Mannequin Challenge

Our first attempt:

Murihiku Polyfest

Making Ice Cream

Our scientific experiment this week was making homemade ice cream. Check out the results... 

Tau Ke

This is a photo of my homework for term 2.

By Elizabeth

Hot money

I have been reading hot money..

By Elizabeth

The dray

The dray rattles down the road.

The dray rolls down the rocky road. 

The wheel sticks to the squishy dirt, like a sculpture.

The metal screws squeak in the wind.

New Zealand mapping

Me, Elizabeth, Amber and Savannah made a map of New Zealand.

By Maia

Mapping

I have been creating a map of New Zealand.

This is the New Zealand map that me, Maia, Savannah and Amber made together. We paper mache'd the mountains and then we painted the mountains. The buildings we made are The Beehive in Wellington, Craters of the Moon in Rotorua, the big fruit in Cromwell and the Sky tower in Auckland.

By Elizabeth 

Rube Goldberg machines

Today, while the Year 5's were playing kids games, the Year 4's were set the challenge to make a Rube Goldberg machine. It was great to see the students working together, discussing, challenging, creating, inventing, failing, innovating, rebuilding, redesigning, redoing, trialing and finally succeeding in their designs.

The third floor bedroom

It all began when someone left the window open, on that cold Christmas night.

Jeremy wakes up shivering, under his covers, with foot prints in his room. He gets out of bed and follows the foot prints to the window. Could it be true is Santa really real? Jeremy puts his hand on the foot print. It was soot. He looks up and sees Santa on the roof...

By Tamehana

Spring writing

Whose history it is?

Today we had a local expert come in and share his experience in building and about the local area.

Dick Cotter arrived in Hawea Flat in 1955. He had 6 children who all went to our school. At that time there were only 2 teachers. The old school building was demolished and then some of the current buildings were built by the school board when they were here.

He built the school house, the school 'baths' and the school dental clinic (before it was moved to Wanaka Primary School). He has seen the Hawea Flat Community Hall and the dam being built, the windmill at windmill corner when it worked, and had family who worked at the post office and the four square.

QR code hunt

Today we used QR codes to gather information on Māori placenames in our area, We learnt that:


...There used to a chief called Hawea, The lake and the river are named after him


...The Motatapu river used to be called Mate-Tapu because of the cemetery in the hills near by.


...Makarora valley was traditionally called Kaika Paekai, "the place of abundant food"


...Mount Aspiring, Tititea means steep peak of glistening white


...Wanaka was called Oanaka, which means the place of Anaka


...In this area Māori hunted and fished on the lakes. They also travelled through this area to get to the West COast and its pounamu/greenstone.

Stained glass sugar

Today we completed an experiment to make stained glass sugar. We recorded our observations and hypothesized what we thought the science was behind the experiment...what do you think the science is?

To see how our experiment unfolded watch the videos below:

Out and about in our area

Today the children visited some points of interest in our area to spark questions and wonderings about our local area. With our buddy class, we explored the area around the school including the Hawea Flat Community Hall, St Ninians church, walked down to Windmill corner and bused down to the Dam at Lake Hawea.

The children sketched, recorded key words, questions and wonderings and will use this information to inquire further into the history of our area.

Taonga Pūoro

On Thursday we had the amazing opportunity to have Jerome Kavanagh visit our school. He shared a number of his taonga pūoro (traditional Māori instruments), their histories and the stories about them.

Watch these videos to hear and see some of these taonga pūoro in action: