Whangawehi Planting

On Tuesday we headed down to the Whangawehi Awa to plant some more trees and to put in our new penguin houses.

We go down there every year to plant trees and this year we were able to see how much our trees which we had planted 3 years ago were growing. They are now a bit taller than Waitama! (He's pretty tall too!). So we decided that in 20 years time they are going to be very tall!

We arrived and Nic had already dropped off all the trees and was busy digging holes for us. We gathered up everything we would need and got into pairs to begin planting.

When planting trees it is important to make sure they are covered at the base of the plant- but not too or too low, as this could either kill the weeds or suffocate the plant.

We had little fertiliser discs to drop into the holes before putting the plants in, and then we put a green stake next to our tree so that if the grass grows faster than the tree we will still be able to find it.

Once we had planted all the trees we had morning tea. It was a break well earned for some of our busy tree planters, who were planting try very quickly and effectively.

After morning tea we got into our house groups and set about putting the penguin houses out. Penguins don't enjoy wet feet inside their houses so we made sure we put them up high away from the tide. We put some of them next to our three year old trees so that in the years to come the penguin can enjoy the shade of the trees.

We had a fun morning getting a lot done.

A very big thank you to everyone who came and helped us. We wouldn't have enviro-school days without you!

Nic telling us about what has been trapped so far.

Tarquinn-Zaid with one of our penguin houses.

Whangawehi Awa

Lucy and Lisa planting their trees.

Morning Tea time!

Shevy resting after lifting his penguin house into place!

Learning about Mountains - Nga Maunga

Room 3 tamariki were very busy today creating their maunga using different shades of green card. They worked productively and I have to admit we have some very talented artist in room 3!!

At the beginning of the week tamariki in Room 3 were told the story Battle of the mountains. This story tells the traditional Maori myth of the battle between the mighty Tongariro Mountain and three smaller mountains Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngaruhoe. The battle took place in the central North Island, each mountain trying to win the love of the beautiful female mountain Pihanga. The mountains were raging with volcanic lava and hurling rocks as weapons. When the battle ended the lovely Pihanga stood close by Tongariro's side.

Taranaki wild with anger and grief uplifted his roots from the ground and left the other mountains. Weeping, he plunged towards the setting sun, gouging out a deep wide trench. When he reached the sea he turned north and stumbled up the coast. As he slept that night the Pouakai Ranges snared and trapped Taranaki in the place he now rests. The next day a stream of clear water sprang from the side of Tongariro. It flowed down the deep path Taranaki had left on his journey to the coast to form the Whanganui River.

The tamariki enjoyed listening to the story and had many questions they wanted to ask too. They also wrote their own short recount of the story using very descriptive words.

When the children were asked about the different maunga in Mahia just about all the tamariki could name some of the maunga here - Maungakahia, Mokotahi, Te Ara o Paikea, Taupiri, Tairea, and Hikurangi. The tamariki are familiar with the names of these maunga as they are the names our house groups at school. Some tamariki identify with Puharareke as their maunga in their pepeha too.

Most of our tamariki at school have walked past or up Maungakahia situated around Nukutaurua. We sing waiata that includes the names of the maunga listed above too. Next steps are identifying where the maunga are situated in Mahia.

Culturally it is important for Maori to know and be able to share their whakapapa – to know one’s whakapapa is to know one’s identity. Our maunga is what anchors us here and with tamariki identifying their maunga (whether it be in Mahia or another location) they can relate to their whenua.

Room 3 tamariki always enjoy listening to stories and learning about the history of Mahia. They also get to enjoy creating art based on what they are learning and love singing waiata from around home.

So whanau ask your tamariki what they have been learning in class. I’m sure our room 3 tamariki will tell you all about it.

Friends

We have spent the last several weeks doing a friends program with Whaea Leith.

This has helped us think about the kind and cool things we could do with our friends.
It is important that we look after one another in Room 3, because we are all special, and nobody likes someone being unfriendly to them.

Garfield the cat has been helping us out, he watches all the nice things we do in class and reports back to Whaea Leith when she comes out for our lessons. He has been telling Whaea Leith a lot of really cool things lately.

He has been noticing a lot of awesome tuakana teina relationships between our tamariki who have been in Room 3 for a long time, and our teina who have just arrived.

He has also been listening to some awesome compliments that a lot of our tamariki have been giving to one another as well as visitors.

We are an amazingly nice and friendly class who have been working hard on being the best friends we can be!

Water and the Jellyfish lake!

We have been learning about the four elements (fire, earth, wind, water),
and the other day we watched a very cool gopro video of someone swimming..... in a lake..... full of jellyfish!

This video got tamariki talking about what would be needed in the water, what it would be like swimming with all these jellyfish, and whether or not it would be safe!

We enjoy watching videos like this in Room 3 as it gets us using language we don't always use.
We all wrote about this video and there were a lot of amazing pieces of writing.

Here is Alyss's writing:

Palau is the name of the lake of jellyfish that do not sting you at all. There are little ones and big ones. If you go to Palau lake you will find jellyfish. You will need diving stuff. If you do not have diving stuff you will sink to the bottom. The colour of the jellyfish was orange. 


