video and found out what we needed to take on a bush walkor tramp. On the video it showed people who knew what they were doing and people who DIDN'T know what they were doing and didn't check any of the conditions. One group tested how fast the river was going and didn't cross it. The other group on the video didn't test and tried to cross so someone lost their bag. We learnt a lot about what to do and what not to do if we ever go to the bush ourselves.

We thought Orienteering was the best activity because it was like a treasure hunt, the clues were scattered all over the place. We didn't have to use compasses because they are a bit tricky to learn to use in a hurry. On the first day Mrs McGhie wrote the clues and they weren't too tough. The next day though, the people who had won the day before wrote our clues and they were really HARD!

For Problem Solving we had to imagine we were at the "Tricky Swamp" and we had to find a path through it on the grid Mrs Peters gave us. A boy from another class got through it first. It was quite hard to find our way through in the first place but, we finally got through. Mr Halkyard and Mrs Peters took turns at running this.

Water Safety meant you had to wear an over sized T-Shirt and you had to create a flotation device made from milk bottles, string and pipe. We worked in teams to make our flotation devices. It was lots of fun.

Our class is participating in the Voices of the World project with children from all over the world. We had to create some pictures to represent the numbers 1 - 10 and then use Photostory to create a movie with our voices counting to 10. We chose to count in Maori as New Zealand is the only place in the world that it comes from (although there is Cook Island Maori as a language but it's a little bit different. Our movie should be uploaded to the Voices of the World wiki site in a few days. In the meantime you can check it out here.




We are loving having a blog and are enjoying all your lovely comments. Mr Lietze's class wondered why we didn't have photos of our lovely smiling faces. We decided not to put pictures of ourselves on because we have been talking about cyber safety and being careful about our "digital footprints". However, we'd love to know what you think? Maybe some of you that have been blogging for a while might like to leave a comment sharing your opinions. We like to hear different points of view.