Holly's Holiday Highlight

In writing we are learning to use paragraphs.

Holly wrote an interesting story about her holiday highlight using paragraphs correctly.

The Amazing Maze 'n Maize

It was the Monday of the second week of the holidays, I woke up,"I wonder what we should do today?" I thought to myself. Then it struck me, I instantly remembered that my sister and I were going to go to the Amazing Maze with Pigeon Mountain Bizzy Bodz. To be honest, I wasn't very excited about going because Mum signed us both up without us knowing. It was a bit of a pain.

I was walking out of my room when I realised my Mum had gone to work already, so my Dad had to drop us off. My Dad owns a company and he had an important meeting, so I got dropped off at Devon's house for a while before the holiday programme started. I just hung around in Devon's room with her and before we knew it, we were at the holiday programme. We arrived when all the others were getting ready to walk out the door and jump onto the bus. The bus trip was about an hour and a half, but I managed to amuse myself. After a while, we arrived at Spookers Theme Park, where the Amazing Maze had been built. We had to walk through a long, winding path to reach the area where there where things like climbing walls and waterslides. But we were mainly there for the high, long, winding maze.

We sat down, anxious to walk straight through the shining, silver gates. Finally, my group was up. We walked forward, grabbed a light blue flag, just in case we got lost and we ran into the maze, excited to find our way to some interesting sights. We walked round and round in circles for a few minutes and finally found our way to a rather long bridge. We zoomed up the steps, walked over and found a path leading to a huge can with lots of flags in it, we had found the way out! It sounds like it was easy to get out, but trust me, it wasn't! It took us at least a good forty five minutes to get out. We were stuck walking in the same path a couple of times and we walked into thousands of dead ends. I was just relieved to get out. It was very frustrating.

I ate lunch and went and played on the inflatable climbing wall, a mini maze and an inflatable alien space ship. That took about an hour and then I was allowed to go on a water slide. It was really long, fast and slippery. They got an old toilet, painted it yellow, and made it look like the waterslide was run in toilet water! It was very believable! I went on a couple of times, got a score of eight and went and got changed. Then we walked back the long trail and hopped on the bus to head home.

I enjoyed the Amazing Maze n Maize. It wasn't what I expected. It was way more fun than imaginable. I really want to go one day with my whole family.

By Holly

Learning with Mrs Rowsell

Today Room 18 and Room 14 were very lucky to have Mrs Rowsell come to talk and share photos about Gallipoli with us.

We learned about a famous statue at Gallipoli of a Turkish soldier carrying a wounded English captain to safety. The statue symbolises the compassion by both sides in the war at Gallipoli.

Thanks Mrs Rowsell for giving up your time to come and talk to us we really enjoyed listening to you and learning about Gallipoli.

ANZAC Day

Today Meg told us that her Mum was in the New Zealand Army.
She brought her Mum's uniform jacket and photos to share.

Meg's Mum went into the Army when she was 18 years old and left the Army when she was 24.
She was a full Lieutenant with the Royal New Zealand Ordnance Corps.

Room 18 thought her jacket was very cool and liked the shiny buttons!

ANZAC Day

Room 18 are learning about why we commemorate ANZAC Day each year on 25th April.

Many of us have had relatives that fought in World War I and II.

Today Danielle shared with Room 18 information about her Great Grandad Fowler.

He joined the army in 1930 and went to the 2nd World War in the Armoured Corps as a Tank Commander. He fought in Africa, Libya, Egypt before going to Greece, Cyprus and India.

Room 18 enjoyed learning about Great Grandad Fowler.

Harakeke Flowers

 

Room 18 have been learning about Harakeke, its uses and the tikanga (customs).

Today we went to the Nature Trail to cut some Harakeke. Hazel said a Karakia before the leaves were cut which gave thanks to the plant. Well done Hazel!

Tikanga of Harakeke
Do not cut Harakeke in the rain or at night
Do not eat by the Harakeke
You need to finish what you start
Do not cut the baby (rito) or parents (tipuna) of the Harakeke whanau (family)
Give your first piece away

Star, Grace, Sarah, Austen and Rachel from year 6 were our experts today and helped us weave Harakeke flowers. We all found it difficult with our first piece, but we kept trying and with the girls help we made two flowers to take home.

We must remember to give our first piece away and then we can keep our second piece.

Working together in Room 18

In Room 18 we are working on our presentations for our inquiry Flower Power.
We chose who we would like to work with and how to present the information.
We decided the topic to present either Pollination, Life Cycle of a Plant, Harakeke or Parts of a Flower.
We are practising what we are going to say in our presentations and we are all looking forward to listening to Room 18's presentations.

Planting Sunflowers

Today we planted our Sunflowers with Room 14.
Many of us had never gardened before so we learned a lot about how to plant our Sunflower.
We had to clear the soil of weeds, dig holes, mix in potting mix into the soil, plant the sunflowers being careful not to break the roots, cover it with soil and then give our Sunflower a drink of water.