Room14HES

Tui are a bird native to New Zealand. The little white feather looks like a pom pom. Can you see the yellow pollen on this Tui's head? They love to eat from the flowers of flax and kowhai. We are very lucky that we have had a Tui visiting our school. Sometimes the tui interrupts our learning.  He likes to sit at the very top of the redwood tree.  Today we finally got to film him. He is hard to see in the video but you can definitely hear him. If you want to find out more about Tui you should take a look at the Department of Conservation website. If you click on the photo it will take you to the information about Tui.

Our friends at a Peek inside have a problem with cheeky cockatoos at their school in Australia. The cockatoos will actually break into their lunchboxes! Our bird problem isn't quite so bad but we do have sparrows who love an open rubbish bin. Today Tarn and Tremaine filmed the birds having a snack from our rubbish bin at school. Take a look at what they filmed.  (Their commentary is pretty funny too because they forgot we would hear what they were saying! Oops!)

Today is Nude Food Day .  Room 14 is celebrating it by not having any wrappers in their lunchboxes.  Instead we are using containers or nothing.     Here is a lunchbox without wrappers. It just has a container to put the food in. We are trying to help care for the environment by having less packaging.   By Tarn and Eva

What did you have for lunch today?   Here are some of our lunchboxes. We pack our lunchboxes at home and bring them to school. We eat our lunch at 12:30pm before going to play. Now that it is summer we eat our lunch under the oak tree with our friends. This means we can be nice and cool in the shade. This is what some of our lunchboxes look like after lunch. We try and have healthy lunches so our bodies are strong.  We created a wordle about the things we had for lunch today - 

We have 12 students from Ritsumeikan Keisho Junior High School   from Sapporo, Japan visiting our school.   We have learnt how to say hello in Japanese - Konnichiwa.  It's autumn in Japan at the moment. Did you know it snows in Sapporo in winter? The students travel to school by bus or train and it takes over an hour to get there. There are over 500 students at their school.    This afternoon we went on a school tour and played a game about our school environment. We played an alphabet game where you try and find things around the school that start with the different letters of the alphabet. It was really important that we talked to each other. We got to know the Japanese students better.     We hope that the students have a great time visiting our school and New Zealand.

Here we are in the Kitchen Garden on our first day back. We are wearing sunhats because it is summer and we are being sun safe.   We checked on our class garden to see how everything is growing. Our lettuces have grown and the slugs are leaving them alone. Our pea seeds have also started growing. We planted a zucchini plant called Black Coral, that we got from Anna's Mum and Dad.  We really enjoyed making new friends around the world last term. We are looking forward to working with our buddies again this term and hopefully we will make some new connections too.

This week was Conservation Week in New Zealand.  The theme was We Love New Zealand. Today we went and hugged our Redwood tree. It is the tallest tree in our school and its trunk is massive. The Redwood tree provides shade and a home for birds. Take a look at our vimeo of our Kidpix drawings of what we love about New Zealand. Our school had an art competition to celebrate Conservation Week. The artwork had to show what we love about our school. Ryan and Tahniah's artwork were in the top 11. They won a marigold plant and Ryan also won a trowel to help him with his gardening.  Artwork created by Ryan.  This is our playground on Putikitiki. Artwork created by Tahniah.  This is the trees by the Kowhai sandpit.

We are excited because Mother Duck's eggs have hatched. Anna took Room 14 up to Fairyland to have a look at the ducklings. They are so adorable. We tried to count all the ducklings but Mother Duck is very good at protecting them. We know there is at least 7 ducklings though. If you look carefully at these photos you can see the little ducklings.   We have to be very quiet around Mother Duck so we don't scare her while she protects her ducklings. If you are quiet and still Mother Duck will pull her chest up and lift her wings a little to show you her little family. She is so proud. Here is a vimeo of Mother Duck. A massive thank you to Madisen and Room 10 for letting us use their video footage. Mother Duck & ducklings from Ham East on Vimeo .

On Monday afternoon Room 14 was getting ready to blog when we heard some beautiful singing outside. Room 14 crept outside quietly and tried to see what was making the noise. Finally we saw the tui in the Rimu tree outside Room 14. We did take some photos but it was really hard to show how beautiful the tui is. Here is a photo of what a tui looks like. Environment Waikato has a project to help increase tui numbers. Click on this  link if you want to find out more about tui and how you can help. We also took a flip video of the tui. If you look carefully towards the end of the vimeo you will be able to see the tui in the tree. Tui from Ham East on Vimeo . We love hearing the tui sing while we are working in our classroom.

Today Mrs Leeson gave Hamilton East School a plum tree to plant in the Kitchen Garden.  We planted it behind the dental clinic because one day this could be a great orchard area.   Look at the roots of the plum tree.   Thankfully Dugan had dug a hole for us earlier. We put fertiliser in when we planted it. This will help it grow faster. Then we piled more soil in the hole. Mrs Leeson had thought of everything, not only, did she have fertiliser she also had worm juice. We mixed this in with the water to help the plum tree grow stronger. Look at gorgeous Room 14 with the new plum tree for our school. Here is a vimeo of Room 14 helping to plant the tree. Plum Tree from Ham East on Vimeo .

Shakshi and Tarn are learning to use a flip video. They used it to video our gardens. It was their first time filming with it and they have done a great job. We are looking forward to seeing what they film next.  Listen carefully to the birds when they are filming in the Kitchen Garden. Our Gardens from  Ham East  on  Vimeo .

Every year the same duck comes back to our school to lay her eggs. Building a nest at a school seems like a strange thing to do.  This morning Room 14 went and visited Mother Duck in Fairyland.  We had to be quiet so we didn't scare her. We wonder how many eggs she has laid in her nest? Here are some of our stories we wrote about Mother Duck.  We drew pictures of Mother Duck using Kidpix. As she lays her eggs snug and warm in fairyland Mother Duck is fed by Father Duck. Dugan puts a fence to stop kids from damaging her scaly feathers even though she is tucked away in the leaf litter under the fern. The sky blue eggs will hatch into ducklings soon. I hope they have a safe trip across the road. By Lucy Illustration by Leighton Mother Duck is special to our school. We look after her. We think she is beautiful. I like Mother Duck. She is my favourite bird. I like her pretty feathers. I remember when she was on Putikitiki with her babies. By Kurtis. Illustration by Ryan Mo...

I n Room 14 we like to play peacefully and look after other people. Today at lunchtime Whaea Tash saw some of Room 14 playing beautifully. She was so impressed she took photos and then emailed them to Anna. This is Whaea Tash's email to Anna -  Whaea Tash was very impressed by this group of Room 14 students.  Well done for showing team work and playing nicely with each other.  I am going to show Room 11 students what being a H.E.S student is all about by looking at these photo's.  My kids may be older but you guys are really awesome examples for them.  Have a fantastic day :) Whaea Tash   We feel proud of ourselves for doing the right thing.  Thanks Whaea Tash for telling Anna about us. What do you like to play at lunchtime?

We took a walk around our school to see if anything had changed during the holidays. We were surprised that some things had changed a little bit.    Some of our daffodils and lavender have started flowering in our gardens.     Some of the games around our school got repainted over the holidays. Now we can see the games properly. This is great as it will give us ideas of things to play during our break times. We got a new soccer goal on Dawson. AWESOME! It means we can finally play a proper game of soccer again.