Kiwi Can Champs

I have been so proud of Tawa Class this term. They have really upped their respect in class and at Kiwi Can. All have been achieving our class goal of participating and contributing and because of this, we have won the class reward!

Reece and Owen came today and we had a party in our pool. They even got in with us! It was a lot of fun and we hope they are both back as our Kiwi Can leaders next year. Thankyou so much for coming to see us each Wednesday, we have really enjoyed our year!

Senior Garden Update

Our beautiful sunflowers

The garden outside the back of our hub has really shot up over the last few weeks. We thought it would be nice to share some photos with you all.

These sunflowers will look fantastic once they have bloomed.

Most of these plants were from our New World little gardens. We can't believe how well they have grown. Check out our courgette plants.

They've pretty taken over our whole garden bed in just a matter of weeks!

These our our sweet peas from the first lot of Little gardens that we got back in term 3. They've shot up in the last few weeks.

It'll be cool to come back after the holidays to see how much our garden has grown. Hopefully some wonderful students will volunteer to keep it watered over summer ;)

Summer means.... Swimming!!

Today our school pool opened and what a great day for it to do so! We were all so excited to hop in this morning..even at 10.30. We had a lady here to help us today. We learned to make whirlpools, go under water, sit on the bottom of the swimming pool and make the first letter of our names in the water. It is so important for us in New Zealand to learn to be safe in the water. NZ summers mean swimming, not just in pools, but rivers, lakes and the ocean. We are looking forward to learning new skills to increase our water safety, as well as our confidence for us to take on the water this summer. Here's a shot of us in action this morning.

Compost is Cool!

Today we went on our first Senior Hub Trip! We went to the Eco-Drop in Bromley to learn all about how to make our own compost and worm farms. This will help us when we get our garden up and running!
We were split into two groups. The first group got on the bus as soon as school started.

Eager beavers ready to go! Tyler a bit unsure.... maybe the smell was too much...

We were met by Lou and Chris who work for the Christchurch City Council. They were going to be our educators for today. First off we learnt about the 6 things that compost has...1. Warmth 

2. Oxygen

3. Green food

4. Brown food

5. Micro-organisms and ..

6. Air!

We completed activities in groups and THEN got to put our learning into practise by making our own compost. Check us out....

Nalanee, Shyla and Nirvana trying to show examples of each element of compost

Getting ready to make our compost with Chris

Camryn adding our green food layer

We learnt that compost is like Lasagne... it has a lot of different layers

Tobey with the layer of water.

The second half of our day we focused on how to make a worm farm. We were put into 4 different groups and had to complete 4 stations. At these stations we, watered the garden with worm wee (remember to dilute this so that it doesn't burn the plants!), ripped up newspaper to make a worm bed, Separated the worm castings from the worms and put the worms into their cosy beds, and took out the citrus and onions/chilli/spicy food that worms don't like.

Shikarn found a delicious slug while he was looking through the worm fams

Ruavai thought the worm wee was gross!

Shyla was a pro with it :)

Jrae making the worms a nice bed

We learnt a lot this morning and we already have to many ideas about what we can do in our own garden. What a perfect way to learn about our environment- our topic for this term. Check back in a couple of weeks to see an update from our garden!

Bye Katie :(

Giving our cards to Katie

It was a sad day last week when our Kiwi Can leader Katie left us to start a new job. There were many hugs, a few tears and sad goodbyes. We made Katie lots of cards and made sure that her last day teaching Kiwi Can at Gilberthorpe School was a positive one.

We really enjoyed playing Bench Ball

We also started a new thing this week.. King and Queen of Kiwi Can. Ruavai and Shyla were chosen to be our first king and queen in Tawa. Next week they have to choose the next one, Shyla to pick the King, Ruavai to pick the Queen. I wonder who they will choose...

King and Queen of Kiwi Can/Tawa

Resilience

In Kiwi Can this term our module is Resilience. We are learning to demonstrate this in all learning areas as well as out in the playground.. we think it is an important trait to have!

Week One

We had to work together in teams this week. We played a MASSIVE game of naughts and crosses and had to communicate with each other. Katie and Reece talked to us about our emotions and we had to demonstrate these on our faces and bodies. Some of the emotions we had to show were angry, frustrated, confused, and happy. Leave us a comment and tell us which emotion you think the team is showing in the last photo.

"Sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm sad.

Sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm mad.

I have to remember every day, 

to deal with these feelings in a positive way."

School's Out For Term 3

Well time has rolled around pretty quick this term and what do you know it’s the last day of already. The Gilberthorpe kids have had a fab day today exhausting themselves in this heat playing different types of games. 

The day began with a bit of Sticks.. which we found brought out the competitive side in us all. After morning tea we got into teams and played Ki O Rahi- a game that we have been practising all week. We enjoyed a sausage sizzle at lunch before we began the final part of our day.. more games and a juicie!

Enjoy your holidays and see you in 2 weeks

Check out some pics below

Which Geldard brother wore it best? Beniah?

Or his big brother Toby?

