Local River Study

On Tuesday Anna Crowe took us to do a practise river study at the Mackenzie Road Creek. We'll be doing this for real next Thursday in the beautiful Pine Valley Stream. Fingers crossed the weather is the same as it was on Tuesday!

Mackenzie Stream

 Measuring the water temperature

 Testing the clarity of the water- it wasn't very good!

 Timing the water flow

Getting the "Bug Boxes" ready for collecting!

Paws and Claws!

More Native Fish....

These boys set themselves the challenge of researching some native fish that Anna did not have the time to cover in her visit on Tuesday. They have done a great job!

Native Fish Lesson

Anna Crowe visited us today to teach us more about some of the Native Fish that live in our rivers- some of which we might even see in Pine Valley Stream if we are really lucky. We learnt that whitebait are actually 5 different species of fish and about how to tell the difference between Longfin and Shortfin Eels. Then the children recreated the lifecycle of the Longfin Eel, which was a lot of very energetic and noisy fun!

The Longfin Eels are preparing for their huge 5 month journey from a New Zealand river to the Tongan Trench to lay their eggs.

The Eels lay their eggs and then die

The baby eels return journey to New Zealand takes 18 months! They will live in the lakes and rivers until they decide to make the journey to reproduce themselves. This may be when they are 100 years old!

After Anna's visit the children chose something about the lesson that they found most interesting and produced a page about it for their Camp Books.

Not long to go...!

Only just over 2 weeks to go until Room 18 are off to Pine Valley!
We will be filling up our Pine Valley books over the next 2 weeks, beginning our study about rivers and native fish (with Anna Crowe) practising our campfire songs and preparing our skits!
Have a look at the "Camp" page on the blog for information about the groups and also for another packing list. More information will be going home on Tuesday.

More Jungle stories....

Jungle Writing

I hope you will enjoy these atmospheric stories that the children have written about a mysterious and creepy jungle!

Go All Blacks!!!

Here we are with our little buddies :-)

Native bird information posters

Today the children worked in their groups to produce information  posters about their group's bird.

The Final Slideshows!

Room 18 Sporting Stars!

Well done to the kids who took part in the mountain bike event on Friday and the New World Duathlon at the Weekend.

Izzy was first place out of the Year 4 girls

 First, second and third place- all from Room 18!

 Witherlea School- First overall!

More Native Bird Slideshows

Native Bird Slideshows

The children have been showing awesome cooperative skills by working with the children in their Pine Valley groups to produce a slideshow about their group's bird.
Here is the first slideshow to be completed. Watch this space for more coming tomorrow!

Pine Valley Statistics

This week we are looking at statistics to do with our Pine Valley focus for this week- native birds.

Room 18 Term 4

Here are Room 18 with our wonderful newest member, Aden, sitting in the middle of the front row. Aden has settled in fantastically in just 2 days, which is not surprising considering the wonderful bunch of welcoming kids we have on our room!

Welcome to Term 4!

One of my favourite places to be in New Zealand- Awaroa, Abel Tasman 

Weren't we lucky to have such fantastic weather over the holidays! Hopefully we will have weather just the same for our Pine Valley Camp, which is in Week 6- not too far away now :-) We have lots of work to do for our camp so remember to bring your camp books in on Monday. I'm looking forward to seeing you all and hearing about what you got up to during the holidays.