Poppy Art

Last week we read a picture book based on how New Zealand saved Le Quesnoy (pronounced Ler kay-nwah)-  from the German's. The book was called 'Le Quesnoy - The story of the town New Zealand saved.' We learnt about New Zealander Leslie Averill and his herorics. There is a street named after him in the town of Le Quesnoy.

History article on the event.

The story is based around events that occured at the end WW1. As most peeople know there is a strong connection between WW1 and poppies for most New Zealanders.

We produced a piece of art based on poppies.

The first step was to create clouds on the paper, using rubbed charcoal.
Next we drew grass that was think, long and different lengths and sizes. We used charcoal again to create this.
On some pieces of grass we drew pieces of wheat.
Next we added a long shoot in the middle, and could add 15 smallers ones at the bottom page.
The idea was to make it look like an ant was looking up at the grass and poppies. To make this realistic we had to make sure the grass was angled inwards.
Out came the red paint and we added up to 15 poppies to our art. The poppies looked like figures of 8 or 2 circles, thinking of this made them easier to draw, we also had a picture to help us out.

Finally we sprayed them will fixing spray and mounted them on black paper.

They look spectacular!

Cricket Skills

This afternoon Bavaid came to teach us cricket skills. The main focus was accurate bowling with a straight arm.

We are practising the windmill to keep our arm straight

 

Here's Michael doing a straight arm bowl.

 

This is Justis running while bowling, he is showing us how to do a run up and a follow through run.



This is Tahlia practising bowling with a straight arm.

This is room 13 bowling at the same time.

Camp Caithness 2014

Introduction

In week 3 the year 5 and 6’s of Bledisloe School went to camp at Mrs Harris’ farm. We stayed for 2 nights in tents and had to do all our cooking without electricity.

When we arrived at Mrs Harris’ farm we walked down to the paddock and started setting up the tents, it was really awesome. Later that day we started doing our activities.

After that we went on the thick plastic waterslide. It was fun because you went fast but the worst part was when the soap flicked back into your eyes.
By Michael and Daniel.

Gorge walk

One of the electives was the gorge walk. As we walked down the gorge we have to be careful of the blackberries. Some people used compasses to guide their way down. There were lots of plants, there was even a stream down there but the stream was full of rocks and not much water. It was awesome because we were surrounded by so much nature.

By Logan and Ruby

Tents

First we had to unpack the tents, then we took the tents out of the bags and put the pegs in. We then put the poles and added the fly. We had to tie it down so it didn’t fly away. Every group had to put up their own tent. Some groups managed without adult help. For some groups they needed help because the tent was so big.

By Jack.

Slingshots

One of the activities we did was using slingshots and blow pipes to hit targets. It was heaps of fun!

Cook out

On Wednesday night we might fires. First we had to dig a whole with the spade, and then we got the wood and used paper. We had to light the fire with a match. We then had to start to cook our dinner which was nachos. We had the ingredients ready to cook. After dinner we toasted marshmallows on a stick. There were biscuits to put the marshmallows in to make smores.

By Micayela and Amber.

Trailer rides

All the utes came to pick us up. The reason we were all pilled in was because we were going to the waterslide in the other paddock. Some kids got to go on the back of the trailer, some on the back of the ute and others in the cab. The best place to ride was in the TRAILER because it was really fun and the bumpiness was extreme! The best ride was in Mr Teddy’s ute. For some people the ride was more extreme than the waterslide.

By Nand and Justis.

Waterslide

We were very lucky that we had nice hot days at camp. In the afternoons we found out that we could go on a waterslide which was made form plastic. It was about 50 meters long. A lot of people didn’t make it all the way down. All the adults seemed to make it past to the end onto the grass. Mrs Colliss managed to get a photo of nearly everyone going down. It was awesome fun, for lots of people it was a highlight of camp.

By Nick and Javarn.

Masterchef

On Thursday night we did our own Masterchef challenge. Each group got an amount of ingredients. Some were compulsory, instant noodles, sausages and some kind of tomato sauce. Some or the random ingredients that only some groups got were, garlic, canned beans, powdered mash potato, onion and heaps of other unusual stuff. Some creations were similar to others, there were heaps of stir fry type things. We all used gas cookers; our time limit was 30 minutes. For dessert we made pancakes.

