Poem

 On Friday instead of having a new reading book to come home, we do a poem in our Poetry book to come home instead. We read through the poem and pick out specific language features to highlight. Then we need to use our best drawing skills to draw a picture to match the poem, just like real life illustrators do! 
We talk through the specific criteria our pictures need first (it needs to: be big and fill the page, match the words, and be coloured in with our BEST and focussed colouring). We love looking closely at the extra details some children add too! 

Here are some photo's of us doing 'judging' which is where we lay all the poem books out and choose some children to tell us which one is their favourite picture and why. 

We hope you love reading through our poems with us and talking about our illustrations!

Pirates Explore!

                           We are having so much fun this week acting like pirates during Explore time! We have been making costumes, hats, eyepatches and ships to sail as well as lots of other fun things. We have experimented with our ships to see whether they will sink or float, and have practised 'debugging' by finding and fixing what went wrong. 

We have also had great fun balancing on the 'plank' and writing secret kind messages to our friends and then directing them to find our message inside a bottle.

This week we have been working lots of problem solving. This means when something happens we are practising different ways of solving our problems ourselves before asking for someone else to do it for us. 
Mrs Hobbs has been so impressed at what great problem solvers we are! 

Check out some of what we have been up to in the photos below:

Hudson worked so hard to balance while walking the plank! 

Aurora had to carefully measure to make her pirate hat and eyepatch the perfect fit for her head! 

Mackenzie was very proud of her pirate flag that symbolised love

Arjay worked hard to make his lego pirate ship have all the features of a real pirate ship! 

Luca W thought carefully about how to make his boat float, and also wondered how pirates would get water so he added a machine that filters the salt out of the water at the bottom of the ship so they could have water to drink! 

Scarlett loved dressing up as a pirate and had an extra large purse to hide all her treasure! 

Jack made this message in a bottle for Shelby and drew a map for him to use to find it! 

Luca B was an expert at balancing on the plank! 

Jack made modifications to his ship to ensure it floated - he also added a handle to the sail so he could save it if it sunk! 

Semi, Cameron and Arjay worked together to make this awesome pirate ship! They even made their very own plank coming off it. 

This was some of the great work that made it to the WOW wall this week - anyone who gets on the WOW wall gets a brain dot OR gets to move their Creativity Pin. Great work guys! 

Volcano Explore

Welcome back to another term in Piako Tahi!

This week we were fired up for Volcano Explore. 

We learnt about the different parts of a volcano and the difference between magma and lava. Check out some of our awesome work!

Mr Hamid teaching his class about volcanoes

Charlotte worked hard to ensure each part was in the right place on her volcano

We loved playing floor is lava, trying hard to keep our balance over the different obstacles

It was hard to balance on the board and pull ourselves across!

Ailbhe added more and more to her volcano including a chamber for the magma, a baby volcano on the side and of course lava to make it erupt!

Mackenzie spent days making volcanoes for her whole family

Enzo loved to draw volcanoes ensuring it had the vent, chamber and crater so that it could erupt

Charlie and Levi both worked hard on their earthquake houses, thinking carefully about how to make them strong

Matariki Explore!

This week in Explore we have been learning about Matariki. We shared a lot of stories about the seven stars of Matariki. We visited Te Papa from our TV and learned how to find the Matariki cluster in the sky. Matariki provides an opportunity for our students in Piako Tahi to explore the values of diversity, community and participation, and respect for self and others.

Have a look at some of the activities from Explore this week!


Kupa was very busy matching stars and numbers in Te Reo.

Te Huriwai was practicing her writing skills learning the names of the seven stars of Matariki.

Whai (String games) were very popular. Well done Iris, Elijah, Ella, Nina and Charlotte!

Making kites was the kids favourite activity. Charlie, Kenta, Zach T, Avery, Caleb, Courtney and Koni-Leigh had a great time, as you can see!

Toby and Ethan spent a lot of time together planing and making a waka that follows the Matariki stars to navigate.

 Teytan, Maui, Shelby, Ryan and Amanda were learning to weave stars using wool and rubber bands. Great activity to practice our fine motor skills!

Some kids were writing kind messages to their families, teachers and friends. Good job Levi, Aurora, Darcie and Hugo!. Lucky Mr Pike, he had a lot of beautiful messages! 

 Our addition worksheet was not easy, but we have Tane, Zach M and Logan W doing some serious thinking to count all the stars.

  Check out Mila, Luca B and Mackenzie creativity with these beautiful stars. Well done girls!