Hi everyone,

The wonderful Piwakawakas have had a week of variety with a day off last Wednesday, Cheryl for technology on Thursday and Friday, movie making with Bu Monday, preparation for Design Stars performance on Tuesday and classroom clearing and more movie making yesterday.

We are using i-Movie and Puppet Pals apps to put together short movies using lego, photos, video and other props. The children are so clever at learning and embracing new ways of doing things. I can’t wait to see their efforts. We will get some of them into their media galleries so parents can see them too.

OK folk, that’s it for today! Ka kite ano,

Bu

Hi everyone,

The athletics for the 8 year olds and under was a great success yesterday and I saw lots of happy faces during the day. Well done Piwakawakas – I hope you all enjoyed the day. The older Piwakawakas stayed behind and had a chance to reconnect with Joan for the morning. Thanks Joan and the senior Piwakawakas for making it so easy for the rest of us to enjoy our day and thanks also to Sarah for taking those extras for singing and sports in the afternoon.

Thanks also to Kirsty for helping out last week with our Japanese Tea Ceremony and sushi making. We are still working on our Daruma Dolls and practicing some performing arts aspects that we may have the opportunity to showcase to you as part of the afternoon programme Sarah is putting together to show the gorgeous outfits her class have made as part of their technology unit on Brothers Design Stars.

Speaking of which, we had a ‘viewing’ of these stunning creations the other day and the children are now using the costume as stimulus for creating a character then developing a narrative around that character. Clever, clever kiddies – all of them!

Ok folk, that’s it for today! Ka kite ano,

Bu

We’ve been busy in the Piwakawaka Room continuing with our Study of the systems and culture of Japan. We’ve learnt about Emperors, Samurai and peasants; the jobs of artisans – including writing our own names in Japanese on scrolls and making beautiful fans and come a long way with writing our own cultural folktales. It’s been messy, busy, informative and fun!

Have a great weekend everyone and we’ll be back for more next week!

Bu

Hi everyone,

Congratulations to the fabulous Piwakawakas for the fantastic job you did of preparing for and operating the Pet Day stall last Friday. I couldn’t believe how popular it was – just about everything sold out! The 8kg of iced Animal Biscuits in those gorgeous boxes went really fast – that’s a winner that we’ll have to keep up our sleeve for next year!

To those of you that submitted a Pet Day Project, I enjoyed reading about your animals and gardens – well done on going that extra mile.

We’ve moved on now to studying the systems and traditions of another culture – Japan. We are making individual Daruma Dolls using the principles of stability, studying the feudal system under the Japanese Samurai and investigating aspects of the culture such as food, clothing, housing and Taiko Drumming. It’s a very energetic (and sometimes noisy) environment. In quieter moments, we’re learning about the folktales of Japan and writing our own narratives along those lines.

OK folk, that’s it for today! Ka kite ano,

Bu

Hi everyone,

Preparation for Pet Day has been our major focus this week. I was very proud of how the children articulated their reasoning for creating a Pet Products stall to Lesley, our Enviro-Schools teacher when she came on Tuesday for a lesson.

We’re also learning how to use our new Google Drive to save all the fabulous work the children are doing. With an influx of new laptops in the school, reliable connectivity and an ever increasing kete of IT skills, all the Piwakawakas now have a cloud based storage space for their work that they can access anywhere, anytime from any device provided they can get an internet connection. This will be our store house and ‘work in progress’ place but we still hope to showcase our finished products right here on UltraNet.

Athletics training in the afternoon has been a welcome respite from the busyness of the classroom.

Ka kite ano,

Bu

Now I can add much fancier bits with a blog!