Year 6 Class Fair

On Friday 22nd August our 38 Year 6 children held a fair. There were lots of toys and books for sale, sherbert, popcorn, jelly, yummy baking that the children did for homework, and fun activities and games.
Every class came with their coins to spend. Some of the Year 6 children helped the younger ones and some helped selling on the stalls. We loved how the younger children really enjoyed spending their money and choosing different things to buy.
We raised $688 and the money will go towards postage and items for the Christmas boxes. These boxes are sent to children in countries where they are very poor. We have to pay $9 postage.

The baking stall being set up with lots of yummy baking!

More baking, homework was fun this week!

Lots of keen customers for stick in the sand!

Louis helping Zeta spend her money at Orlando's 20c stall

Mr Direen paying lots of money to throw the sponge at George!

The fair was great. We learned a lot about budgeting, giving change and dealing with money. It was fun counting it at the end.

World Ranger Day

 Thursday 31st July was World Ranger Day and the Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust invited ten children from each of the three Peninsula schools to take part in activities at the Okia Reserve at Victory Beach.
We did four activities: shoot the pest, use a GPS to find a nest, trap petanque and planting pikao to help provide the penguins with a suitable habitat. We also had to identify plants along the way. At the end we enjoyed a delicious BBQThe weather was beautiful and we enjoyed having lunch at the beach and jumping off the sand dunes. The trip was sensational and we were exhausted by the end of the day. A big Thank you to Mrs Lund for helping with transport and to the Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust for all of the great activities. We loved it!
Dan, Milo, George and Ed

Planting pikao

Eating lunch at Victory Beach.

Using a GPS to find the penguin nests.

Not a real penguin but great to know we were learning about them

and helping them to survive.

Writers Workshop

Writers Workshop

On Wednesday 30th July Mrs Hawker took us to Port Chalmers School to for a writers workshop. Four authors were there; David Elliot, Sandy McKay, Melinda Szymanik and Quinn Berenston. We went to workshops taken by Sandy McKay and David Elliot. They both told us that to be a writer you need to have lots of good ideas and a notebook to write them in so you can use them later on for your writing. David Elliot said that ideas were like butterflies that fly through your head and you need to catch them. He talked about using delicious words in your writing. Both authors said that to be a good writer you need to read lots of books to get other peoples ideas. We really enjoyed hearing them talk about their writing and what inspired them. We loved it when they read their own books to us because they read it with so much expression and passion.

By Josephine Tarasiewicz and Rory Augustson

Terrific Trip to Toitu and Gasworks

As part of our topic this term, Times of Great Change, Room 1 visited Toitu and the Gas Museum. Due to the frosty morning we cautiously hopped on the bus. We were keen to learn more about inventors and inventions and  we couldn't wait to get there.

Visiting Expert - Gareth Engineer

Today Gareth, Katrina's father, came to school to talk to us. He is going to be helping us to install our water tank and help us design our bike powered pump.

Gareth explaining Newtons Laws!

First he explained where our water comes from. The water we use in Dunedin comes from Deep Stream, which is 675m above sea level, then on to Deep Stream, which is 425 above sea level onto Silver Stream at 158m above sea level and then to the Macandrew Bay tank above Jane St which is 124 m above sea level.
 Water needs to come from a height to give water pressure. When a place is very flat, like Invercargill, they use water towers. Naseby uses water races based on the Roman aquaduct system.

Our water tank will be about 10m above sea level so we will have very low water pressure.  We need to create the pressure using a pump which we will attach to a bike. We did experiments working our how much pressure and flow we need to water our garden.

We had to time how long the hose took to fill a 10 litre bucket.

It took about 37 seconds. In the classroom we worked out how many litres per second it took.

Pumpkins From Our Garden

Room 1 and the enviro children from last term and this term made pumpkin soup using the pumpkins we harvested from the school gardens. We softened the pumpkin skins in the microwave so they were easier to cut. We also added onion and bay leaves to the soup. The soup  was delicious!! For Maths Room 1 had to estimate the weight of each pumpkin, weigh them and then add the weights together. The total weight of the seven pumpkins 18.033kgs. We only used two pumpkins to make the soup so we have five left over. Each class has been offered a pumpkin. well done Room 4 on taking up the offer. We can't wait to see what you make with your pumpkin. We have collected the seeds and hope to grow pumpkin plants for our garden next year.

Seven lovely pumpkins grown in our school garden.

Maths! Estimating and weighing the pumpkins. Over 18kgs in total.

It taste great, thumbs up from Room 1

Money For Malawi

Did you know that in Malawi many people, including children, are lucky if they have one meal a day. The meal is often only maize flour and water. They drink water from a well that may be dirty. Many people suffer or die from malnutrition and disease. World Vision is hoping to help them with the 40 Hour Famine Appeal.
To raise money for World Vision we had a rice day at school. Each child brought $3 or more to go to World Vision. We used our Maths, especially our knowledge fractions and volume, and had to work out our quantities. Each child was given 1/4 of a cup of uncooked rice. We needed 6 1/2 cups of rice in total. We added 13 cups of water to it and boiled it for 14 minutes.
Although it tasted yummy imagine eating it every day, once a day! We watched Seven Sharp and they interviewed people from Malawi.

We raised $92 and some children have raised money on their own.
World Vision are going to teach villages new ways of living sustainably. The money raised is providing them with seeds, cows, goats and chickens. They will be taught to use the foods and hopefully breed the animals so they can have more to help their people.