Tuesday 28th August

We have been continuing with our facts on birds. The children have been exploring the playground and reading interesting facts on birds and in particular those native to New Zealand. We hope that you have been learning some interesting facts on birds at home too!

Today Nina, Femka and Nikau started working on their Bird Fact File. They each chose their favourite bird and wrote down facts that they had learnt or read about. They then had to carefully draw their chosen bird and focus on certain parts including their beak, feet and habitat.

On Tuesday 21st August Room 2 went bird spotting around the playground. Nina said that her favorite bird was the fantail and that if everyone walked around quietly you could hear the birds sing and talk. Tana spotted 3 hawks!

We made a tally which included the type of bird, how many times we spotted a specific bird and where we located them.

Femka spotted two birds nest along the way. All the children had a turn using the binoculars. We looked through the book "Common Birds in New Zealand 1" to help us learn more about which bird we spotted.

Maybe this would be a good activity for the children to continue at home.

In July we were really fortunate to have the Recyclying Circus visit Hira School. They performed in front of the whole school. Tama thought they were really funny and his favourite part was the juggling.  They were very clever and only made a few little mistakes, but that was ok - it was lots of fun to watch!

On Monday 13th August, Judi Keylock came to Hira School and helped us decorate masks for the Mask Parade. Tessa explained to make the masks they needed to use Japanese paper, tissue paper and dried up flowers.  Then we put special glue to stick the dried up flowers onto the paper. Judi also taught us some magic - what we had to do was wrap special leaves and put them in a steamer. After 1 hour we took the leaves out and they changed colour, some were pink, purple and even blue.  Tessa agreed that it was lots of fun and is looking forward to wearing her mask at the parade.

Last month we had a suprise visit from a very famous person....Ronald McDonald.  Ronald was teaching us all about road safety. Nina learnt that the first thing you need to do when you get in a car is to put on your seatbelt on and that when you are going to cross the road you need to be two steps away from the road. If you want to cross the road you need to look to your left and right for traffic (or crazy drivers)....Thanks for visiting us Ronald!

We have been following and learning about the Olympic Games which were held in London, England. Nicola's favourite sport to watch was shotput and the gymnastics and floor routines. Caden explained that there were lots of different countries participating in the Olympic Games including Jamica, New Zealand and Australia. His favourite part of the Olympics were the running races. At school we have been researching all we can about the Olympics. Paige brought in her Ludo game from home and Caden brought in Chess. It was fun to play our own games. Our whole school is participating in their own Olympic Games. We have been practising in groups and hopefully we will have our own special Olympic day this Thursday (weather permitting)...stay tuned!