Cindy and Robert also brought a selection of puppets for us to use and a real puppet theatre. There were string puppets (marionettes), shadow puppets and finger puppets just to name a few. We had fun preparing little shows to perform, using funny voices and our imaginations. There were some Maori games too. The spinning tops were fun to use and there was a special one that you 'whipped' with flax to keep spinning. We also played some playground games from the olden days. They had lots of chants/rhymes and didn't require any equipments. While groups of students were busy exploring the many ways children entertained themselves before plastic, devices and electricity, the remaining students joined together for an extra special discovery! There was such a lot to choose from, lots of team work, creativity and smiles on display! What a fabulous day it was (even in the wet!!)
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We had a visitor in Manuka! She had a funny hat, a loud voice, and wore an eye patch! You guessed it - it was a pirate captain! Captain Blood visited our class with a HUGE problem! Her crew had been involved in a massive battle with another pirate crew and had their boat scuttled! What good is a Pirate Captain without a ship? She needed our help to solve the problem. She gave us instructions about the size of the boat she needed, a cutlass each, and off we set to design her a new ship. It was so handy that the cutlass each group got was one metre long! After we drew up plans for the boat, the correct size, we could add features such as a crows nest, anchor and a plank!
Captain Blood had such a good time that she came back the next day, armed with her set of handy measuring cutlasses, and a big box of cannon balls. We had a competition to see how far we could fire them on the back field. It was really handy that the Sports Trust Coaches had been and shown us how to successfully throw a shot put, which looked remarkably like the cannon balls. We fired them as far as we possibly could, then using our measuring cutlass, checked how far we could throw them. After that, Captain Blood got a bit cross and made us all 'walk the plank'. The sharks were swirling directly underneath the plank, so we had to jump as far as we could. Again, those measuring cutlasses came in really handy and we measured how far we could jump. It was lucky that the sharks weren't really real, as it was pretty tricky to jump a long way. Check out our pirate ship plans!!
  We were so lucky to have James from Natural New Zealand Honey come and share his knowledge about farming bees. We learnt so very much and he was pretty impressed at what we knew too. We learnt all about 'queen excluders' in the hive boxes, got to check out the smoker that is used to calm the bees, and how different types of flowers make the honey different colours. He bought a see through hive where we could see 4,000 bees and if you spied really carefully you were able to spot the queen bee. James had painted a blue spot on her back so that she was able to be seen amongst all of the worker bees. We found out that three simple eyes on the top of a bees head help it to see in the dark, and that each of the two compound eyes has nearly 7,000 lenses! What amazing insects bees are! A great big thank you to James for sharing his wealth of knowledge with us!
What a lot we have learnt about bee bodies over the last few weeks. Bee's have amazing bodies, full of nifty tricks and their body parts are called the most wonderful words. We've learnt about their long straw-like tongue called a proboscis, their thorax (to be said like 'The Hulk' showing off our muscles!) which is the motor house for their wings and their long, useful antennae. We've learnt about forewings and forelegs, hind wings and hind legs. Did you know that they have pollen baskets on their hind legs and they use their fore and mid legs to brush the pollen into their pollen baskets. What is pretty cool is their five eyes (yes - five eyes! Two compound and three simple). To show off what we had learnt we each designed and created a cardboard printing block. We made the base of the block using the basic three segments of the bee (head, thorax and abdomen) which we then decorated with all the essential bits likes wings, legs and a stinger (but only if it's a girl!). We did make quite a mess!
Then we got busy printmaking! We tried two different types of printmaking. First we wrapped our printing block up in a tight parcel with some paper and rubbed a crayon over it, transferring the image onto the paper. We found that if we use more than one colour it gave a really neat effect. Then we used proper printing ink and rollers. We carefully rolled the ink onto our printing block and then using a dry roller, pressed the image onto some paper. These looked pretty jolly fancy! Come in and check them out!
What's that buzz? North Loburn started off Term 3 with a wonderful day all about BEES! This is our school wide topic for the term and this was such an amazing way to spark our interest and focus our attention. The school was muddled up into six groups, all named after a different type of bees (did you know that there are not only bumble bees, honey bees and worker bees, but also leaf cutter bees and carpenter bees?!). These groups had students from every class in them, and it was so neat to see the big bees alongside the smaller bees to get the job done! We made bee buzzers that actually sounded like bees, bee stick puppets, a HUGE honeycomb, bees with transparent wings, iced cupcakes like bees (delicious!) and competed in a bee themed quiz. What fun!!
What a treat it is to join with Rimu and Kowhai for Discovery Time on a Friday. To end Term 2 we had such a great time celebrating with a Matariki themed discovery. There was lots of activities that we could choose to do. We could paint the night sky with cotton buds, make origami stars, do some weaving, puzzles or create 3D stars with the straws. We were also engineers with the Meccano, electricians with the Brain Box kits or scientists with the microscope! Mrs Green also put some Jump Jam music on and we shook our groove things on the stage. Such fun!
What a busy term we have had and one of the things that we are most proud of are the fabulous pieces of art that we have created. They brighten our classroom and are worth popping into class to have a look.  We were so fortunate to have Mrs Connelly spend a day with us this term, and she helped us to make these fabulous pieces of art. First we had to draw some abstract shapes onto our backgrounds, and then we used undiluted dye to create really bright colours for our background. She took photos of us 'striking a pose' and printed them off to go onto our bright backgrounds. We tied in some writing about ourselves which we also used on our artwork. We love that not only are each of our art works unique, that we are too!
To celebrate Matariki the junior classes were all muddled up into three mixed groups. Each group spent three afternoons in a different class creating something that reflects Matariki. In Kowhai, the students made kites which they decorated with ribbon and wool. In Rimu, they created a brightly coloured mobile that has the stars of Matariki hanging from it. In Manuka, we painted stars and then wove black paper through them. Some of us found the weaving part a bit tricky, under and over. It was lovely to see the big kids helping the little ones. They look fabulous!
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