What's Been Happening....
What's Been Happening....
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Read on to discover all the exciting learning and events happening in Kānuka this year!
July
July
First and foremost, we are really excited to welcome 3 new members to the team this term! Stella Ching along with Jasper and Louie Miners have joined us in Years 4 and 5 this term. They have made a great start, seeming like part of the furniture already. It is also, of course, wonderful to have Dom back from 6 weeks in Japan last term!
The Commonwealth Games have taken centre stage in Literacy Learnings this week in Kānuka. We've been learning about the core values the Games centre around: Humanity, Equality, and Destiny. We've unpacked how these play out at the Games, as well as how they relate to our own lives ... and even our LRS Values. The tamariki even had a crack at Zoe Hobbs' incredible Gold medal winning and NZ and Oceania record achieving 100m!! Although they all gave it a valiant effort (and in spite of there being 100 Tu Toa tickets AND a Crunchie bar on the line!) none quite achieved it!
Our Fidget Sensory Boards have provided a great opportunity to look with fresh eyes of odd ‘junk’ and reuse in creative ways. The tamarki have come up with a vast range of wonderful ideas to tweak, turn, push and pull!
The frosty mornings this week have lent themselves to fun skating on the netball court, finding wonderful ‘trapped in ice’ creations (like Oliver’s below) and smashing sheets of ice from the swimming pool!
Making and testing aerofoils
June
June
Kānuka has been flying this past month... and not only in the BP Cross Country!! We've been learning about flight... from questioning what flight actually is, through to what forces create the magic. We experimented with paper planes, helicopters and aerofoils; hypothesising, creating, testing, tweaking.
This unit culminated in a trip to Wigram Airforce Museum where our learnings about flight in relation to movement 'through and by' air, lift/weight and thrust/drag were reinforced and built upon. The museum and some of our reading assignments led up to discoveries about flight and its connections to human endeavours.
It has been great to see the children using their developing scientific minds to see the connections between the forces that support flight and the forces that create floating and sinking from our previous science unit. The realisation that 'matter' is all around us (whether it is water or air) helps build a foundational understanding of key physics concepts.
May
May
Kānuka Community Newsletter
ANZAC Day has been at the core of our learning across social sciences, reading, art and even maths this past month in Kānuka. We learned about how the service of our ANZACs has contributed to our way of life now and the importance of standing up for what we believe in even from a distance. A highlight was visiting the memorial gates, talking about teh engravings and names, and making a rubbing (frottage) of the names and words to create a ‘memorial gate’ of our own in the classroom to add to our learning wall We also collected autumn leaves along the way to frottage and enhance our display. Our Senior Readers made a Kahoot! to help us review our learnings.
(Please excuse the quality of the pic. The clarity of the rubbing is better in the flesh!)
March
March
We've been floating boats and sinking flinkers in Kānuka these past few weeks as we learned about floating and sinking in our science unit. The concepts of density, buoyancy and gravity led us off into other discoveries such as diving into the Dead Sea (30% salt and very buoyant!); experiments with changing states of matter from ice (solid), melting to water (liquid), evaporating to steam (gas) and all the way back again! Our reading led us into learning about both Issac Newton and his fallen apple as well as Archimedes and his Eureka moment. The House of Science kit yet again came up trumps; both with the goodies in the bin, as well as the inspiration to take our minds further.
2025....
2025....
Patting the Huskies at the Antarctic Center
February
Antarctica has absorbed us these past few weeks in Kānuka! What a fascinating and critical part of the world we have right on our doorstep! The wonderful House of Science resource has taken us through experiments from seeing how baleen whales eat compared to toothed whales, and we've discovered first hand how blubber can help keep us warm from freezing temperatures. Having Zoe's grandad, Colin, in to talk about his many years of experience in Antarctica was inspiring and drew some wonderful deep questioning from the children.
We are so grateful also to Nicky, John and Pauline for inviting us to see them extracting honey ... and for the delicious samples we got to try! Beyond being fascinating and tasty, it inspired a whole week of writing and lots of rich conversation!
Before getting stuck into our Prime Maths maths programme, we have been busying ourselves with strengthening our basic facts knowledge. The children gain 'Bricks' for each block of knowledge they conquer and we have, as a class, been building a fabulous brick wall to celebrate these achievements.
March
On Wednesday the year 1-6s went to World Maths Day at Duvauchelle School. First we went to a small classroom with Mrs Richardson. We did lots of maths games.
After this it was morning tea and play time. After we had finished eating everyone went to the playground. Literally everything was made out of tyres or very very strong rope. Some things were made out of wood.
After the bell had rung the year 1-3s went into a library and played ‘Greedy Pig’. So you have a board and you need a whiteboard marker and a large dice. So someone rolls the dice and if it gets a one all your numbers on your first line get rubbed out. But if you sit down you get to keep your scores and stay down until the next round.
After that it was switch-over and we went into another teacher's classroom and made fortune tellers (chatterboxes).
