Pounawea Camp

Claudia catches an eel. "Yum, smoked eel tastes like trout!"

                       First yabby of the day - caught by Mr Hutton, on a piece of string loaded up with stinky meat.

Jack finds an empty crab shell at the rock pools at Papatowai. We found many awesome creatures including a small yellow foot paua, anenomes and a range of very cool starfish.




 Jacks hollow paddle crab shell has red spots on either side and spikey bits on the front.

The population of bug city in Earthlore is 2,000,000 bugs and growing.

New Solar Lights for the school

Room 2 have reached the final step in their enquiry into alternative energy and solar power. They managed to fundraise $77 from a variety of fundraising ideas. After researching a range of solar powered lighting options and prices they selected two solar sensor lights. These will be installed by the steps to the hall and on the side of the hall. They also bought 5 small garden solar lights to have alongside the concrete ramp. Callum and Rowan investigated the best place to locate the lights based on which location receives the most sunlight. We hope that having this extra lighting will help make it safer and easier to walk around the school at nights if there is an evening function at the school. Thank you for your support with our investigation into solar lighting. It would be lovely if there is someone in the community that would be willing to help us install the two sensor lights on the sides of the buildings as he solar panels need to be mounted on the roof. 

Thanks from Room 2

Healthy lunches

Today room 1 made sandwiches after lots of talk about teeth friendly snacks.  Some children found out that lettuce, marmite and cheese was delicious!

Bike Safety

We loved having a Police Constable at school today to help us practise our cycle skills.  we checked that our helmets were in good condition, and then practised some skills.  we checked our emergency stops, we completed a course with U turns, weaving and cycling in between the cones.  Finally we had a snail race.

Holly, Shakira and Tom-Erosion Challenge

Wipe-out House!

Room 2 were set to work designing and planning a house made out of Mega blocks. The aim was to build a structure that would withstand first a sprinkle of the hose, then a downpour with the watering can's spout, and then a whole watering can of water being tipped on each house! We put pieces of wood and wood chips into our sand hill surrounding our house. An unnecessary flag distinguished our house from four other groups houses.


This is what our house looked like before anything happened to it. We decided to add sticks inside the hill to give it extra support.

This is what our house looked like after a sprinkle from the hose, then water from the watering can's spout. The hose is being dragged through, adding a touch more destruction.

After the whole watering can's load unleashed its power, our whole house tumbled off the hill like a feather in high tide waters. Evidently, the sticks in the hill did not work. Our house stayed together, but failed to stay on the hill. We were disappointed that our house did not survive, but we had fun watching put house being destroyed in seconds.

Stevie, Seth and Claudia erostion challendge

                                         Standing still

This is what our house design looked like. We were challenging 4 other groups with heaps of good ideas to keep our houses standing on a sand hill. I decided to make a Tee Pee to help our house stay up. 

This is our house after the first sprinkle of water, it didn't change much it just stayed up.

                            
         Waiting for the big dump of water. Fingers crossed our house keeps standing - OOHHH.

Thanks to Stevie idea to have a stick tee pee around our house.

Overall we were the group that won the challenge as our house stayed in place and was not damaged. It was a tough challenge but we were pleased with how well our house did. If we did the challenge again we would maybe build our house on a giant rock to make our house more stable and instead of using sticks around the outside we would put sticks under our house to anchor it to the hill. We had lots of fun and enjoyed being outside in the sandpit.

By Stevie, Seth and Claudia

Erosion Challenge- Alex Jack Callum

Last Monday we had an erosion challenge where we had to build a block house to put on a sand hill. Then we had to defend the house from weathering, buckets of water, with bark, sticks and other materials. Here are some photos of our groups creation-

Our final creation had a rock buried in the hill and bark buried around the hill.

Our house after the first downpour.



Our house after a bucket of water.

After a second bucket of water, our house was demolished.

Overall, our group came second. Something we could improve on is making the house sit on the flat bit of the rock. Some things we did well were making supports under the house and putting bits of bark around our hill, making the water run straight off the hill, keeping the sand from eroding. In the end we were proud of our defences from the weather and the design of our house. By Callum and Rowan

Aaron,Wiremu,Nathan- erosion challenge

DESTROYED IN MINUTES!!!

We start building.

We add a moat.

We look proudly at our finished project.

We look at other groups ideas.

We got a sprinkle on our house, it didn't do much. 

A down pour hit our house and made a sink hole.

Overall we were pleased with some of our design ideas but if we did it again we would put some stilts under the house to hold it on the hill. We would also put a channel in the sand to stop the water from damaging the sand around our house. 

Ryan and Blue - Erosion Challenge

Destroyed in seconds!