This is the link for the video:

https://gopro.com/channel/aquatic-adventures/lost-in-jellyfish-lake

Rocket Lab Excitement!

On Tuesday the 16th of August we were very lucky to have been a part of an important Rocket Lab transportation.

Rocket Lab were transporting down two very important pieces for the launch pad. We waited patiently as we watched the pilot vehicles come around the corner. We could all hear the first truck coming, but it was coming very slowly!

Thankfully both of the trucks stopped and we were able to go and have a good nosey at what the trucks were carrying.

The first truck was carrying the bottom platform, which is called the erector platform. The other piece was the top part which is called the strong back.

Both of these were very big, especially the erector platform, which was so heavy the truck was nearly touching the ground!

They had left Auckland on Monday and travelled to Napier which took 13 hours. They left Napier very early at 4am and got to us 10:20. The trip from Napier all the way to the end of the peninsula took them 12 hours. So they ended up travelling two whole days to get them to where they needed to be.

Rich was filming it the whole way from Auckland out to the end of the peninsula and he came to share the video with us all at school today. While he was sharing the video he also filmed us! So keep your eyes peeled tomorrow night (Thursday the 18th August) as we may be on the news! (Rich said it will possibly be on both TV1 and TV2 news- we will also play it at school on Friday).

It is such an exciting time for tamariki to be living in Mahia, the Rocket Capital!

Thank you Duffy Sponsors!!

Te Mahia School tamariki love receiving Duffy books, look forward to getting lost in their books reading about the many wonders and characters authors have conjured up. Their faces light up when they see the variety of books they get to choose from in the Duffy books catalogues but it is always hard choosing from the great range to read. 

Ngā mihi nui to our following Duffy sponsors:

Grace Mua

Maehe and Deb Austin

Nans Marie, Vienna and Jenny

Nadine White

Pat and Sue O’Brien

Violet Bell-Streat

Donna and Byron Davis

Alec and Anne Ormond

Ali and Nolan Maru

Thank you again to our sponsors listed above who made receiving Duffy books possible for our tamariki. Our tamariki can carry on their love for reading at home too. As they would say, “we love our new books!”

The Great Migration – Te Hekenga mai o ngā waka

Room 3 tamariki and Te Mahia School are very lucky to have Whaea Adelaide join our staff at Te Mahia. Whaea Adelaide is in class with us in the afternoons. Her role at our school is Teacher Aide and she is a facilitator of Te Reo Māori. We are all learning kupu hou (new words), kupu ruarua (phrases), and haurārangi (sentences) from her. She has a wealth of knowledge and her Te reo is beautiful.

Today the tamariki were learning about Te Hekenga mai o ngā waka, namely the two waka of our area – Kurahaupō and Takitimu. As well as using the phrases:

Nō mai rā anō – Long time ago

Nāwai rā – eventually or after awhile 

The story began like so….

A long time ago a man called Kupe travelled around the seas and landed in Aotearoa. Then he sailed back to the islands and he told the people of the islands that he had discovered a new land. So the people prepared themselves by building them waka. The people sailed from the Pacific islands and they used the stars to navigate their way to Aotearoa. The tamariki were interested in the stars and asked a lot of questions in relation to how the people followed the stars to get to Aotearoa. There were 7 waka that came over. Two of those waka were Kurahaupō and Takitimu.

When the Kurahaupō waka arrived in Aotearoa it landed up North first and then sailed down the east coast of the North Island stopping at Nukutaurua (Te Atihau) in Mahia. Rongomaiwahine was on the Kurahaupō waka and remained behind in Mahia. The waka then carried on to the western side of the island, namely Taranaki. The captain of the waka Kurahaupō was Te Maungaroa, and Whatonga was the tohunga (priest) on the waka. The final berthing place of the Kurahaupō waka was Whaingaroa. The iwi associated with Kurahaupō are Taranaki, Rongomaiwahine o Te Atihau, Ngati Apa, and Muaopoko.

The Takitimu waka started off up North then made its way down the east coast. The waka landed at Nukutaurua and then Ruawharo, where Ruawharo (the tohunga) remained behind to live. The Takitimu waka then carried on down to the South Island where it’s final berthing place was in Waiou. Tamatea was the captain of Takitimu waka and Ruawharo the tohunga (priest). The iwi associated with the Takitimu waka are Rongowhakaata, Ngati Kahungunu, and Ngai Tahu.

At the end of the lesson the tamariki were asked questions to see what they had absorbed from the story, then they were colouring in their own stars to put up in our classroom. Will post pictures up once they are finished.

Wearable Art

On Tuesday the 2nd of August we had an enviro schools work shop at school. The focus of this workshop was to get our Little Penguin houses up and running.

We are building the little penguin houses to try and boost the penguins population around the Mahia Peninsula.

As well as making penguin houses, we also had harakeke weaving (where tamariki made some beautiful jewellery), and wearable art creations.

Our wearable art creations were based on the four elements, wind, fire, earth and water. Tamariki brainstormed which element they would like their creation to represent and set about planning, with the materials they had on hand. Once they had planned their creation they began the creating process. It was awesome to see tamariki working well together in groups and exploring the many different ways they could recycle materials to represent the elements.

Thanks to all the whanau who got recyclable supplies to school for us to use, as well as all the whanau who helped out.