Water fun day 2017

One of the best ways to start our year at Glenbrae school is our annual Water Fun Day. It is a day of team work, problem solving, water fun and laughter. 

Our activities this year included - waterslide, holey cup race, three legged race, obstacle race, walking the plank and squeezing the sponge. 

The objective of the day is for the houses to fill up their buckets. The house with the most water in their bucket wins. Everyone joins in the fun and filling the buckets takes a lot of work especially if the water is going out of the holes or dripping on our way to the buckets.

This year our highlight was the awesome water slide. It was longer, stronger and more slippery. Every student had so much fun on the water slide as well as the other activities. 

We also had a water bomb game at the end and it was so much fun. Each student was given at least two water bombs and they had to try and throw it at someone else while hiding from others throwing water bombs at them too. The teachers got into the fun too.

A big thank you to the Glenbrae School staff for this great event.

Cooling off in the swimming pool

One of our favourite activities in Term 1 is our swimming programme. Our swimming time is at 12.15 pm and by that time we are hot and in great need of some cooling off.

It is not just splashing and fun in the pool, we also do some serious swimming. We have been focussing on our Freestyle, Backstroke and Breaststroke techniques. Mrs Tofa always gives us little tips about our techniques. For example when learning to maintain our breathing we have a saying "Deep breath, bubble, bubble, bubble". This means we take a deep breath then blow out the air in bubbles and come up for some more air.

Being a confident swimmer is very important. There are so many deaths in New Zealand from drownings. It is not just about being a good swimmer but also a wise swimmer and recognising dangers in the water.

Congratulations to our holiday blogging stars

Congratulations to our students who were recognised for their excellent work in the Holiday Blogging programme. Well done everyone and keep up the great work. Also a big thank you to Rachel for the awesome prizes.

Week of Inspirational Maths

We have been working through a Week of Inspirational Maths. We enjoyed the activities and we also learnt a lot from the videos. One of our favourite videos is the attached video. Have a watch and comment with your thoughts and we will comment with our thoughts about Maths and speed.

Whitney has been exploring why the Maori wanted a treaty and why the British wanted the The Treaty of Waitangi. Here is her research about the two perspectives.

Maori perspective 

Maori chiefs were fighting among themselves. Queen Victoria offered the treaty so there will be law and order in the land. Maori also wanted the new technology brought in by the settles such as farming tools, weapons, tobacco and alcohol.

Some Maori were worried about the behaviour of some settlers especially in Russell. The Maori wanted law for the settlers so they could behave.

British perspective

For years the missionaries tried to encourage the Maori to form their own government and state. The chiefs could not come to an agreement themselves and so the treaty brought them together.

The British wanted to protect their place in New Zealand because they had more than 2000 settlers already living in New Zealand. They also did not want the French to take over. That is why the treaty needed to be written and signed urgently.

Our class have been learning about the Treaty of Waitangi. We have had a lot of rich discussions about the treaty and different perspectives about the treaty. Here is Alfred's slideshow about his understanding so far.

Being Cool in Room 7

Talofa, Kia ora, Malo e lelei and welcome to all our viewers. This year we have a great group of excited and energetic learners in Room 7. So far we have a total of 26 students on our roll. How awesome to have a big class. We have started this year with a cool start. Our focus for this year is to be cool. Quite fitting because its summer so we are also working on being Sunsmart and going into the shade to be cool. We also want to be cool with our attitudes towards each other and how we approach situations.

There are so many up coming events happening and we are excited about them. Next week we will have our Water fun day. Our annual event of having fun and competing in our house groups. We have also been playing some volleyball and we are getting very confident with our skills. We also like the team work that has been happening during our games. 

We have been learning about the Treaty of Waitangi and have found so many interesting facts about the treaty. Did you know one of William Hobson's signatures is believed to be forged? This is because he had a stroke which made travelling a challenge for him and in one of the copies of the treaty his signature is William Hobson all other documents has his signature as W Hobson. Interesting isn't it? 

We look forward to the weekend to view the celebrations of Waitangi at the Treaty Grounds and Te Tii Marae where we are going for our camp, another exciting event we are looking forward to. 

Watch this space for more exciting happenings in Cool Room 7.

Ka kite ano