Loving the dress ups

Payton makes a beautiful bride

Seniors playing Ki O Rahi

Dress Up Relays with Miss Harris and Miss Johnstone

Chrysler looking beautiful

Do I have to wear this? (He loved it really)

Ruavai taking part

Little Garden Update

So today we finally repotted our plants. With the help from Mrs Hey in the junior hub, we chose where our flowers are going to go. We cleared some space in the garden and dug holes for each of our plants. We were lucky to have Mrs Duthie (a keen gardener) with us to help plant these. We chose to plant our Purple Tansys under an apple tree in the orchard, and our sweet peas and sunflowers in the garden behind our hub. Our Purple Tansys are looking a bit sick at the moment so we hope these will survive over the holidays! We have some keen students who are going to come in in the holidays to check on our plants and Des has said he will water them for us.. Thanks Des!
Check out what we have done..

Our Top Fish

Go Gemeve!

So we have counted up all of our fish tickets for the term... it was a close race but the lucky Gemeve came out on top. Unfortunately she was away for our Fish Assembly yesterday but we presented her with her award in class this morning.

She chose to go to McDonalds for lunch along with myself, Mr Wilkinson and all of the other Top Fish this term. Don't bring any lunch tomorrow Gemeve!

Tawa Class Green Thumbs

We have been pretty lucky in Tawa Class.. A couple of weeks ago Miss Johnstone was sent a kit of the New World Little Gardens. If you haven't heard of these they are a collection of seedlings that you can get when you spend a certain amount of money at the supermarket. It comes with a biodegradeable pot, seeds and a soil tablet that you use to plant your seeds. We were gifted 30 of these! Enough for each of us to have one (plus a couple of spares that we gave to others around the school). We were given flowers like sweet pea, sunflowers, and purple tansy.

We researched how to care for our plant such as what it needs, how much to water it, and when it needs repotting. We then sat back and watched.... in only 6 days we saw the first signs of life. It was the Purple Tansys that sprouted first! A couple of days later the Sunflowers began to sprout.. then a couple of days after that we saw a green shoot coming from the Sweet Pea pots.

In 3 weeks our Little Gardens have shot up amazingly, we have measured and some of our plants are 5cm already. This shows that we have been awesome plant parents. It is pretty cool seeing the responsibility that the students are taking in regards to this. Each morning they are watering their plants and checking for new signs of growth. Without being asked they are adding to their slides, with new updates and measurements.

Here is our class set. If you want to see each of our slides about our own plants check our individual class blogs here

Here are our plants on day one

Day twenty-one- almost time to be repotted

Proud of our plants!

With just having moved into our new building this is great timing. Our windows face out onto a huge garden. Hopefully we can get our plants out here soon to add some colour and beauty to the back of our school.. We will keep you updated.

Michael Jordan who??!

For the last few weeks we have been lucky enough to have players from the Canterbury Rams come to our school to teach us some basketball skills. Have a look at us in action.

Tawa Class demonstrating their new Basketball skills. Look at Levi following through with that shot!

We still have a couple more weeks to go and we are loving it so far. We can see that our skills are improving. Maybe one day one of us will be in the Rams team.

Duffy Books!

Today was an exciting day... we got our Duffy Books!!
This morning we all went into the junior hub to listen to our Duffy Role Model Author/Illustrator Scott Tulloch. He has written and illustrated tonnes of NZ picture books. Have you heard of... I'm not a Worm? or Eating?
He showed us these and talked about what inspired him to do this job. When he was younger he was gifted the book Asterix. He now uses this to help him come up with ideas and designs for the characters in his own books.. how cool is that?!
The best part of our Duffy Assembly was DEFINITELY when Mr Tulloch drew a realistic portrait of beautiful Miss Waho. We weren't sure it looked too much like her though.. what do you reckon??

Look closely and you can see the portrait Scott Tulloch drew of Miss Waho

We were so inspired after listening to him.. I wonder how many of us will now end up being authors or illustrators... watch this space.....

The boys excited to start reading their new books!

Gemeve, Cayleigh and Lacie all chose the same stories!

We are so super lucky to get these new books given to us each term. Thanks Duffy Books!!

Update!

Kia Ora Koutou!
It has been such a long time since our last post that I thought we would update you with what we have been doing! Well we have said goodbye to our old classroom. It was a long process getting everything moved out but we have finally got there.

Saying bye to Tawa Class!

We have a shiny new beautiful hub now. It is colourful, it has an oven, a green room for filming, a front and back deck, and the girls even have their own special room! We have been in there since Friday and so far so good. We are loving working with Rimu and Rata and Miss Waho and Mrs Raisin. Here are some pics:

Our whole hub in our new space

Alizae, Peter and Tane working hard on their blogs.

Promise we won't leave it so long for the next update. Some exciting things are happening... and only 3 weeks til holidays! How has this term gone so quick???

We Are Making People's Days!

This term our school value is Make Someone's Day.

We have been talking about what this means, so far we have studied Empathy, and Caring for others. In our classroom this term we have a letterbox. In here we are posting letters to students/teachers all around the school in order to make their day. Some students from other classes have been coming in in the mornings to write letters too! We think that this is a good way to show our values! On Fridays we have been delivering these around.. keep an eye on the post and maybe it'll be your turn next! 

Look at our awesome letterbox!

Peter made Tane's day with the letter he wrote him

Just look at the smile on Tane's face :)

An example of a beautifully written letter from Lachlan to Rory in Rimu... Rory even wrote him a reply!

We have been enjoying writing these letters and seeing the smiles that we can put on peoples faces when they open them. What a great way to make somebody's day!