How the Earth Began - The Story of Papatuanuku and Ranginui

On Tuesday we were supposed to go on a mystery history trip to Cambridge but... it poured with rain.  So, we did some cool stuff at school.

We watched the Maori legend of how the earth began with Papatuanuku and Ranginui.

Papatuanuku and Ranginui loved each other so much that they hugged closely together.   Their children were sad because there was no space to play and the sunlight couldn't fit in.  Tane pushed Papatuanuku and Ranginui apart so that the sun could come to the earth.

We noticed koru shapes.  The were like spirals.

We had a go at drawing some koru shapes.  They were super swirly.  

Some of us tried making arrow shapes too.

  

Next we drew big, huge, mega, ginormous, humungous, tall and strong pictures of Tanemahuta. 

     

  

We used pencil and then sharpie.

  

Next we used dye to make Tane colourful.  Check out his strong muscles.

Our art was very wet so we put it in a safe place to dry.

  

Meanwhile, we worked collaboratively to create murals with pictures and words to retell the legend.

  

We shared our ideas and worked together.  Look at these awesome teams!

  

If you come to visit Ruma Piwakawaka, you will see our amazing work along with some super star simile writing about Tanemahuta.

In the beginning...

 Mr Crane visited us today to tell us a maori legend

 and so it begins......

 The story of Papatuanuku and Ranganui

 The earth was very dark.

 A man was needed.

 A very strong man.

 And then Ranginui is chosen and she has curly red hair! We laughed so much that our tummies hurt.

Then Papatuanuku and Ranginui had lots and lots of children children.

This son with the big black hair was strong and pushed his parents apart.and now the earth was light.

and now the earth was light.

Cambridge used to be mountains and valleys until... there was a big explosion! We can't wait to learn more stories about Cambridge.

Mapping Goodwood

Yesterday we were like birds, floating above Goodwood School.  

We used Google Earth to zoom in over Goodwood School.  

  

We used Google Earth to help us to draw maps of our significant places at Goodwood School.

We looked carefully and used our knowledge of shapes to draw the buildings, the court, the pool and other special places that we like to learn and play.

We added labels and a title.

  

All of our maps looked different, even though they had a lot of the same significant places.

Can you see our significant places?

Sensational Sunflowers

It is Autumn now and our sunflowers are dying so we decided to cut off the head and get the seeds out.   But... our scissors broke into three pieces!
     

So we pulled the sunflower out of the ground using our big muscles.

We twisted and bent the stem to break the flower head off.

  

The sunflower was a bit heavy with so many seeds in it.

We brought the sunflower inside and then we pulled the seeds out.  It was tricky to get the seeds out, we had to pinch with our sneaky fingers.

  

   

We wrote about our sunflower and we used connectives to join our ideas in our writing.

  
Look at this clever writing!

Amazing Authors

Yesterday in Ruma Piwakawaka we worked collaboratively to write some piwakawaka nouns and verbs.  Nouns are words that are people, places or things.  Verbs are words that are actions or things you can do.

We used our verbs and nouns to write about piwakawakas.  We activated our nouns with verbs.

We are clever cookie authors!  

Ruru

       Did you know? We have been writing facts about Rurus.
    Rurus have bold eyes so they can see in the dark. They are nocturnal because the sleep in the day.

They have big wings so they can fly silently and hunt for their food. Insects, weta, beetles and small birds are what they like to eat.

Goodwood School Wedding

Miss Frederickson and Mike got married this morning in the Goodwood School hall.  We all went to the wedding.  Miss Frederickson was wearing a beautiful white bride's wedding dress.  It had flowers. We got to have a boogie at the end of the wedding in the hall!