By Ashley and Tahlia.

Eeling

One of the five electives at camp was eeling. We went to a pond were it was said to have lots of eels. Each group (of 2-4 kids with 1 adult) had a small handline.

No one had caught anything when time was up!

We chucked in the hinaki and waited until the next day.

The next day went we pulled it up we had caught a dead, blind eel. We didn’t eat it because it was dead and we weren’t sure how long it had been dead for.

By Seth and Te Ahu.

Camp Concert

On Thursday evening after the Masterchef results were told to us we started the 2014 camp concert. There were lots of different acts, but there could only be 4 winners. Some people sung, some did funny skits and others danced. The winners were lawnmower problem, the ugliest man, vampire bats and bubble-gum. The winning groups got half a block of chocolate to share out between the group. Kayla, Isabelle, Zoe and Amber were in the winning group the ugliest man, along with Zoe’s dad and Mr P.

By Kayla and Isabelle.

Dreamcatchers.

Dreamcatchers were so cool. The star in the middle was the standout, we got to add decorations and add string so they can be hung. My one was gold because stars are gold, I made 2 dream catchers but I still have to put the finishing touches on them but when I do I will never have nightmares again.

By Paige.

Young Farmer.

On Thursday morning everyone went up to the woolshed and did some farming activities. The young farmer competition was one of them. There were 3 stages to the race these were; log run, fill the bucket and hit the nail 3 times, you then had to return the log to the start.  There was a winner from each class competition, Room 11’s was Reon, Room 12’s Nick, Albie from Room 14 and our representative was Kairon. It was a tough competition and Albie won.

By Anthony and Bryce. 

Welcome to 2014

Welcome to Room 13’s blog. We are glad to be able to add on the blog from the last 2 years. During the past week we have been doing fun activities and getting to know each other. We have welcomed one new student to Bledisloe School, Daniel; he has transferred from Henry Hill School. You can read about what else we have been doing for the past week… so keep reading and enjoy.

By Kayla and Zoe.

 

Art – Bunting

First Mrs Colliss photocopied some large triangles. We then drew a collection of things that represent us inside the triangle. Once we were happy with the plan we transferred our design to the fabric and outlined it in vivid. We then used paint to paint them bright colours. Mrs Colliss is now going to sew them together. Here are some really cool ones, we will put a photo of them all up when there are finished.

By Nick and Daniel.

Sand timers

For maths we have been doing time, so we made some sand timers. We used old POP bottles, sand and tape to make them. The first time we did them we had a few problems, the holes weren’t big enough, the sand was a bit wet and there were sticks in the sand which clogged it up. We solved these issues and complete the tasks. They were fun to make and we got to work on our problem solving skills.

By Ruby and Michael.

 

 

Topic

Throughout the week we have been put to the test to try and figure out what we are doing for topic this term. We have been given some clues, like a display outside filled with interesting things, on Friday the teachers dressed up as farmers. We have been looking at farming pictures and asking lots of questions!

By Karion and Jack

 

Camp

On the 19^th – 21^st of February we are going to camp at Mrs Harris’ farm. We will be sleeping in tents with our groups. The whole camp will be set up in a paddock with no electricity, and there will be about 140 people! We get to cook our own dinners, everyone is getting very excited. We will let you know more as we get closer to camp time.

By Anthony and Logan.

Fact Wheels

On Wednesday we wrote 8 interesting facts about ourselves. We then presented them on these bright colourful wheels, there is a split pin in the middle so they can turn around. They are on the wall so our families and classmates can find the most wonderful class in history!

By Tahlia, Ashley and Sasha.

Swimming

The first week of school we have gotten into our swimming groups. There are 3 groups and based on people’s confidence in the water and their swimming ability. It was a bit too cold to swim today, but we will be back into it on Monday.

By Te Ahu and Javarn.

Art Effects

We used Microsoft Word and we clicked on insert picture and got our own photo up. We had to adjust our photo and get 8 copies of it. We then had a play around with the artistic effects. We had lots of fun and learnt a lot of skills on the computers. It made the wall look creative and colourful.

By Micayela and Paige. 

Fish

This year room 13 has 2 goldfish. We got to name them. We voted on their names, there were lots of names to choose from. In the end the bigger fish got called Jelly and the smaller fish got called Chocolate. The class came up with a little joke, Jellyfish and Chocolate fish.