For our erosion challenge we built a Lego block house that looked a bit like a castle, but it looked more like a big square of blocks. We put bark around the outside of our house and a bunch of sticks crossed over diagonally underneath our house so it would hold the house up. Unfortunately our house didn't stay in place.

Blue and Ryan working hard to design a sand hill.

The old "thumbs up for finally finishing building

This is our house after the sprinkle.

This is what our house looked like after the event...knocked off the top of the hill.

If we did this challenge again this is what we would do differently: 1) Make the sand hill wider so the house would stay on the top.
2) We would use more pinecones to surround the house or use a stick tee pee to hold the house in place.
3) We stuck sticks into the hill to make it strong but we would bigger sticks and have them on the bottom of the house.

We had lots of fun doing this challenge in the sandpit and we learnt alot about erosion.

By Ryan and Blue

AthletIcs Day 2013

What a great day in the sun at Memorial Park.  Well done everyone.  Here are a few pictures to enjoy.



Poppy does a big jump in long jump.



Alex prepares to throw in shot-put.

Room 2 wait in the grand stand before starting the events.

Nate and Seth made this banner for our school. It made Seth feel more confident.
"GO WAIHOLA"



Jack, Charlie and Max are proud of their results in the junior athletics.
Great to see you wearing your sunhats.



Fundraising

In Room 2, we have been fundraising for solar lights and have raised $71 in total. We have raised the money by having a colouring competition, a jelly bean in the jar challenge, with the prize being all the jelly beans and the jar, Halloween mufti, and a Halloween cupcake sale. We also got a $100 donation from the Waihola Woman's Institute. 

Our blog

Hi Room 2, let's get this blog going again!  Claudia took some photos of our athletics today.  They are saved in a folder called athletics 13.  Can someone put some up for us, with a write up?  Our athletics day is now November 7th - 3 weeks away.  Keep practising!

Solar power vs Wind power

In room 2 we have been comparing the positive and negative points of wind power and solar power as alternative power sources. We researched many questions that we had about each power source. We also interviewed Bob Lloyd a physics lecturer from the university and asked him a lot of our questions. After comparing all of our information we found that solar power is a better option for our area, it would not cost as much, need less to maintain, they are more energy efficient and has a longer warrantee. We investigated different solar power options for around the school, such as a solar sprinkler, a solar fountain, a scarecrow and solar lights for the path to the hall down the steps. Room 2 decided that the solar powered lights would be the best option. We have researched a range of solar lights from websites of local companies and selected 3 based that we felt would work. We would love your feedback on which one you think would be best for us to purchase from the options below.

OPTION 1: The Warehouse

OPTION 2: Mitre 10 Mega

 

OPTION 3: Mitre 10 Mega

 

 

TO VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE PLEASE MAKE A COMMENT AND SAY WHICH OPTION 1, 2 or 3 YOU LIKE BEST and WHY. Thank you from Room 2

Maths homework

Hi all, don't forget to look at the maths page of our blog to see your homework for this week!  Well done Rowan, Nathan and Claudia for top homework last week, you get to use the I-pads in our next maths lesson.

Ape Escape

Ape Escape

In the weekend, three Gibbons escaped their enclosure at Orana Park in Christchurch. All the people visiting the zoo had to go into special cages to prevent getting attacked by the small 14kg apes. One of the teenage Gibbons got excited and swam over the moat which is very unusual because Gibbons are not swimmers. The biggest cause of death for Gibbons in zoos is drowning. Two other excited Gibbons decided to follow their friend over the moat. Orana Park has had the enclosure for eight years and has never had this happen before. The small but deadly apes are strong enough to rip you apart, can grow up to 1 metre tall and can jump up to eight metres high. After an hour of chasing monkeys around Orana Park, the Gibbons were finally captured and put back in the enclosure without the use of tranquilizer darts. The male apes didn’t go very far from their enclosure because they didn’t want to leave the females and babies alone. The zoo staff only knew about it when a visitor took a video and some photos of the ingenious Gibbons escaping over the moat. The incident was said to be very serious and Orana Park will investigate into how to prevent this from happening again in the future. A presenter from the Erin Simpson Show was at Orana Park when the Gibbons escaped and posted on Twitter “I’m at Orana Park and an ape has escaped! This is like real life King Kong”. Callum           9.09.13

"I must protect this pole"

Two adventurous Gibbons take over

Two adventurous Gibbons take over

 

Growing great veges & making pumpkin scones

Weather Report

This video was made by Rowan and Harvey.

Jack's Pics

Rugby

Gymnastics

Signatures

This morning when I had a  bath, I refused to wash my arm and took great care not to get it wet. My arm is covered from wrist to elbow in signatures from the Otago rugby players that visited our school. Some children got to tackle the rugby players. Seth McKeay managed to bowl one of the rugby players over.  I hope they come again this year.

By Blue