Wednesday, August 29

Netball Finals

Last Saturday was finals day down at the netball courts. Both of our senior netball teams were playing off for 1st and 2nd place in their grades. Here are some of the supporters who came down to cheers the players on. We blew up green and white balloons, took our school flag along and some people even put green hairspray in their hair!
Even though our teams didn't win, we were very proud of them. Both teams DID win the deportment trophies which is a great achievement.
Thankyou to everyone who played, supported and coached our teams this year. It has been a great season.

Collage Boats

Mr Brown visits Rm7


This is Taylor's grandad. He came to visit our class to speak to us about life as a fisherman. We wrote letters to him last week, inviting him along. We found out that he owns two boats. One is called the Mako and the other is called the Pursuit and that he sells his fish to Talley's. He has been fishing for about 40 years now and he brought lots of photos along to show us. He sure knows a lot about fishing and had a lot of interesting stories to tell. Everyone in our class had lots of questions to ask him and we could have spent the whole day listening to Mr Brown. Taylor is holding up some photos of some of Talley's first boats.
He told us that he was out at sea for 7 weeks once which is a long time to be away from home. He also told us that one of his crewmen fell overboard once but luckily they managed to rescue him and haul him back aboard. His trawlers often fish along the West Coast near Westport as well as in Tasman Bay. He said that some days he can catch up to 20 tonnes of fish (which is a lot of fish'n' chips!!)
He has caught a few sharks in the nets before and even caught a Great White a few years ago - that would have been scary!

Tuesday, August 28

Mr Inglis

This is Mr Jack Inglis. He came to our school to speak to us about cancer because on Friday it is Daffodil Day. Mr Inglis has had lots of operations on his face because he has got skin cancer. The surgeon had to build him a new nose. He told us that it cost him $16, 000 for the operation. He had to have a melanoma cut out of his ears 2 weeks ago. He is lucky to be alive today. He went to Christchurch to have his operation and he had to have a bandage on his face for about 3months until the skin healed. He had a skin graft from his forehead and this skin was used to make his new nose. The surgeons are very clever!
He told us how important it is to wear sunhats and sunblock these days. When he was a young boy, he never wore a hat or sunblock at all and now he wishes he had.
Remember, SLIP, SLOP, SLAP and WRAP!

Tennis Coaching

Madeleine and Kaitlyn are playing "hand tennis" - they had to hit the ball over the racquets on the ground to each other. It was one of the games that Greg taught us during our coaching session today.


This is Greg. He is the tennis coach who came over from Nelson to teach us some skills . We had to practise bouncing a ball on top of our racquet for as long as we could. It was tricky, lots of people lost control and balls went all over the place!
(Some even went up on the roof...ooops. We will have to ask Jake nicely if he can get it back down for us)



Tuesday, August 21

Monday, August 20

TALLEY'S fisheries




We began our study by brainstorming a list of things we ALREADY knew about Talley's ..
Then we wrote some "I wonder?" questions such as
"I wonder how many boats they own?"
"I wonder how many factories they own?"
"I wonder how many different flavours of icecream they produce?"

These were questions we wanted to find out answers to and this was the basis for our research


Here is a photo of Talley's headquarters which is at the Motueka Wharf

We took a photo of one of the huge freighting trucks used to transport Talley's products around the South Island


This is a photo of the Rongatea 11. We created some collage boats based on this old fishing boat.

Our class is studying Talley's as part of our Discover Tasman inquiry topic. We have found some information on the www.talleys.co.nz website. Most of us have realised what an important part of our community the Talley's company is - nearly everyone in Motueka knows at least one person who works there.

Miss Robinson took some pupils down to the Talley's shop at lunchtime to do research. Some pupils have emailed Talley's and asked if someone could come to our school and speak to us about the company.

A group of pupils also took a trip to New World to see which Talley's products were stocked there.
(Miss Robinson found some delicious Talley's icecream in her freezer and we got to taste it..YUM!)