After this it was lunchtime and we played on the playground. Then Little River had to go back to school.
By Margot
Oliver has mastered a maths brick. Well done Oliver!
April
It has been a busy past month in Kānuka!
We have been learning to speak māori with Ms Warren on Tuesdays, learning to ask "How are you?" and "What are you doing?" - Isobella
We have been learning about our feelings, how to identify them and get out of them if they are wobbly or angry or low. - Margot
We've been practicing our Bricks for learning times table and pluses and take-aways and building a brick wall that shows how good we are at maths - Matthew
We've been doing paragraphs in writing. We use them when we move on in time or a new idea or new setting. - Sarai
In description writing we wrote about a house and we used describing words and the senses - Isobel
We're excited to go to the Antarctic Centre and we've been learning about penguins, the difference with the Arctic, how cold it is and preparing for it. - Julie
We've done poetry, art, science, maths, reading and writing to learn about Antarctica - Oliver M
May
In our learning around Pink Shirt Day, we have been deep diving into anti-bullying and inclusion in Kānuka. This led us through the story of Wolfgang the Wolf's wonderful coat as well as a number of quotes explaining the concept of inclusion. We did some fun collaborative art and penned our own quotes to show what we had learned. A couple can be seen below...
Science has collided with art this month as we learn flowers and the real reason behind why they are so beautiful. Our art focus looking at creating secondary and tertiary colours from primary colours is building into the creation of some bold and brilliant flowers ... that are also anatomically correct!
Matthew's dad Leo with Kānuka and the telescope
June
June
Kānuka has been learning about the nine stars of Matariki this month and about Paunga. Did you know Matariki is too low for us to see in Little River but we can see Paunga which tells us where Matariki is. Matariki is about spending time with your whānau, good harvesting and having friends. It's about being grateful for things around us. We did a play and we built the nine stars of Matariki with pointillism for the play. We made boil-up to share kai. Matthew had seconds!! It was too good! Leo (Matthew's dad) came and told us about telescopes, the Matariki stars and much more!
We did Colour My World for art; doing blending of the primary colours to make secondary and tertiary colours. Our artworks look super duper awesome sauce!!
From the Kānuka Tamariki
July
July
Kānuka has been Mrs Lopasless for the last two weeks and they have missed her terribly. It was feared by some that they would not recognise her on her return as they were forgetting what she looked like! However she is back today and these fears proved unfounded (much to the relief of the younger ones).
Kānuka has been taught by Ms Warren and Mrs Cochrane. We have explored Mantis Shrimp, Bearded Dragons, the performing arts, shapes and stained glass windows. The stained glass windows were a great hit as they could be eaten! They were very yummy.
Photos: A Mantis Shrimp by Matthew
Gabe K’s Bearded Dragon
Margot and Oliver with their delicious Stained Glass Windows
Mantis Shrimp By Matthew
Bearded Dragons by Summer and Gabe
August
August
It was a bittersweet week, last week as we both celebrated the Margot and Gabe from our Kānuka whānau ... but also farewelled them as they head to Dubai for the next chapter of their adventurous lives! Speeches have of course occupied much of our writing and oral language programme these past weeks and it has been so heartening to see the progress in confidence the children have gained in this learning. All have made progress they can be proud of!! We are loving the great weather and taking the opportunity to work outside in the fresh air; one of the topics muted as our persuasive writing topic continues. In science we have dug deep inside to check out our skeletons in our 'Dem Bones' unit, and this was complemented by our reading work this month.
October
October
In amongst the Term 4 busyness of Pet Day, Athletics and Parihaka, Kānuka have been getting well and truly excited by the CCC Libraries Mānuka Stories campaign to motivate our tamariki to read more! We set ourselves a goal of 224 books for the 8 week period to the end of November and are well on track. Chapter books, picture books and school ‘readers’ have been eaten up leading us to make our first journey down the road to the Library to watch our Mānuka tree blossom!
I've been reading Death Caster, The Shattered Realm series. They're about fighting and death. There's a lot of mystery and action - Dom
I've finished the first of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and Oliver gave me 2 more. I'm already on p25 of Big Shot and they're interesting and they do cool stuff and say cool words. - Matthew
I'm reading a book called The Ugly Truth. Before that I read Astro Chimp and it's about a chimpanzee who went out in outer space to see if they would survive so that they could see if humans could because that's what we evolved from. Chump comes up with a plan to get back to earth. - Oliver M
I've been reading chapter books for Mānuka stories. I like mysteries and the Babysitter series. My aunty gave me all the originals and they're really different from the newer ones which I have also read - Isobella
I've been reading a humongous book about Billie B Brown. There are 12 stories in the book and I have read 5. They're interesting and Billie always has good ideas. - Isobel
I've finished A Bunny Called Clover It was so good! I loved the bunny and it reminds me of my bunny. - Julie
I've been reading a chapter book called The Fairytale. It's kind of about it being important not to tell lies. - Sarai
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