February 2024

 This week we began our literacy learning with the help of Milo Monkey. We made Milo Monkey cookies by decorating plain biscuits. Milo helped us learn the letter m sound. Magnificent mahi!

Milo Monkey craft.

We love learning!

Halloween Dress-up Day 2023

 Today we had great fun dressing up because it was Halloween. Check out our amazing costumes. We all looked fabulous!

We wrote about our costumes and our shared book for this week is 'Number One' by Joy Cowley which is about a ghost who loves scaring people until someone scares him. "Woooooo!"

  

Friday 27th October

Paparore School are supporting the All Blacks for their final game against the Springboks form South Africa, in the Rugby World Cup in Paris, France. Most of us dressed up in black for our school's "Black Out Day" and some of our South African students and teachers dressed in green. That was great too as it shows Diversity/Rereketanga, one of the Paparore School Values. Some of us will get up early on Sunday morning to watch the big game. We think it will be a great game of rugby because the two best teams in the world will be playing each other.

!

Gardening

 A week ago we planted sunflower seeds into little pots. In went the seed raising mix and then the seeds. The students from Te Kauru grew sunflowers last year and then collected the seeds. Now we can use them to grow new plants. How cool is that! We put the pots outside. They need sun and water. We are checking and noticing growth. The weather has been perfect for growing. When the plants are big enough we will plant them outside in a garden we have been preparing.

One week later . . .

 A Little Seed

A little seed for me to sow

A little soil to make it grow

A little hole, a little pat,

A little wish, and that is that.

A little sun, a little shower.

A little while-

And then, a flower!

We also planted swan plant seeds for a butterfly garden. They were a lot smaller than the bean and sunflower seeds. Mr Mullholland has been helping us a lot with our learning about growing seeds and plants.

We are growing the swan plants in a little hot house for germinating seeds.  

Five days later a tiny sprout appears . . .

The seed has germinated.

How to make a no-dig garden

 This term we have been learning about growing plants from seeds, the parts of a plant, and, what plants need and do for the environment. We have worked together to create a garden to plant our sunflower seedlings in and a 'Butterfly Garden' where we will plant the swan plants we are growing. 

We joined hands and measured the space our garden would be.
Our garden will be a curved shape. It is 16 strides long.

Next we spread out the cardboard onto the ground.

We had to stand on the cardboard so it wouldn't blow away.

We worked in pairs tipping soil out of buckets, spreading soil and returning the buckets for Mr Mullholland and our helpers from 

Te Puawai to fill up again. 

Our gardens still need some more soil but that's our job for next week!

We went back to the classroom, washed our hands and got rewarded for our great mahi and . . . so did the lovely tuakana Levi, Miley, Kingston and Mason from Te Puawai.

We couldn't have made our gardens without their help.
They displayed all of our school values -Hiranga/Excellence, 
Rereketanga/Diversity, Ngakau/Integrity, Porihanga/Community and
Partnership and Kaitiakitanga with big smiles and their willingness to
help out! 

 

Gardening

 Our inquiry topic for term 4 is, 'From Garden to Table.'

During the last three weeks we have learned many new things about seeds and plants and have also extended our prior knowledge about plants and gardening. 

We have germinated bean and sunflower seeds without using soil and also with soil.

Without soil: Here is a written procedure that tells you how you can do this.

Here is what our seeds look like after two weeks. 

I look, I notice, I wonder

Many have sprouted and some of the seedlings were touching the top of the bag. We wondered what we could do to solve the problem so the plants could grow up straight. We opened the bags and after just one day the plants look straighter and they have grown even taller right out the top of the bags. We can also see the roots on each plant.

We also noticed that some seeds had not yet germinated. We think there was too much water in the cotton wool so we squeezed the balls and some are starting to germinate. 

Too wet!