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