Wednesday, August 15

Thursday, August 9

Problem Solving




For maths recently we have been extending our "thinking skills" by trying to solve problems that require a great deal of concentration. Here you can see Renee and Josh trying to put together some tangrams and Emma is making a pyramid where each side has to add up to the same total (harder than it looks!).



We found out that there are often more than one answer for the same problem. For more problem solving ideas wheck out http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/

Funny Money!


The two Chloe's are pictured with their hands on the BIG cheque - $10, 000. They wish it was real! Mr Harrison is busy now planning what to spend it all on. We are hoping to get some nice new playground equipment which will be fantastic.

Wednesday, August 8

Zoe's Scarf


The pupils in Room 7 are so talented. Zoe has been very busy knitting at school. At breaktimes, instead of playing in the playground, she can be found sitting quietly with her friends outside our classroom knitting. What a great skill to have.

Miss Robinson asked Zoe a few weeks ago
"Are you knitting me a scarf Zoe"?(Miss Robinson was joking of course)

Imagine her surprise when Zoe presented a beautiful pink scarf after the holidays and said

"Here, this is for you Miss Robinson".

What a lovely gift, thank you Zoe. I will treasure it, I have never had a pupil knit me a scarf before!!

Now the other teachers are jealous and want to know if they can have a scarf too!!

Miss Robinson is wearing the beautiful scarf that Zoe made for her, doesn't it look great?

Tasman Makos



Yesterday we were fortunate enough to have 2 players from the Tasman Makos rugby team visit our school. Their names were Tim Taylor and Peter Nixon. They brought posters and a t-shirt along to give away to pupils. They asked us quiz questions about the Makos team and those who answered them correctly, won a prize.
They also signed autographs and some children got their shirts signed and their arms signed!
Chris Jack has been playing for the Makos but soon he has to leave for England to play in the World Cup with the All Black team.
You can check them out at http://www.makos.co.nz/ and find out other interesting facts about the team. Good luck for the rest of the season!



Cameron's Water Rocket


Cameron and his dad made this really cool rocket using an old plastic bottle, a pump and a special valve. Cameron showed us how it works and explained a bit about it. We had to make sure it was facing AWAY from other people in the playground so that they weren't in any danger.

Miss Robinson got a real fright when it first"popped" as it made a loud noise and zoooommed past her so quickly!

Cameron also wrote a fantastic story about water rockets, you won't believe how much he knows. Maybe he could be a scientist or an engineer when he gets older?

Super Spaceships




Our class has integrated our science topic "Our Night Sky" into our ICT programme as well. Jonty and Jadine created these cool space pictures using the PAINT programme on the computer. (You might like to try this at home if you have a computer and microsoft word)
As you can see, they have drawn spaceships with rocket boosters on the sides as well as some shooting stars and planets that are found in our solar system. Jadine showed her work to Room 6 and taught them how to create shapes and use the paintpots to fill in these shapes to create their own pictures. We will find a special place to display all this fantastic artwork. Awesome stuff Room 7!


Saturday, August 4

Aquatic Centre and Rabbit Island




Our class went on a day trip to the Aquatic Centre on Wednesday 1st August. We were lucky to have several parents willing to provide transport to Richmond. The first cars headed off at about 10.oo am. Everyone was very excited and noisy on the way over (the poor parents!) Bev met us in the foyer and explained some safety rules to us before we were allowed to change into our togs.

Miss Robinson hired four surfboards for everyone to use. Most people spent time in the wave pool although the spa pools were also a popular choice. Chelsea did really well to stand up on the surfboard and balance on the waves!
After an hour and a half in the pools we were so wrinkly that we all had to exit the pool and get changed again!

We piled into the cars once again and this time we headed to Rabbit Island where we had a picnic lunch and a fossick along the beach. The weather was great despite rain earlier in the week.
Some pupils spent time making huts in the scrub, others collected pretty shells and made cool sandcastles. We also took PE equipment along and played frisbee and bat down on the sand.
It was another fantastic trip and we want to say a big thankyou to the dads (and Chloe's mum) who were able to take time off work to come with us. We really appreciate it and hopefully some of these parents might be able to come on camp to Marahau with us in November?