Happy Easter and Happy Holidays

We hope you all have a super happy Easter and fun two week holiday. Remember to keep practising your basic facts and keep up that awesome home reading over the holidays.

Photo taken by Georgia

.... and now including Georgia.

3D models

Today for Maths we made 3D models out of wine gums and toothpicks. It was an easy way for us to count the number of faces, corners and edges that each shape had. There were a couple of shapes that we could not make with the wine gums and toothpicks. These were a cylinder and a sphere. We discovered that the reason we couldn't make them was that they had no corners and they did not have straight edges.

Chaleece, Alex ane Regen concentrate on making their 3D shapes

Samantha, Rylee and Emma with their creations

Alex, Dewald and Regen hard at work

Fraser and Elliot - full of concentration

AND SO TO THE COMPLETED MODELS.......

Izack with his triangular pyramid

Elliot showing us his square pyramid

Josh proudly shows off his cube

Jess licks her lips in anticipation of tasting her wine gums!

Samantha proudly displays her square pyramid model

Jaxon was super fast in creating a triangular pyramid

Dewald shows us his free choice creation

What a fun Maths lesson! Undoubtedly the best part of this lesson was devouring the lollies when we had finished. Don't worry though Mums and Dads, as we did learn alot from this activity!

Sports Activator visits again

Penny, the Sports Activator, visited school again today. She worked with Room 4 on small ball skills. Firstly, we had to work as two teams knocking down and picking up cones, focusing on peripheral vision as we ran. This was a fun warm up and got us all moving and working as a team.

Check out Alex busy guarding her cones - or had she just stood them up?

We then worked on our throwing and catching in a small group situation, always moving when we didn't have the ball to make ourselves near our opposition to try and tag them with the ball. Can you spot Regen busy directing someone in this photo?

Finally, we got to put our skills into practice by playing a team game with Penny. We had to hit the ball and then hold onto our bat and run around the bases (hoops). Each team had three batters available. The only way you could get out was to be caught out or if you were running and weren't in your hoop when the fielders had thrown the ball to Penny. We only had a short time to play this, so will have to make sure we get out and have another game in the next couple of days so that we remember the rules.

It was great to see everybody involved and participating.

Discovery of Gold collage timeline

As part of 'Our Golden Past' inquiry topic, we created a class timeline to show the main events in the discovery of gold in our local area. Mrs O gave the students a partner to work with and we had to create a paper collage picture in pairs to represent one part of the timeline. These photos show us working with our buddies, sharing ideas and listening to each others' suggestions, collaborating and co-operating as we worked.

Dewald and Fraser, Rylee and ..... Alex (the next day)

Emma and Jess, Jaxon and Mac

Blaize and Izack, Samantha and Georgia

Adam and Regen, Joshua and Elliot

Lucy and Chaleece

AND OUR FINAL PRODUCTS........ Come and check out the complete timeline in Room 4.

Edward Peters (Black Peter), an Indian who arrived in N.Z in 1853 is believed to be the first person to discover gold in the Tuapeka district.

Created by Joshua and Elliot

George and Helen Munro were the earliest known settlers in the Tuapeka area. They sailed to N.Z from Scotland, and after arriving at Port Chalmers in Dunedin, they made their way to the Tuapeka area.

Created by Jaxon and Mac

George Munro was a shepherd who worked hard on the farm, while Mrs Munro took care of the house and family. The gully that they lived in was named after them and is what we know today as Munros Gully.

Created by Izack and Blaize

Gabriel Read, an Australian prospector, arrived in Port Chalmers in February 1861 after hearing reports of gold being found in the Tuapeka district. In May 1861, Gabriel Read appeared when Mr Munro was working on his farm. They talked about where gold might be found.

Created by Dewald and Fraser

George Munro invited Gabriel Read to spend the night with him and his wife at their hut. Mr Munro took Gabriel Read to the back gully and showed him where gold might be found.

Created by Jess and Emma

Gabriel Read returned to the Munros and told of finding lots of gold in the back gully. Mr Munro was not interested in prospecting so he continued farming. Helen Munro was interested and she took her butchers knife and went out to the small creek which ran in front of her home and she found lots of gold. Helen Munro was the first woman that we know of to make her fortune mining gold in N.Z.

Created by Lucy and Chaleece

Meanwhile, Gabriel Read wanted to claim the reward that was offered for the discovery of a payable goldfield, so he wrote a letter to The Otago Witness.

As he made his way back to Dunedin he also told everybody that he met along the way about the gold at Tuapeka.

Created by Samantha and Georgia

And so the goldrush began! Thousands of miners rushed to the area from around the world to seek their fortune. By 1862 the population of Lawrence had grown to 11,500 which was more than double that of Dunedin at the time. Our population of 550 today is very small compared to the goldrush days.

Created by Adam and Regen

The chinese miners joined the goldrush around 1867. They were not allowed to live in the same area as the Europeans so settled in a special camp on the edge of town and had to walk to the goldfields every day. The chinese miners often had to re-work the claims of the Europeans. They worked very hard and only a few made it rich.

Created by Mac and Jaxon

From 1864-1868 as the population boomed, the settlement at Blue Spur grew to provide for the needs of the miners. There were two types of every store - 2 bakeries, 2 butchers, 2 hotels, 2 churches and a school with 226 students.

The goldrush in Lawrence didn't last very long, with many miners leaving the Tuapeka District to follow the rush throughout Otago.

Created by Rylee and Alex

Shining Star - Mac

Congratulations to Mac, who was awarded the Junior School 'Shining Star' Trophy this week for caring for his school environment. What a great role model you are to other students, and we are especially that proud that you take care of our school.

Well done Mac!!!

Managing Self

For our health topic we are learning about Community and creating a positive classroom environment. As a part of this study we have talking about what communities we are a part of and how we contribute to each of these communities.

Today we discussed the importance of 'managing self' in being a positive community member. 'Managing Self' is one of the Key Competencies which is a part of our school curriculum. We talked about all of the different aspects of 'managing self' and brainstormed them on the board. We put it all into our own words, so that it made sense to us. Then we put our words all around a 'self' (who we have called Anna).

These are all important skills that we need to work on to be good learners, and good members of community groups and even our own families. We will continue to focus on these skills for our entire time at school. This term we will be setting personal goals that help us develop skills to do with 'managing self' that we think we need to work on most.

A Spider in the Wood Pile

This morning, for news, Georgia brought along a very large spider that her mother had found in their wood pile yesterday. Luckily she had it in a container with a lid screwed on very tightly.

Thank you for sharing such interesting news Georgia!!!