During the last week we have listened to some very interesting,entertaining and informative speeches. Every class member was able to deliver with confidence the speech they had written.
Alec,Hannah, Alexandra, Savannah and Gemma were selected to go forward to the Semi finals. From this today Gemma and Alec have been chosen to speak at the School Final.
Good luck to them both.

The term has started with the thought of fun things to happen. We have Skool Stars Videoing this week, we will look forward to 10 August when we can view our efforts.
We have our speech to write, the Sevens tournament at Katikati and Music Festival all on the same day-30 August.
In class we have already been discovering how blind and partially sighted people get around. This will be followed by The World of Africa where will compare New Zealand to Africa.
Our Skoolstars videoing was really cool. Here we are just before we were videoed. Our many thanks to Mrs Tipper for the help and support she gave us all.

The fun we had in the last week of the term. Mr Arnold and his team organised a shared lunch. We ate all types of kiwiana food from pav’s to smoked fish and chips. We played games such as pass the parcel, gumboot throwing and sack races As our own class we sailed our Team NZ boats we created in pairs. It was great to draw the plans and design our own boats.

We had four class members who went through to the next round and ran in the North Cluster Cross Country. Harry and Matt ran really well but did not get through to WBOP at Waipuna Park. Holly and Phoebe got third and fifth and went through. It was a fine day,they ran well and gained fourteen and fifteenth place. Well done.

What a sight! What a neat Day!
All our school in different countries (teams) with 10 children in each team.
We were dressed up in the colors of the countries.The games were 10minutes long,on a smaller field than normal. Each team played all the others in their year group so some played about 8 games.
At the end the winners were announced and then the Year5/6 winners played the Year 7/8 winner which was a draw.
The winners were Year1/2 Nigeria; Year3/4 Korea; Year 5/6 Uruguay and Year 7/8 Ghana.

On Tuesday we had 29 students from I.S.V.Kuaka Conservation Group here. We all did Jump Jam together, then 2 or 3 students went to each class room . We all shared things about the school, us and them.It was lots of fun.
After morning tea we were lucky enough to join with the Enviromonitors and plant over 400 trees in our bush area. We learnt the best way to care for plants, the best way to plant them and more about all the students.

Our trip to Otorohanga was one of interest and fun. We were meant to leave at 8am but with the bus breaking down before we left school we were behind time. The cars and passenger were away,the rest of us finally got to the Kiwi House 30 minutes later.
We all had a talk then a walk through the Kiwi House where we saw different native birds along with the kiwi that were sort of awake. What beautiful birds.
After lunch we went to Harvest Rock then did our tour of the town. We saw the modules which showed some kiwiana icons from School Milk to Rugby.The best part was our Hokey Pokey ice cream and large jaffa which was great to eat.

Already we are well into Term 2. We have been busy with our New Zealand: Then and Now Unit.

To learn about our country we are spending each week researching and finding information about different aspects of New Zealand. To begin we found lots of information about Anzac Day, what it meant to us as a country, soldiers who went to war and those people who stayed behind. It made us appreciate what we have got.

Last week we read stories and books written by New Zealand Authors. Our research was finding out about an author, then sharing the information with others. In the slide show you will see Laura really enjoyed learning about Lynley Dodd. This week is about the Native Bush which will help us understand why it is important to us as New Zealanders.

Next week we are going to Otorohanga,the Kiwiana Town so before hand we will discover what kiwiana means.

Each week one group is cooking a New Zealand dish. So far we have had Anzac biscuits, beautiful meringues with kiwi fruit. I wonder what is next.

With Guide Dog week coming up we were lucky enough to have a visit from Guide Dog Trainee Gill and Trainer Wendy. He was a lovely dog and we learnt how much it costs to train a dog,how long it takes and what work they have to do. We had a gold coin collection to help train a dog. Good luck Gill.

On March 15 we attended the Small Schools Cluster Swimming Sports at Katikati. It was a beautiful day with everyone prepared to swim their best. It was great to see many children attempting two or three length events. As a school we won the Year 5 AND Year6 relay. Our swimmers were Patrick, Savannah, Lys and Freddie.

On the Friday a group of 15 Year 5 and 6 children attended the North Cluster Swimming Sports with Mr Arnold. Once again many children swam their best and we have 5 children go through to the WBOP sports on Friday 26 March. Good luck Savannah and  Patrick.