By Isabelle and Amber.

 

The last final bits of 2013.

Safe Cycling

The seniors have started doing Safe Cycling.

Yesterday we had to bring our bike and helmet to school.

Our first activity yesterday was checking our bikes and making sure that they are safe. Some of the things we checked were:

The tyres, making sure they weren’t flat.
Our helmet, making sure it fitting on our head correctly.
Brakes, make sure they work.
Handle bars, making sure they are straight.

We then did some laps of the court and we had to make sure that we stayed on the white line. This was really hard for some of us!

Today we are about to go out to the field and practicing turning and stopping safely.

By Micayela, Bryce and Shohei

Art - Taking a dot for a walk.

On Friday we did some art.

It was called taking a dot for a walk.

We were given a big piece of paper and a black pastel.

We closed our eyes and put one finger on our nose. Our other hand had the pastel on the paper ready to draw.

Mrs Colliss read out the instructions as we went along. We traced our finger around our face, so we knew what to draw. As we touched a part of our face we drew it onto the page. Keeping our eyes closed.

Once we had finished we opened our eyes to see our Picasso!

They were very creative!

Some were hard to tell they were even faces.

Then we used a range of bright coloured pastels to colour the pictures. They look pretty cool but weird.  

By Sam, Jonathan, Tahlia, Nick
 

Calendar Art

Calendar Art is when we produce a piece of art that is made into calendars, diaries and card that our parents and families can then buy.

We decided to do pictures of either a parrot or an owl, most people picked owls.

Our first step was to paint the background either grey or blue. Grey for the owl pictures and blue for the parrots.

The second step was to add the clouds to our background. The technique that we used was one we learnt at camp when visiting the art gallery. You use a stencil that has cloud shapes on it, paint and a brush to carefully paint clouds.

Step three was to draw the bird on a separate piece of paper. We had lined bird drawings from the internet to help us out.

The next step was the colouring of the birds, bright colours for the parrots and darker colours for the owls.

Step five was to carefully cut the birds out. Mrs Colliss did this step for lots of people.

Depending on what your bird was doing, some people had to add a branch into their picture.

The final part was to glue it all together.

 By Te Ahu, Michael and Caleb

 

 

Optimist yachting!

The year 6's went optimist yachting last week. We were in groups of 3.

Day one was a good first day for sailing. The wind was in a constant direction which made learning to sail easy. Today we worked with a partner and sailed from one side to the other having turns with the third person on the bank. At the end of that day we felt confident to try again tomorrow

. Day two, the conditions were slightly different. The wind was going north today, which made sailing similar to yesterday. Today started with the same activity as yesterday for a warm up. After that we did a block challenge which involved Mr Papuni using the motor boat to spread out wooden blocks that were lettered in the water. Groups then had to collect as many blocks as they can. Mrs Colliss choose a secret letter which would give that group a bonus point (it was unsurprisingly C). The winning team was, Liam, Pasa and Wayne. With a total of 6 blocks! 

Day three, conditions were dodgy! We weren’t sure whether we would be able to go or not. Then weather down at the pond was ok so off we went. We started with the same warm up and then the block challenge. The wind started to change and pick up. So we headed back in to shore. Humo and Ethan capsized but were resilient and got it sorted and kept sailing. The winner was Isabel, because she collected the ones that had come into shore! Mr P and Mrs C decided that the conditions weren’t so good so we called it a day. We Tidied up and came back to school.

 

The first two days were outstanding and the third day was ok. It was a great experience and we can’t wait to do it at intermediate.

 

Written by Liam and Tommy

Kapa Haka Festival

  

 

As we walked into the hall the audience were talking. We sat down on the tiered seating, waiting for the other schools.

After months of practice we were finally at the Taradale schools Kapa Haka festival. We looked awesome, girls in their red dresses and boys in their black shorts.

Other schools performed on stage as we sat quietly aware that everyone could see us. Most of us were really nervous but excited at the same time. For some of us it was our first time performing at the yearly festival.

The room 13 who performed at the festival were;

·       Isabelle

·       Justis

·       Liam

·       Te Ahu

·       Seth

·       Tahlia

·       Micayela

·       Kairon

We performed some songs with all the schools as well as the boys doing a haka.

