Term 3

What a start to the term! We have a new reading and writing programme that everyone is finding super interesting! After discussions with the students we found that animals were a topic of interest so we decided that learning about sea creatures would be a great way to kick off term 3.

Here is a link to the sea life literacy programme

We also had some very successful Year 5 rippa rugby students competing at the Northland regional championships. They finished first equal in their pool but did not play in the semi finals on a technicality. Great work by those students.

Matariki Madness!

On Thursday 27th of June we had a very early start at school. Some people arrived at 5am! We were there to celebrate Matariki by going down to the beach to see the Matariki constellation and share a delicious breakfast.

Later that day we had a rotation of various activities in class. One group helped to prepare our class garden for planting, another group learnt how to make a traditional Maori porotiti and the other group did a science experiment to make chocolate mousse.

We had such an awesome time and to top that all off we got to play the rest of our KidsCan fundraising games!

Floating Classroom

Thursday 13th of June was one of the best days we have had all year!. The Year 5 (and Year 6 students from Te Ngahere) students all walked down to the Paihia Wharf at 8:30am to catch an Explorer boat out to Urupukapuka Island. We were part of the Floating Classroom initiative run by Project Island Song.

Everyone was excited as we raced along the water over to the island, stopping to spot some penguins and shearwaters along the way. When we arrived at the island we had to cross a heli pad on the water to get to another boat which dropped us at the floating pontoon pathway to shore.

We got split into groups and set about our activities. While one group went hiking across the island to plant trees, the other group made traps for any incursions on the island and a weta house before they set off to find some native fauna.

 






The first activity we did was making the traps. We split into groups and were given the materials to start building. After looking at the examples of finished traps, we set about using teamwork to get the traps made so they can keep the birds safe on the island. One group also made a weta house to give weta a place to hide out safely.

 
             


Our next activity was planting trees. We walked over the hill to Cable Bay and found some nice spots to plant our trees in groups. Once we had done that we went back over the hill to grab our stuff to head back.

On the way home we had a few guest captains that managed to drive us safely across the sea. After a wonderful trip we were all tired and ready to head home! A huge thanks to Ria and Deb for taking us around, our wonderful parent helpers and everyone else who lent a hand to make it such an awesome day!

Reka ranei Kawa

In Te Maunga we have been learning all about kai. We learnt about kaimoana and what we can find in the sea and put into our kete. We also learnt all about reka and kawa! Check the photos and see if you can figure out if what we ate was reka (sweet) or kawa (sour).

Rippa Rugby by Teah

On Wednesday the Year 5 went out to play Rippa Rugby with Bodene. We did some practice and warm ups. After that we had a game and it got very aggressive and competitive it basically turned into tackle but with rippa mixed together. In the end we all had fun and had a great time.

Camp by Yazmin

In Week 11 of Term 1 Te Maunga went to Cooper's Beach Christian Camp. We had support from our teachers and parents. We also had a lot of support from some companies and parents that couldn't come to camp but gave us donations for the raffle so a huge thank you to them! Te Maunga really appreciate it. We had so much fun on camp with all of the different activities. We got to go on kayaks, the waterslide, slippery hockey and the confidence course. We would also like to say thank you to the camp staff for having us.

Robots By Teah

Last week Te Maunga went on an app called Sphero. It was to control robots. We were put in groups and went on our computers and started coding. Group by group we went in the library to make another code. Then we pressed start and the robots followed our code. After that we controlled them with a dot that we moved around in a circle on the screen. The robots followed the instructions given by iPad. Then group by group they did again and again. It was fun playing with all of the robots and I hope we get to play with them again!

Rippa Rugby by Archie

Today Hayley-Jade came to Paihia School for our rippa rugby lessons. She comes once every one or two weeks. We do some warm ups at first and then we play some rippa. We have three teams yellow, blue and red. We call the yellow team the chicken nuggets, the blue team are the blueberries and the red team the tomato sauce. I think lots of people enjoy playing rippa so it’s cool that we get to play rippa during learning time. I think having sports at School is really cool and fun, don’t you? I don’t think most schools get to play rugby during learning time. We are a very lucky school and I like that. The seniors and the juniors are always on different days. I enjoy playing rugby at school and like going to tournaments. The good thing about rippa rugby is that you can just give it a go. If you don’t like it at least you tried and you should be proud of yourself.

8 Crazy days!

What a huge week and a bit we've had at Paihia School!

We had our school tryathlon on Friday March 15. What an awesome way to spend a sunny day at school!




On Wednesday we played Rippa Rugby with Hayley-Jade and had a great time. We learnt all sorts of new skills and can't wait for the tournaments coming up during the year

The Talent Quest was held on Friday March 22. It was outstanding to see all of the talented students we have at school. Te Maunga had a wide range of acts during the show and we even had some of our classmates win prizes! Akaycia won a prize with her group for dancing, Azure won a prize for doing some very impressive gymnastics and Brisa was the overall winner of the Talent Quest for her amazing dance!

Welcome to Te Maunga!

We finally have a blog up and running in Te Maunga! We have 5 students in charge of making sure the world can see all of the great learning we do here in class. Akaycia, Archie, Lincoln, Teah and Yazmin will all be working hard to make sure our blog gets a lot of updates and lets everyone know how much we are doing in class.

There are 55 students in Te Maunga in Year 4 and 5. We have moved into our new classroom and it is awesome! We really like the furry walls.

This blog will be updated every week to show you all of the awesome stuff going on at Paihia School, in particularly in our class.