Manu Tukutuku

As part of learning about Energy we looked to harness the wind using Manu Tukutuku (kites). We created out kites overseveral weeks using toe toe flower stalks. We were going to skin the kites with raupo but were unable to find any. The first time the lake where raupo grows was too low and and the next time the water level was too high. We solved the problem by using toetoe to skin the kite as well. Unfortunately this made the kite to heavy to launch successfully, so we decided to decorate the kites with feathers and shells and decorate our walls.

                        

Computational Thinking

 In the first week back we had a visit from Mr Kinane. Our focus for learning was computational thinking, this is when you need to think logically and sequentially. We were sending commands to a micro bit. This is a small programmable electronic device with LED lights. The micro bit was able to be controlled remotely.

After developing some simple programmes using block code on www.makecode.microbit.com we were ready for something more adventurous. Our challenge was to make the programme for controlling a gate opening and closing. The micro bit controlled a crikit and servo, a small motor. 

The code was quite challenging because the gate needed to open and then close. We worked in pairs to achieve our goal. Here is one example of our work.

Whacky Wig Wednesday

 It was a little late but today we celebrated Whacky Wig Wednesday. This is a day when we raise money for cancer research. There were a number of whacky wigs at school. Here are the students in Piwakawaka with their whacky hair.

Theo's collage of a cat

WE have been learning how to make collage using images from Explore and creating new images to write about. Here is Theo's example. Head to his blog to comment.

A great day for Gardening

It was a sunny afternoon so we decided to make the most of the day and head out to the school garden. We fertilised plants, tuned the compost bins, weeded and tidied the garden shed and propagation tunnel. It was lovely to get a couple of hours in to make the place look spick and span again. 

As we are an Enviro school we love learning in our environment. It is a chance to learn hands on tasks that we can use at home. Gardening is such a satisfying activity.

  

Piwakawaka Calendar Art

This term we have been learning about Notan art. Notan is a Japanese art form, that balances poitive and negative space. There is no wasted paper because you use both the pieces of paper either as the positive image or the reflection.We completed our art works for the school fundraiser. Should our school community wish to buy a calendar , notebook or mousepad it is printed with our art work on it. The school gets a percentage of the sales. We hope you enjoy looking at our art.

Crawl Fish Stream

On Tuesday we went on a class visit to Crawl Fish Stream. Our class was investigating the health of the water in this location. We tested many aspects of the waterway to establish its health. We looked at the temperature of the water, flow rates, invertebrate populations present and periphytons in the waterway. We measured the water flow in the stream, stream bed composition, and water depth. All of the aspects were considered before we could pass a judgement on the stream health. The class undertook this activities because we got a School Kit from Dairy NZ. We chose Crawl Fish Stream because it was within walking distance of the school so we can repeat our visit at different times of the year to monitor the health of the waterway. Our favourite activity was racing the orange downstream and timing it between two points to work out the flow rate of the water. There was an awful lot of maths involved in our investigation.

Football Fun with Matt

Today Matt gave student is Piwakawaka a chance to show off their football skills. As well as drills we has us the opportunity to play a game. Matt is from the Football Association and he is promoting football as a sport for Westland children. Piwakawaka really enjoyed the drills and loved the game. Matt was impressed with the skills on display. Awesome effort Piwakawaka.

Junk 2 Funk Costume making

For Junk to Funk me Renny, Lucy, Olivia and Xanthe are making a super virus. It is made out of boxes any rolls, egg cartons  and tape. we glued it together with a hot glue gun.  It is fun because it is my first time using a hot glue gun.  We took turns using the hot glue gun. We did it at Renny's house in the shed. We had 2 packets of chips and we ate them all. My favourite thing was using the hot glue gun.

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Posted By Sofia to Sofia @ Kaniere School on 7/29/2020 12:36:00 pm

Friday Fun

This is a copy of Taylors blog post about our Friday Fun.

Tessellation Art

Finally our tessellation art is finished and hanging on our wall. The art was part of our Geometry learning. We learnt about reflection, translation, and rotation of shapes. It took a long time to colour it in. We presented our work at assembly. We hope you enjoy it.

Anzac Day

These are some of the projects Piwakawaka students completed as par t of their ANZAC learning. The projects have been completed at home while we are doing distance learning. There are so many creative kids.

Physical Education

Piwakawaka has been focussed on building our aerobic fitness. This gets our heart and lungs fit. We have been circuit training which means we do short bursts of high intensity movement to increase our heart rate. The movement changes but it is fast. We can be running, jumping, or skipping. We are building our fitness for the cross country later this term. We also run our cycle track. It is four hundred metres long. As a class we want to run the length of the South Island. We will need to do 3500 laps.

On line classroom

We hope you are all keeping safe and well. Our online classroom is humming along. This week we have been doing our reading groups and having whole class hangouts, so we can catch up. To end the term we are going to have a fun Kahoot together.

Some of us are completing our tessellation art work. This is an image of one of the completed works. Olivia changed her shape into a dog. The class was most impressed with her effort. We can't wait to try rotational symmetry but will use a smaller template and piece of paper because this size took a lot of colouring.

We challenge our Tuhi Atu Tuhi Mai classes to come up with their own tessellation art.

Hanging Out

Today we had our first Hangout with our wonderful Cybersmart teacher Mrs M. She had cold and could not visit us in class. Mrs M sent us a link in our Gmail. That link took us into the meeting. We all had to keep our microphones off and our camera on. Mrs M could show us her screen. We could see where she wanted us to go. The chat was on so we could type any questions for Mrs M. Our headphones are on so we could hear Mrs M without it being too loud.

Science Roadshow

Our Year 5's were lucky to be able to attend the Science Roadshow. The show focussed on air pressure. One of the activities required our teacher to get into a bag and the air was removed to create a vacuum. She found it really hard to wiggle her fingers.

Around the room were lots of cool experiments related to how our bodies worked, friction, forces of nature, physics and chemistry. Have you ever been to a Science Roadshow? If so what did you like about it.

Tessellation Art

We are making art based on the work of M C Escher. We used this You Tube video tutorial to get us started. We can't wait to see the results. It has been fun learning about how we can integrate maths and art. We hope you will use this video to create your own art work.

Welcome to the new school year

Welcome back to school. We have some of our lovely learners back from 2019 and new group of learners. We are looking forward to having lots of fun and learning lots of new knowledge and skills along the way. We hope you continue to follow our blog in 2020 and we look forward to lots of new viewers so feel free to recommend our blog to others. Our year has start with a round of assessments but this is now largely completed and we are looking forward to more enjoyable tasks.