What is Matariki/Puhanga?

At first we thought Matariki/Puhanga was about

• Children
• My self
• Spanish
• No no naki a
• Singing
• Hello
• They have to have actions.
• Family
• They are brothers
• They are sisters
• We sang a song.

After learning about Matariki/Puhanga through songs, stories, art, HOLT learning and our families.

Thank you Kylie for coming in and helping us learn more about Puhanga, teach us a new waiata as well as guiding us in weaving a Puhanga star.

This is what we think now.

• It’s the Maori New Year.
• Its called matariki.
• In Wanganui, we call it Punga.
• We celebrate the 7 sisters, they are stars in the sky.
• We celebrate by telling stories, made kites, shared food, we fish, gardening, grow new plants and look after them.
• We see the Puhanga star outside our window.
• We think about those who have past away and remember their lives.

Learning about number stories

Puanga Celebration

Learning about the HOMS

Striving for Accuracy

Lily and Seth are throwing a beanbag at a target. They are trying to get it as close as they can.

Assembly

Today was our turn to take assembly.

We were feeling lots of different emotions about taking assembly from being scared and nervous about talking into the microphone to happy and excited that our families were coming to watch us.

We sang the library song, read our favourite Greedy Cat big book 'The New Cat' and shared our greedy cat art. We are very proud of the job we did.

Here is a movie made out of picture Miss Nation kindly took for us.

Thank you to all the families that were able to come and support our learners in their very first assembly at school.

Bucket Filling

This week we revisited  our learning about bucket filling and re-read stories the stories below for our new friends that have started this term.

This is what we learnt from the story.

Drips in the story meant:

• being mean. - Kristinn
• taking things/snatching. - Dustin
• people were whispering about him. - Jack
• his drops came out. - Peighton
• his sister laughed at him in a mean way. - Braedyn
• bullying him/jumped up on him. - Seth
• drips coming out of his bucket where making him angry - Austin

Drops mean:

• the water drops into the bucket - Dreus
• giving notes - Braydon
• they played together - Cassady
• they weren’t silly to each - Austin
• team work - Kristinn
• people were being nice. - Nevaeh - His teacher gave him an A on his story.
• he got to share with the class
• smiling
• kind hands
• not hitting
• sharing
• being nice
• saying hi

A bucket dipper takes drips out of peoples buckets. They make other people sad.

A bucket filler puts drop in other peoples buckets and their own. They make others and themselves feel good.

Non-standard Measurement

He Puna Aranga spent the middle block of the morning outside experimenting with non-standard measurement. The children were given maths equipment to measure a given area outside. The first group were given the straws to measure the path to the drop off bay. The second group measured the blue bench outside the junior classrooms-using small sticks. The third group had popsicle sticks and measured the black seat. The fourth group were given interlocking cubes and measured around the sandpit. The fifth group had a variety of different equipment to measure around the junior playground.

The learning investigation: How many of your equipment does it take to measure how long the sandpit is? or the area they were given.

The children set out problem solving ways to measure these large areas. We saw teamwork happening as the children took turns with the equipment. Some people were given the job as 'fixers' to ensure there were no gaps between each popsicle stick, cubes, straws etc.  Predictions were made as the children guessed how long was their area. Big numbers were used to describe how many of each material it took to measure the length or circumference.

Watch the videos below of some children explaining their learning.