Breakfast Club

Yesterday Mr A and Willy moved the duck houses up into the pond area in preparation for our eight Khaki Campbell ducks we are getting this week. We hope they will start laying lots of eggs soon so that we can have lots of scrambled egg with our toast for breakfast club each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Manuka cuttings

In Kauri class we are learning how to take cuttings from our Manuka trees. We have been asked to supply 200 saplings to a local cooperative farm in Kaeo.  We are going to make rooting compound from our own honey. We are following the following instructions on how to make our own rooting compound:

Honey is naturally anti-bacterial and will benefit your new cuttings. To make a honey rooting hormone, take a few simple steps:
a.) boil 2 cups of water
b.) add 1 Tablespoon of honey
c.) let the mixture cool and place it in a covered container (like a canning jar). Store your honey rooting hormone away from the light. It will last about 2 weeks. To use: dip cuttings in the solution then pot up as usual.

To use: dip the cuttings in the solution then pot them up as usual.

https://www.businessofbees.com/blog/2016/11/4/growing-manuka-from-cuttings

Chicken Run

Last term kauri class started preparing for chickens. We were kindly donated a chicken coop from Zoe's dad and we used some of Mr A's spare fencing for the run.

It has been a bit of a learning curve as we had Cecil's pet chicken come and test our chicken run. Unfortunately she escaped in the first weekend.

The project goal is to get enough eggs to supply our breakfast club. Kai Ora have kindly awarded $1000 towards our chicken run project so watch this space for further developments!

We think we will need to spend some of the money on a new fence to begin with!

Interview with Stephanie Foster

Last term Stephanie Foster came in to kauri class to talk about her NZ fishing records. You can listen to her awesome interview below.

https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOUKoCagp5_WuxNcMD7F1B97rjBwdjthPvaAlkk

Rotary Club Dictionaries

A big thank you to Mike and Robert from the Kerikeri Rotary Club for this year's Year 4 dictionaries. The students loved them and they will prove valuable for many years to come!

Passion Project Friday

On Passion Project Friday (May 10) we made sea-glass wind-chimes. We made them out of junk collected on the local beaches in our region. We have put the wind-chimes in the orchard so that we can enjoy the relaxing sound of them while we are building our tree-house.

First we got the materials we needed, they were sea-glass, old driftwood, old fishing line and some old string.



Next we tied knots around the sea-glass.

Finally we tied the nylon to the driftwood and hung them up in the trees.

Silver Enviroschool

Last term Oruaiti School became a Silver Enviro-school. Some of the things we were working on to get to silver included, trapping pests, making beeswax wraps, making sustainable bags, we wrote a story book with a sustainable message, made kawakawa balms, planted manuka and kawakawa, started kawakawa tea club, and we made pallet chairs.

This year kauri classes inquiry focus is to make an outdoor learning space. So far we have looked at designs, planned where the space will be and what it will look like. The Kerikeri Rotary club are working with us to help fund and build it. We are also getting help with the plans from Glen Bradbury.

Watch this space for developments!

16 Habits of Mind

In kauri class we use the 16 Habits of Mind by Art Costa. These are the habits of successful people. The habits are:

1. Persisting
2. Managing Impulsivity
3. Listening with understanding and Empathy
4. Thinking Flexibly
5. Thinking about your thinking (metacognition)
6. Striving for Accuracy
7. Questioning and problem posing
8. Applying past knowledge to new situations
9. Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
10. Gathering data through all senses
11. Creating, imagining and innovating
12. Responding with wonderment and awe
13. Taking responsible risks
14. Finding humour
15. Thinking interdependently
16. Remaining open to continuous learning

Te Reo

This week (week 1, term 2) for Te Reo, kauri class learnt Maori words for autumn (ngahuru), cold (makariri) and leaves (rau).

Interview with Hari Bans

To commemorate 125 years of  women's suffrage in New Zealand Kauri class has been interviewing women from our region with an interesting story to tell.

In this photo we were listening to Hari Bans talk about her life.

 Below are the questions that we asked Hari Bans:

How is your life different to that of your grandmother?

Hari Bans has two grandmothers. One owned a candy shop

What advice would you give your 10 year old self?

Hari Bans said she would not give any advice because all of the events in her life (good and bad)
have shaped her into the person she is today.

What has been your greatest achievement?

How close do you think we are in the Far North to equality between men and women?

Who has been the biggest influence in your life?

Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King were among the most influential people in Hari Bans' life
because they promoted peaceful protest to change the world.

What did you learn from them?

Hari Bans learnt to make Avocado ice cream from her Grandmother.

What was the happiest/saddest moment in your life?

Hari Bans told the class that there have been many happy and sad moments in her life
but having Ariela and Rafael were among the happiest. Some of the saddest moments
were losing her stepfather to Leukemia and her parents breaking up.

How would you like to be remembered?

Hari Bans explained that she would like to be remembered as a person of peace.

Who has been the kindest to you in your life?

When Hari Bans was younger and was living in Spain she went through a patch of difficulty. She was homeless and needed some help because she had just given birth to Rafael and had nowhere to call home. She sent an email to friends asking for help. A friend from Scotland replied and offered her support. She flew to Spain to live with Hari Bans for a week to cook and clean. Hari Bans explained that this really meant a lot to her.

Production masks

For our production this year kauri class are pests. We are creating paper mache masks to get into character.  So far we have made a template of our faces with tinfoil.

Then we started layering papermache over the tinfoil.

At the moment we are adding the pest features to our masks.

A rat's nose

A cat's mouth

We are making kiwis as well!

A dog's nose

A hedgehog's nose

On Friday the 3rd of May kauri class helped Manuka class to make their paper mache masks.  After we showed them what to do and how to do it we did some more layering of our own masks.

This week our habit of mind is thinking about our thinking. We asked ourselves four reflective questions when we had finished our tasks. We asked:

• What were we learning to do?
• How did we know we were successful?
• What might we do differently next time?
• What are our next steps?

We are also working on a drum routine to this piece of music

Ariela's Dad, Ross is helping us to learn a backing beat on the drums.