Poi Performance

Last term we performed our poi dance at full school assembly. We looked great dressed in our black t-shirts and moari headbands. 

Thank you to all those parents who came and supported us! Here are some photos of our performance :) 

Japanese Blossoms

Last Friday we had lots of fun creating Japanese Blossoms (Thanks Room 11 for the great idea!)

We firstly had to put a blob of dye on our piece of paper and blow really hard through a straw to spread the dye out over the paper to look like branches. We then made some different shades of pink using the white and pink paint. We had lots of fun finger painting the blossoms onto the branches.

Have a look at these photos of us creating our beautiful Japanese Blossoms...

Cultural Diversity - Clothing

As part of our inquiry unit on Cultural Diversity we have been looking at clothing from different cultures. Some children from Room 12 brought in clothing from their culture to share with the rest of the class. 

Here are some photos of the students dressed in their cultures clothing...

Maori

Japan

Samoa

India

Koru Art

Have a look at our amazing koru designs!

For this unit we learnt about warm and cool colours and  created a contrast between our koru and our background. We also learnt how to blend colours. 

We had lots of fun creating these korus and are so proud of how they turned out. 

Mehndi

As part of our inquiry unit on cultural diversity we have been looking at art from different cultures. 

Today we were so lucky to have Khushi's mum and friend come in and do Mehndi on our hands.

Have a look at these photos to see some of the beautiful patterns and designs...

Tapa Art

As part of our unit on cultural diversity we are looking at art from different cultures.

For the past couple of weeks we have been learning about Tapa. Tapa is a barkcloth made in the islands of the pacific ocean such as Tonga, Samoa and Fiji. The Tapa Cloth is very important to these cultures. 

Here is a you tube clip of how Tapa is made...

We had a go at making our own tapa cloth!
Firstly we practised a range of traditional tapa patterns and then we had a go at creating some of our own designs. We chose our favourite 3 designs to use on our tapa cloth. We penciled our design onto some brown paper and then we used vivid to go over the pattern. We had to make sure that we stayed in the lines and made our patterns nice and bold! We then used brown dye to dye the paper. The fun part was scrunching up our artwork into a tight ball and opening it back up - this gave it the tapa cloth effect.

We are very proud of our tapa art!

Auckland Museum

On Monday we were lucky enough to go to the Auckland Museum as part of our inquiry unit on cultural diversity. 

We travelled to the museum on a double decker bus, which we thought was pretty exciting! We had so much fun exploring the museum and having a go at some of the hands on activities. We loved learning about the Wharenui and the stories behind the carvings, weavings and paintings. Our favourite story was the creation story about Ranginui and Papatuanuku, the earth mother and sky father. We also got to learn a haka - that was our favourite part!

A BIG thank you to all our wonderful parent helpers! This trip wouldn't have been possible without you! 
A special thank you also to Mrs Lovie (Amelia's mum) for the wonderful photos :)

Cultures in Room 12

We have lots of different cultures in Room 12. 

Here are some pic collages we made about our cultures...

Poi

This term as part of our inquiry topic on cultural diversity we have been looking at aspects of the Maori culture. We decided to learn a poi song and dance. For the past couple of weeks during art we have been making our own poi. 

Here is what we did...

Firstly we twisted two pieces of wool together with our partner. We had to keep twisting until the wool was nice and tight.

Some of us turned the wool into a bar and enjoyed a game of limbo!

We then had to bring the two ends of the wool together to make the string thicker. We enjoyed watching the two sides spiral together. We then tied the two ends in a knot.

Once we had made the string we needed to make the top of the poi. We did this by pushing some stuffing through a hole in the top of our string.

Once we had placed the stuffing through the string we had to wrap a plastic bag around the string and stuffing.

Miss Fisher then cello-taped around the bottom of the poi and cut off the extra plastic bag.

We love playing with our pois!

Culture Poplets

Last week we created poplets showing what we know about culture. Our poplet had to include 5 ideas about culture and we had to give at least 3 examples for each of our ideas. 

We did an amazing job coming up with lots of different ideas and examples about culture. 

Bucket Fillers

We have been reading the book 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?' by Carol McLeod and looking at what it means to be a bucket filler and a bucket dipper. 

In Room 12 we try really hard to ensure that we are always filling up each others buckets to make our classroom a happy learning place. But what exactly does this mean?....

Have a look at this short film we created explaining what it means to be a bucket filler :)

Citizenship

This term we have been looking at citizenship and what it means to be a good citizen.We have looked at different communities that we belong to and ways in which we contribute to those communities.
We created some pic collages showing ways that we demonstrate good citizenship here at Halsey Drive School...