Aha! What a Genuinely Glorious Group

We are indeed just a genuinely gorgeous group of individuals that are all working together during this lockdown period.

You all know that we have been meeting every day using google meet. You've read about our online quizzes. We've also had a crazy hat/hair/wig meet. This was such a fun way to end an awesome week last week. We truly had a lot of craziness going on. It's great to see that even though our way of working at the moment is different, we are still able to laugh, smile and have some fun. Okay we have had more than 'some' fun, we have had a whole heap of fun! :)

This week is no different. Our quiz this week is about the teachers. Tamariki will be trying to guess which teacher has done different things or whether the information about that teacher is true or false. For those playing, I'll give you a little hint. One of the questions is, "True or False - Mrs Taylor has a cat called Humphrey." The answer is ..... false. Actually Mrs Taylor is allergic to cat hair so there is no cat called Humphrey. There is a teddy called 'Teddy' though. Friday is also the 1st May so we are having a "M" party on our hangout.
                "A party at 9am!" you say.
                "Absolutely," I say, "it will be a blast."

While we have been at home, we have been continuing with a shared story. This term our shared book is Possums 2U by Vince Ford. Vince is a fabulous New Zealand author who writes about life in New Zealand. Ms Dods has been recording herself reading each chapter. These can be found on our class website if you are interested in listening to this awesome story. We are enjoying it. Alongside having to answer some questions, we have been getting busy and creative based on different things that have happened in the story. These were our choices last week:



So as you can see, we could choose between making a possum, a poster, a cartoon, a shelter, or even a possum trap. Here is some of our awesome work:



See, I told you we were a genuinely glorious group!
See ya next time :)

Looking Back, Looking Forward

We have continued staying connected with our online learning this week. Many of us are enjoying telling each other some great jokes at the start of our hangouts. Some jokes are funnier than others!

Today we also did a quiz using our baby photos. This week I asked the children to send me a photo of when they were a baby or a toddler. I know that many of our families enjoyed the chance to look back and to see the photos that were taken and to discuss the different things that were happening at the time of the photos. We then used these photos and created a kahoot (cos Te Mahuri loooves kahoot) to try and guess which of our students is in the photo. It was a lot of fun!

If you would like to have a look at our then and now photos then check out this presentation ...


It's important to be able to look back and reflect upon times past. It's also important to be able to look forward and consider what might come. In the future I hope that our students and families look back on this time and that they will be able to reflect on some of the positives rather than just the negatives. I also hope they can look forward with hope at this time and not dread. And as I look to the future, I look forward to being able to see our students again face to face. While being online together has been fun, our face to face interactions are awesome too. Stay strong beautiful people, you really are an awesome group.

What a Week!

Wow! We have some awesome tamariki and whanau in our community that have engaged with us and the learning we've set and we couldn't be more proud to be apart of it. We have loved seeing you all through our video hangouts and we thank you for welcoming us into your homes and connecting with us. We have met some of your pets, told jokes, laughed and smiled. We've loved it!

Ms Dods found this beautiful video courtesy of Visit Auckland that reflects on this time and with still so much uncertainty about what is to come, it really is a timely reminder that our strength is in unity and that there will be an end to this strangeness.



Sit at a distance, stand as one.
When the time is right, we welcome you.
But for now, listen.
Our Earth Mother is breathing.

Kia kaha, and we'll see you all very soon.

Task #6 the Easter Edition!

Welcome back everyone, we hope you are all well in your own bubbles!

We are excited to see everyone once term 2 starts on Wednesday 15th April. We are fully organised and ready to go and will be emailing our students and their families at the beginning of next week.

For those of you who would like another challenge over this easter break then this task is for you. There are two to choose from but I know you will have fun no matter what you choose.

From our whānau to yours ...

Monster Results for Task #5

What another fabulous task! There were very different ways that our students made monsters but all were very cool and we absolutely loved seeing them all.

Here's what we did:

Well done everyone, another great success!!

Terrific Task #5

Good morning ...

Task #6 is finally here. There is only one task but we hope that it will allow you to be as creative as you can.

