National Young Leaders Day.

Last  week ten students went to National Young Leaders in Christchurch. We left at 9 am and went over Arthurs Pass. We did some shopping at Riccarton Mall and then when our accommodation was ready we went there. We stayed in ‘the lodge’ at Meadow Park Top Ten. Each room sleeps 4 people and had a shower, toilet and basin. Once we were unpacked and sorted Miss Smith went to buy our food and Mrs Magon supervised us swimming in the heated pool. We had Hells Pizza for tea. There are two great playgrounds, a pillow, a games room with large size games and a room with arcade games. Some of us won lots of lollies.

The next morning we got up early and headed off to Horncastle Arena for the conference. It was an AMAZING and INSPIRING DAY!! There was a theme for the day E KORE AU E NGARO HE KAKANO I RUIA MAI I RANGIATEA -  I AM A SEED BORN OF GREATNESS. Our first speaker was Aaron Jackson an actor (he is Hayden in Shortland St) - he talked about NGARO - the times we all have when we feel invisible and have nothing to offer. Next came Daniel Flynn - he is from ‘Thank You’ and told how he worked despite being told no again and again to build up a company that makes sure there is fresh water for people all over the world. He gave us 2 books, if you buy his book there is no set price you just pay what you think it is worth. We then had some netball players speak and then nomad (band was interviewed). At lunch it was a big party where we danced and had our photos taken. After lunch Adam and Duane who bought a beach in the Abel Tasman National Park for “all of us” by starting a Give- A- Little campaign told their

story and how important is to work with a team and support each other. They talked about KAKANO - everyone has the potential to make the world a better place and that “impossibility is someone's opinion, not a fact”. It is important that we all help each other. We also learnt about RUIA  - this was about how we become like the people we choose to spend time with so it's important to make good friends.

Lastly was Matt Brown a hair artist, (he did an amazing haircut that we all wanted !!!!). He talked about RANGIATEA  - how we can leave the world a better place and achieve greatness in small ways every day. Finally Nomad played 2 songs and we all got to dance up by the stage. It finished at 3.00pm and we left to come home.

I wish that we were rich enough to take more than 10 kids as we all (even the adults) learnt something about how we can grow into better, greater people no matter what happens in our live (if we make good choices).

Mnemonics

ANZAC AT SHANTYTOWN

We went to Shantytown and studied ANZAC from the homefront. The boys learnt to march and the girls learnt to unravel old jerseys and knit. We wrapped parcels in brown paper and tied them with string. These parcels contained a letter, tissues (for the nose of latrine), a comb, a tiki, a candle, a pencil and pad and some mints.  We dressed appropriately for the times.

Our lunches were in brown paper bags. We learnt to wrap bandages and then we bandaged up a wounded solider . He went away on the steam train and one of our students dressed as the Mayor and wrote a welcome home speech. Even though it was pouring with rain (and I mean pouring) we all went to the train station to welcome him home.

Each class made a wreath to lay at our ANZAC service which we held in the church as it was soooooo wet. We had all be learning the song 'Flanders Fields' so rather than somone reading out the poem we all sang this. 

We all had ANZAC biscuits (which weren't called that when the war was on only afterwards. They were called rolled oat biscuits and were sent away as they lasted such a long time. If they got too hard the soldiers could dunk them in their tea.

Basic Facts

We are focussing on improving our basic facts. Our latest thing is having a 'Factometer' on the wall. We have our pictures on this at the level we are working on. We have to work our way up the levels (they are  named like karate belts and start at white finishing with black), the higher you go the harder the work gets. We have 2 cards each day and 3 minutes to answer the problems on the card. Some people or moving up really quickly (this is because they are learning them at home). It will be interesting to see what her next idea is for trying to motivate to learn them.

ANZAC ART

One of the borders of our school is the beach. It takes us 2 mins to walk across the field to the beach which we probably don't use as much as we should. We went to the beach to source white stones to paint ANZAC POPPIES on. 

As you can probably see there are ltos of grey rocks and it took us a while (we did play around a bit and enjoy the fresh air ) . We each had an idea about the size and shape of rock that we wanted and the teacher encouraged us to stick to that (another reason it took a little longer).

We looked at lots of poppies and each decided what we wanted our poppy to look like. Next we sketched our poppy design onto a our rock then painting  a black outline with a very fine brush. You had to take your time, hold the brush carefully and use small clear strokes. Once this was dry we filled in the outline.

We had planned to lie them amongst our crosses when we had our ANZAC service but it was pouring with rain so we were allowed to take them home or leave them on the classroom window sill. 

 Duffy Role Model

We had a visit from Diana Queenin 

She grew up in Pukekohe and while in high school spent a year in the United States.  She has lived in Melbourne, New York and Los Angeles (as well as Auckland and Wellington).  While in New York she worked as a guide in the Museum of Natural History specialising in  Dinosaurs and Ocean Life. In Los Angeles she attended UCLA University and studied  Bio Geography (the effect of nature on the land) and spent time in the American  deserts among the cactus and snakes. Diana is a certified Scuba Diver and has dived in the Caribbean, the Red Sea, and Thailand and learned much about the underwater world. She joined Project Jonah when she came back to New Zealand and is very interested in Whales and Dolphins (as well as Monarch  Butterflies, Plants, Fishing, Insects, Birds, Travel, and READING BOOKS).  Recently she went to Uganda to the source of the Nile River was fascinating to listen to. She talkeda about and presented some of the interesting things shw has collected over her life time and djuring her travels.

Easter

Easter

We iced Milk Arrowroot biscuits so that they looked like Easter Eggs. We made 80 of them and took them to A-Z Preschool for morning tea today. It was heaps of fun and we got to play with the little kids there. They had made VERY YUMMY cupcakes so we had a really good morning tea( we did have fruit to so it was a little bit healthy).

We also made a gift for each of the little kids, it was a bunny, We made them out of hollow plastic eggs from 'The Warehouse'. We used pipe cleaners to toake the fee and ears, then we put a fluffy tail on the back. We could stick on eyes or drav them with 'Sharpie'. We filled them with 3 small caramel eggs.

                          

 The final thing that we did was wrap them in cellopahne and put a little notice on them wishing everyone 'Happy Easter'. We made 40 of them to take to the preschool and then we made one ourselves to keep or give away to someone in our family.