2013 A New Year

Happy New Year from us in Room 2, 2013

We look forward to sharing our experiences with all of our friends and supporters this year. We hope to share stories, videos, slide shows and photographs of the things we do in class and out in our community.
Room 2 this year has all new people in it.
Our teacher is Keith
The support staff are Karen and Janice
The students are Casey, Ethan, Georgia, and Hemanshu
Together, we all plan to join in together to have a lot of fun, try new things, learn a lot from and with each other, work together and share our experiences.
It is going to be a great year!

The flood and the storm

Today we had a big storm in Nelson. There were very bright flashes of lightning and loud rumbles of thunder.. there was very heavy rain that filled all of the drains and made huge puddles everywhere.
The Maitai River that is next to our school, began to grow from a small stream into a big river.
It got very dirty and brown as it got bigger, and faster. There were waves in the river and it began to climb out of its river bed and up onto the banks. It swirled around trees and over the seats where people sit on fine days; it covered the footpath and the walkway.
It splashed around the tree trunks and roared under the bridge. We got some photos of it and made a short slide show of it for school.
We made some great pictures of the flood

Eco dyeing Presentation at the Suter Gallery

We will shortly be holding another exhibition at the Suter Gallery across the road from the school. It will be well worth going to see our students' beautiful work and the scarves they made.

Theme Day "Fun in the Pacific"

Last week, on Friday 16th September we all gathered in the courtyard at school to celebrate our Theme Day. The topic was Fun in the Pacific. Classes had been studying and making the things we needed to celebrate the things we had done and learned over the theme time.


There were waka (Maori canoes) in a variety of designs and colours. Some chose traditional colours and other groups had chosen bright, colourful designs. The waka were decorated with koru patterns and other Maori designs.



Students wore headbands and staff wore blue to symbolise the sea around the waka.


We all took part in a parade around the courtyard and the playground to the song "Hoea te Waka Tamariki ma" ("Paddle the Canoe My Children") to show off our waka and costumes.





After that, we assembled in the courtyard for a karakia for the kai, (a prayer to give thanks for the food), then we shared a little meal of Pacific food, trying pineapple, kumara, coconut,kiwifruit, fish and other foods that classes had made.




It was a great day and everyone had a lot of fun, singing and dancing

Eco Dyeing At Lud Valley with Judy and Mike Keylock

We went to visit Judy at her home in Lud Valley to try some eco dyeing of scarves for our exhibition later in the year. We cooked the dye over an open fire in the yard at Judy's house. Michael, her husband took a lot of photographs as we all had a go at designing, preparing and "cooking" our scarves.
It was exciting to go to a new place in the school van and to try a new way of working with fabric and dye.
The dyes we used are all from plants that grow in our Nelson area. The fabric is cotton, merino wool, or silk.
Acknowledgement: The video on this post can also be viewed on our news blog. It was made by Judy Keylock and the photos and video clips used were taken by Michael Keylock.
Our scarves are stunningly beautiful!



We had our lunch in her back yard on a beautiful sunny day and after we had done our dyeing work, we explored Keylocks' small farm and garden. They have a very eco -friendly home in Lud Valley, north of Nelson City.

Social Group with Janet

On most Tuesday mornings after morning break, Janet comes to our room to join us for Social activities. We sing songs, we play games and do activities together.

We love the "Yee - Haaa!" game where we pretend to ride our horses

We are learning about taking turns, sharing, greeting people, dancing and singing together.

We play games of musical chairs, dancing around until the music stops then trying to get a chair.

We do lots of fun things with Janet.

Growing Beans

Even though we are not in a fairy tale, we played Jack and the Beanstalk.
We got some bean seeds. (Broad Beans) and planted them in pots.

As we watched them over the last few weeks, we have seen them sprout roots, then grow a green shoot, and come up through the soil.


At first they were tiny , but gradually they grew
taller and got more leaves until now they are over
ten centimetres tall.

We are going to take them to the Waimarama
Gardens and plant them there.

We will continue to watch them and report on
them until (We hope) they produce some beans
for us to enjoy eating. We might even keep a few
seeds to plant next year if there are enough!



We made a large picture of the Jack and the Beanstalk Story

Believe it or Not!

Today we were working in our classroom when we noticed that something unusual was happening outside. It was snowing!

We live in a place called Nelson in New Zealand where it almost never snows so we decided to go out in it.

We played and danced around in the falling snowflakes for a while until we discovered something else about snow. It is really cold.

We hurried back to our warm room to have our morning tea and warm up.
If you look closely you can see the snowflakes falling in the pictures.

Working on our Living Story

We have continued to work on our living story project about Michael Recycle.
It has been fun to make the big boards for the hall. We spent a lot of time today painting them
In these pictures Joel and Tawhiri are working together to finish the pictures.

Di has been helping them to make great paintings

Special Visitors to our School

We had some beautiful visitors to our school a short time ago. Two Kereru, or native pigeons came to visit our kowhai tree at the front of the school. They are very big, about the same as a bantam hen and have beautiful colours on their feathers. Our teacher, Keith, took these photos of them to share with us.

The kereru were eating the leaves of the kowhai tree.


We often have visits from kingfishers, tui and bellbirds too and we have a lot of seagulls, sparrows and chaffinches coming to school to try to share our lunches as well. They come very close to us and we can easily see how beautiful they are.It is great to have these beautiful birds close to us.