So as you can see, there are no rules to this task. How will you make your monster? What will you use? Will you do it on your own or have someone help you?

As always, we look forward to your brilliant blog posts that introduce us to your magnificent monsters.

Have fun :)

Woohoo! Task 4 Completed!

Welcome back everyone and well done for those of you who took part in task 4. Remember you had a choice between two different tasks this time. The first choice was to make a paper plane and then fly it the furtherest by facing backwards. The second choice was to choose an artist and let their work inspire your own art work.

Two great tasks and here are our results:

Great work everyone!

Task 5 will be available tomorrow.

Art or Paper Planes ? Task #4

Welcome back everyone, to our next set of tasks. There are yet again two tasks that you can choose from or if you have time, or are inspired by both activities, you could choose to do both of them.

The first choice is ...

Cool right? There are so many different paper plane designs that it will be really interesting to see which design you like.

The second choice is ...

I know that some of you are slightly puzzled by task #4b so I have put together a little presentation of some ideas that might help you understand what this task is asking of you.



So there we go, those are the two choices for your next task. I wonder which one you will choose? Maybe you will attempt to complete them both. Either way  the choice is yours.

Good luck and have fun!

Task #3 Completed

Wow another amazing challenge has been completed. Well done to everyone that took part. We loved seeing your inventiveness in the amount of clothes that you could wear and in your Lego creature designs.

Here are our results ...

What is next? Hmmmmm could it be art, music or an engineering challenge? Maybe it's all of those things or maybe it isn't. Yup there's no clues about our next challenge so you'll just have to check back tomorrow.

Task 3a - The teachers results ...

Hi everyone,

Matua and I had sooo much fun trying challenge 3a. We raided the wardrobes and fancy dress cupboard!! Matua managed to wear: 2 Dressing Gowns
1 fur coat
7 shirts
4 pairs of shorts
2 winter vests
1 leather jacket
1 ski jacket
6 hats
1 tie

I managed to wear : 1 Fur coat, 1 necklace, 1 tutu, 3 hats, 1 surf life saving shirt, 1 pair of gloves, 1 t-shirt, 2 shirts, 2 dresses, 1 pair of trousers.

The end result was we both became overheated and very hot and flustered. You can see us taking the clothes off and counting everything. But here we are all kitted out in our finery!

 Such a fun and very silly thing to do..and what a mess to put away at the end. Have fun on this challenge and for our next class challenge all.

Ms Dods and Matua 

Now which task to choose?

Kia ora everyone,

We are back with another task for you all. Okay that is not quite true, we do have in fact two tasks for you to choose from this time.

The first choice is .... (drumroll please!) ...

Hmmmm ......I wonder if anyone will be able to get more than 20 items of clothing on? My thanks go to The Taskmaster Classroom for the inspiration of this task.

The second task choice is ....

Right so there you have your two choices of tasks. I wonder which one you will choose? Clothing or Lego? Lego or Clothing? Maybe you won't be able to decide and you'll choose both! Either way whatever one you choose, good luck and have fun. I can't wait to read your fabulous blogs once you have completed your chosen task.

Steady (or not so steady) Stacks!

Well everyone task 2 has been completed. There was a lot of different approaches to this task with some great successful stacks.

Remember the task was to stack as many items as you could alphabetically, either from a - z or from z - a. Here are our very cool results.

Of course it wouldn't be right of me to ask our students to do something that I wouldn't do myself so here is the result of my challenge.

A - Angela
B - Board
C - Carpet
D - Diagram
E - Electrical Cord
F - Flag
G - Ghost
H - Hat
I - Information Pamphlet
J - Jelly
K - Keepsake
L - Lipstick
M - Mat
N - Nothing
O - Onion
P - Photo
Q - Question Mark
R - Rosemary
S - Screw
T - T-Shirt
U - USB disc drive
V - Very annoying toy
W - Wrap
X - Xray
Y - Yeast
Z - Zip

I will admit that trying to stack the onion called for a lot of patience. Here is the final stacked result.

I wonder what the next super task or tasks will be?  Check out this blog tomorrow morning to find out the details.

See you soon.

Kia kaha all.