The start of a New Year

We are almost a month into 2012 already and Room 8 is getting ready for it's new class of children. Mrs Davies has been busy setting the desks out and starting to put things up on the wall over the last week as the new term starts next Wednesday.

We hope you will continue to follow and comment on our activities and work this year, we have camp to look forward to at the end of the term which should be lots of fun and I know we will be busy writing stories, producing beautiful works of art and doing lots of other amazing things before then. We will do our best to keep adding to the blog on a regular basis just like last year.

Oh No!

Amy shares a piece of her writing about our kayaking at Waimarino.

I wobble in the kayak but don’t topple .the wind has pushed me into the side of the bank. ”Oh no” I think. I carefully force my paddle between the murky brown water speckled with green and the hideous weeds growing thickly in the water. I push using all my strength to get of the bank. Chemae and Maega have already past me. I try hard to keep up but I can’t, my arms aren’t strong enough. I keep getting blown into the bank. I swerve suddenly to avoid running over a mother duck and her ducklings. I carefully look at their soft feathers and wonder how Ocean can be scared of them.

As I slowly paddle specks of sticky mud covers my legs. I carefully turn without getting blown away. I approach the white boat and hurry up so I’m not the last.

Our trip to Waimarino

Marcus and Jennifer tell us all about our trip to Waimarino waterpark near Tauranga.

On Monday the 21^st of November we went on a school trip to Waimarino Adventure Park. Our instructors told us the rules like no running or else you had to do 10 press ups! They also taught us how to put on a buoyancy vest and told us about some of the activities for example on the Slip and Slide only works with contact to skin.

The instructors then let us go and we went to have a lot of fun!!! There was an activity called “The Blob” and one person would jump onto “The Blob” and move to the end and then another person would jump on and then, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”, the first person was catapulted into the air and Wow look at the humongous splash! There were other activities like a kayak slide (which was basically a hydroslide that you could go down in a kayak) a Tarzan swing and a gladiator pole.

We also did kayaking in the afternoon. We had to get into a circle and hold onto the other persons kayak beside us, this was called rafting up. We were also taught what happens when we fall out, Steven volunteered to jump out of his kayak and the instructors told us how to get back in. We played cats and dogs and us kitty cats mouths dropped the dogs were scary. We then formed our circle again and the instructors did tricks on the boat. When we had a turn most of us fell of when we were standing or doing wheelies.

We had the time of our lives!

Personalize a digital slideshow

Doodle 4 Google success

Last term Room 8 designed Doodles 4 Google as part of their homework. Every year Google holds a competition in which school children can come up with a design for their famous logo based around a theme. This year the theme was "My Wish for New Zealand". We were only allowed to send in a limited number of enteries so we voted on our favourite ones and them posted them off. Over 2500 schools took part and with only 10 enteries per school that still makes over 25,000 designs for the judges to choose from.

Today we found out that one of our designs made it into the top 100. Not only that, the judging is divided into four age groups with only 25 designs chosen from each age group so our lucky person was one of only 25 designs in the years 4-6 age group. We are really proud of her for this amazing achievement.

(Cherie's wish was for New Zealand to be a giant water park)

Our Budgies

In Room 8 we have two class budgies. Belle is green and Sebastian is blue. They live in a cage in our class .They like eating carrot, asparagus, silver beet and cuttlefish.  They are noisy and messy, covering everything in feathers. Sebastian likes to chew everything. JJ

Belle and Sebastian

Clay Making at The Waikato Society of Potters in Hamilton

Marcus, Jennifer, Charne & Anna tell all about our recent trip to have a go at some pottery.

On Thursday the 10^th of November we went to the Waikato Society of Potters workshop and we made superheroes out of clay.

The potter gave us each a bit of clay and we then watched her make a clay figure. After that we had a go. Firstly we banged and bashed the clay and rolled it into a sausage, we then cut it in half and moulded the head. After that we cut a line in the middle for legs and smoothed them.  We cut out arms with the other bit of clay, smoothed them and then we scratched them with a fork at the end of the arm. We did the same with the places on the body the arms would go. We then used a toothbrush to wet the parts we scratched and stuck them together. We made a hole in the back to hang them up and we used newspaper to keep the hole from closing (the paper burns away in the kiln). We then did the smaller features like the face and clothes. They turned out awesome.

We also had a turn on the wheel; I think we all enjoyed it heaps! We made bowls, pots and gigantic messes. We had to keep our hands wet so that the clay didn’t stick to our hands. We used our fingers to change the shape of our creations and we also changed the speed to control the clay and so that it would not go all over the place. If you did want to speed up the process you could but be careful! We had a great time and we all wish we could go back again. We have our fingers crossed that they all survived being fired in the kiln.

Balloon Car Racing

As an end of term treat Room 8 undertook a balloon car building challenge. Each team was given one balloon to power their car and had to include half a one litre milk bottle in their design. We got an hour and a half to build our cars with each team having two or three members.

(John, Steven and Marc construct their long distance racer)

There was lots of variation in the designs for each team with cars that looked like a dragster through to three wheeled racers. The classroom buzzed with activity and excitement as the cars took shape and there were squeals of delight and despair as test runs proved designs successful or still works in progress.

(Zachary, Bhavit and Marcus admire their first effort)

(Cherie checks out the construction of her teams racer)

At the end of the hour and a half the teams gave themselves a name and then we headed to the hall for the final race off.


There were three awards up for grabs, longest distance, fastest racer and most interesting design. John, Steven and Marc took the prize for the longest distance; Amy, Anna and Gabi built the fastest car and Cheri, Amy and Maega claimed the most interesting design award.

(Haydon gives his teams racer a test run)

We took some video of our cars in action and we will try and post a little movie of our efforts at a later date.