Transplanting Trees

To make way for the new renovations that are planned for the administration block at school this poor old tree had to be moved. Mr Bensemann and Jake carefully prepared the tree for transporting. They dug it out of its original place and transported it around the the playground area on tractor with a forklift on the front. It was interesting to watch how they manuovered it into place without damaging the roots. We hope it enjoy its new home and will continue to grow big and strong!!!

End of Term 3 party

To celebrate the end of another very busy term in the Middle School, we had a shared lunch yesterday. Everyone brought along some nibbles and fingerfood to share with their classmates. We had a FEAST!! Look all the fabulous food....our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. It was great to see a mixture of healthy food like fruit kebabs and sandwich wheels as well as the traditional "party foods" such as chippies and cake!!!
Thankyou to all the mums and dads who spent time making, baking and icing delicious treats for us, it was fantastic!

Daffodil Day 2009

Friday 28th August was Daffodil Day. Mr Robinson came to speak to us about cancer. He first got cancer in his throat and he had some radiation but then the cancer spread and he had to go to hospital for 7 months to have chemotherapy. The chemicals killed his cancer and now he is healthy again. He had a bone marrow transplant over 13 years ago.

For Daffodil Day students dressed up in yellow and some even donated money towards the Cancer Society by buying an icecream at lunchtime. Mrs Latimer took the best dressed pupils over to the Community Hospital to visit the patients.

Tennis Coaching

Greg came over from Nelson to coach our class for tennis. He taught us some skills and we practised controlling the ball on top of our racquets. We did some warm up atcities first as you can see in the photo.

Here you can see Isaac trying to keep the ball on the racquet. We played a game called racing cars. You had to tilt the racquet so that the ball went round and round the racquet but it wasn't supposed to fall off! Lots of people found this very tricky to do.

COWS at school!

MSS has recently purchased 16 mini laptops called COWs (Computers On Wheels). They are fantastic. Room 7 has been using them to do Mathletics this week as well as work on our Disaster Powerpoint presentations. There are enough for one between 2 people so we can work together easily on our projects in class. They are stored on a special trolley that can then be wheeled to the next classroom.

Here you can see James and Lucas concentrating hard on their laptops. Some people in the class are extra clever at using powerpoint as well as other computer programmes so they are then able to go round and help others who don't quite have the same skills yet. It's like having several teachers in the class! Miss R says it is wonderful to see everyone in the class so focused and motivated to learn. Keep up the fantastic work Room 7.

Tane's new glasses

Check out Tane's new glasses...they look very cool. They make you look very smart and sophisticated Tane! We like the funky green pattern on the sides...you will have to take really good care of them so they don't get damaged at school.

Go Zone NiE

Room 7 really enjoy reading Newspapers in Education. This months issue is called "Erupting Earth" and its all about volcanoes. It links well to our study on Disasters. Here you can see some students working on their Go Zones together. NiE are full of interesting facts and colourful pictures.

Did you know......that the biggest volacno in the world is in Hawaii?

Did you know ....... there are three types of volcanoes - cone, shield and caldera?

By Aaliyah and Sam

Sam's baby brother

Today Sam got a new baby brother called Ryan. She picked some friends to go over to see Ryan. He was born today at 3.25 am this morning . He had lots of wrinkles when he came out now he only has them on his hands and feet. The hospital is just across the road from school.

Winter Art

Stevie

We used the PAINT programme on the computer to make these winter art scenes.

Susie

Callum

Alana

Mrs Snuggles

Grace C brought her pet rabbit to school last week. Her name is Mrs Snuggles. She is about 7 months old and she is a Netherland Dwarf. She is fully grown already. Mrs Snuggles is a grey colour and her fur is very soft. She likes to eat carrot and parsnip tops. She wakes up at 6am every morning and she likes to rip up the newspaper in her bed! Mrs Snuggles also likes to do 360's in the air which is pretty cool. Grace takes her for short walks down the street with her harness on sometimes.

Our Furry Visitors

On Wednesday James brought his bunnies to school to show us. The one that he is holding in the photo is called Buddy and the one in the box is called Buffy. Buffy belongs to his sister Olivia. The bunnies are about 2 months old now. They like to eat hay and carrots and they even eat Weetbix sometimes!
As you can see they are very cute and fluffy, their fur was very soft. One of them did a little poo on the carpet! When the bunnies were getting ready to go back into their boxes to go home, Buddy jumped out of his box and leapt on top of Sam!

High School Band

Last week the High School choir and band came to visit us at school. Mrs Bolt is the music teacher and was the conductor up the front. There were lots of different instruments being played. They played some Green Day songs as well as some Beatles music. They must practise a lot as they all knew the music off by heart and could play the songs really nicely together. It was great to see some of our ex-pupils in the High School Choir. Sophie, Rebecca and Shannon look different in their school uniforms, we hardly recognised them!

Wasp Nest

Here is Tane holding a paper wasp nest that he found in a bush on his deck at home. It was attached to a small branch. When we looked at it closely we could see the holes where the wasps lay their eggs. It looks a bit like a honeycomb.