Our performance was outstanding, especially on the second night. Mrs Colliss said she wished she had gone the second night not the first.

We still have one more event to look forward to this year, this is a festival at the Hastings Sports Ground.

We look forward to photos from this event.

Term 4 Already!

Digi Awards

Earlier in the year a group of Bledisloe Students submitted photos to be entered in the Digi awards. I, Humo was lucky enough to have my photo make it through to the finals. It was Highly Commended.

Mrs Colliss, Mrs Geddis and Mrs Bevis picked me up from my house and we went over to the Hastings Opera House. When we went inside I was assigned to my special seat and we saw a slide show of the photos which made it into the finals.

When the announcing started it was for graphic design. We saw heaps of cool examples of students work from a selection of Taradale schools.

 Finally it was time for the year 5 & 6 photo section. I was called to the stage. As I walked across the red carpet my photo was projected on the stage. I was awarded a certificate and had my official photo taken.

We then saw the winners of animation and short films.

Lastly there was a supreme winner, the prize was an iPad, this was won by a girl from Taradale Intermediate.

It was a very competitive competition and I look forward to entering again next year.

Humo's amazing photo.

Recieving the Highly Commended award.

PrEp

PrEP is coming up. For those that don’t know, PrEP stands for Primary Enterprise Programme. Throughout the year we have been earning bleds which are used during PrEP as the currency to buy supplies for our companies. We have to make either a good or provide a service, then we have a market day at the end for the rest of the school to come shopping. So far we have talked about needs and wants, and most maths classes are doing financial literacy.
We will update when we start production.

This is a highlight of the year for lots of people.

Government

An extra part of PrEP this year is the government.

There are different roles, these are Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Market Planners, Treasurers, Chief Justices, and M.P.’s.

Students had to be nominated for the roles. Those who were standing for Prime Minister had to give a speech that told people why they would be good in that role. We then held the election. The election officers counted the votes.

The winning people were

Prime Minister: Tipene Deputy: Hermione

Market Planners: Lucca and Reone

Chief Justices: Wayne and Kayla

The Treasure’s are: Humo, Bryce and Kingsley.

The M.P.’s are Ethan, Alannah and Alecia.

The government then meet at the think tank with Mrs Devine where we began to talk about the roles and learnt more about the NZ government.

Then the M.P’s had to write a letter to our teaching asking for a meeting time for people to talk if they have any problems.

We meet again next week.

By Ethan.

Chess  

Five past eight was the time to be at room 8. We were all excited about the upcoming tournament. It was the interschool chess competition. We have been training for many terms and after 2 dates the day was finally here.

We split up into groups and were driven to the Hastings Sports Centre on Railway Road. We entered the centre, registered and given a number which was written on our hand. The first number was your year number, the second was the registration number, the last number was where your name was on the board.

We climbed a flight of stairs and were faced with 2 basketball courts filled with tables which each had 3 chest sets on them.

We had to wait ages until all the competitors arrived. There were well over three hundred kids from schools throughout Hawkes Bay.

We played five games throughout the day. Each game was restricted to 20 minutes. After each game we had a 20 minute break.

There were some sore hands and eyes at the end of the competition. Even some sore bottoms from sitting for so long!

Room 13 had four people competition.

Humo won 3 games and had a draw, this secured him fourth equal place.

Caleb won 3 games.

Ethan won 2 of his games.

Jonathan won 1 game.

It was Caleb, Ethan and Jonathan’s first year competing at the competition. It was Humo’s fourth time.

It was a great day.

Room 13 Chess players

 

The Indian Paper Decoration Demonstration.

'We are going to the hall to get creative' we were told.
When we got to the hall we were greeted by an Indian man named Kumar.  All he had with him was some coloured tissue paper and a pair of scissors. He wowed us straight away with his paper creations. He used no glue just the coloured tissue to create awesome flowers and decorations.
He showed us about 4 designs and then told us about a book he would have on sale tomorrow that will give step by step instructions for 15 of his designs. This will be $4.

Humo thanked him for visiting and inspiring us. We returned to class and after a quick google search found a video of Kumar making his flowers on YouTube. We then attempted to recreate some of his creation. We had mixed results and made a massive mess!
A random yet interestin afternoon.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZ12GYPRaY