Bokashi

This week our class has been using the bokashi kit. We have been putting our food scraps inside and sprinkling a tiny bit of EM sawdust over the top to stop the odour from waffling around our room. We put our hand inside a plastic bag and then squashed the food scraps down into the bucket. When we lifted up the top bucket we could see the liquid fertiliser at the bottom. It smells just like vinegar. We can put almost anything into the boksahi compost except for oil, liquids and bones.

The Best Nest

Here is Aaliyah holding a birds nest that her grandma found in her garden. It didn't have any eggs in it. It must have belonged to a small bird as the nest is tiny. We are amazed at how a bird can make a nest like this using just its beak and feet.

The Mintie Challenge

On Fridays we focus on developing our problem solving skills in maths. Miss R set us this cool challenge where we were each given a MINTIE. We had to unwrap it and make the warpper as l-o-n-g as we possibly could without using scissors or cellotape. The idea was to tear or rip the wrapper around and around (a bit like peeling an orange) until we oculdn't go any further. The person with the longest wrapper was the winner. Miss R had a go first and hers measured 88cm. Everyone was then determinded to try to beat her record. The only person who was able to do it was Susie- she managed to get hers 92cm!

Some people found this challenge really tricky as you couldn't rip it too thinly or it would break ...but if you did it too thick, then it wouldn't end up very long at all. Susie concnetrated really hard and took her time - that was the key to her success!!

Life Education

Today we went into the life education caravan with Helen and Harold. Here is Cameron putting the heart into the right spot .This is carpet kid. Helen showed us a video about a boy called Billy who moved to a new school. The other children were not very friendly towards him and he felt left out. We talked about ways the children could have included him better.

By Shaquille and Brooklyn

Go Giants GO!

On Saturday night 43 people from our school travelled over to the Trafalgar Centre in Nelson to watch the GIANTS play the Auckland Stars. Nelson ended up winning the game in the very last second by 2 points. The score was 77-75. Phil Jones scored the winning goal but it was nervewracking as the ball bounced on the goal ring a few times before it actually went in! The crowd went crazy and everyone jumped up out of their seats. Nelson is leading the whole competition at the moment which is great.

Gracie B-E really got into the spirit of the game and wore blue and white facepaint to support the GIANTS. Go GIANTS Go!

Hockey Heroes

On Wednesday 13th May we went to Saxtons Field in Nelson to play in a hockey tournament. There were 12 of us who competed. We won 3 games and lost only 1 game. We were one point off from making the finals! We were all so excited. We played extremely well and were proud of our efforts. Thankyou to Eva's dad and James' mum who came with us and managed our team for the day. It was fun driving over in the minivan. Macey, Grace B and Shaquille all won Player of the Game certificates which was great. Well done guys!
We can't wait to compete again next year. With a bit more practise we might even win the finals next time!

Bokashi

This is Kate and she works for the Tasman District Council. She came to talk to our class about composting. She showed us this composting system called BOKASHI. This idea was created in Japan because most houses in Japan do not have big gardens or places to put compost bins. This system just uses 2 large buckets. One bucket sits inside the other one. The one in the middle has small holes in the bottom for drainage. You use special sawdust that has micro organisms in it. You sprinkle a small bit of sawdust over the food scraps inside the bucket and it stops the food from smelling awful and the food doesn't rot. We are going to trial this at school over the next few weeks and see if it works.

Brooklyn's Birthday

On the 13th of May it was my Birthday. I turned 9. I got a stereo,a book,a helmet,a cd,a dvd,chocolate and an oufit. My mum made this vanilla cake that was a 9 shape with green icing pink smokers pink flowers and pink and green balls.

Soccer coaching

On Monday Darren the soccer coach came over from Nelson to teach us some skills . We had to dribble the ball around some cones in a square shape. We had to dribble backwards which was really hard.

After that Darren taught us how to pass the ball with one foot and showed us how to use the other one for aiming. Then we went to play a game of soccer. One team was bibs and the other team was non bibs. The first goal went to the bibs team and the second goal also went to them too so they were the winners and the non bibs lost. After that we had to say thankyou to Darren and go home.

By Stevie and Aaliyah

Composting

Here is Charlies compost it has veges,manure,sawdust and grass
in it and is healthy for fruit and veges.

if you want a healthy garden worms are what you need

If you want a good garden a good compost will really help.

By Charlie

Golden Tickets

We designed some golden tickets because we have been reading CHARLIE & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY we also designed some chocolate bar wrappers and chocolate recipes.Willy Wonka had done them so we did as well. We put them on display in the window of our classroom and they look cool :].

by Brooklyn and Dayna

"A" Day

On "A" Day each class had to dress up in different colours. We had to dress in purple. A day was about autism that means we spent the afternoon playing with the ORRS students. We also were "appreciating" everyone as part of "A" day and celebrating how special and unique we all are. Some of the games were musical chairs then we did a obstacle corse then we did basketball skills .But just before we thought it was over we had to find ice cream sticks- there were 3 to find. Graces mum made Grace a t shirt out of a pillowcase and a skirt made out of wrapping paper.A day was the best day ever!!!
by Aaliyah and Gracie B-E

Bike Safety