This week, some of our ākonga brought in a swan plant. It was very special because not only did it have a baby caterpillar on it but it had a chrysalis with a monarch butterfly ready to emerge.

We checked in on the chrysalis throughout the day on Wednesday, but it didn’t change. We could see the butterfly through the chrysalis, and it looked really dark. The ākonga took the swan plant home on Wednesday for the night.

On Thursday, the ākonga brought a newly emerged monarch butterfly to school. How exciting! The butterfly was still sitting close to the chrysalis and wasn’t moving very much. It had come out of its chrysalis overnight. In the afternoon, we got to watch some videos of it happening.

On Friday, the Butterfly returned to school. It was moving more within the container, and we were told it was ready to release. Just before we went home for the weekend, the year 3s went outside, the butterfly was already flapping its wings inside the container. Then, one of the ākonga took the lid off, and we waved goodbye as it flew away on its new adventure. What an incredible experience to celebrate together!

Last Saturday was the Kids Round of the Super Rugby Season and Papatūānuku were invited to be involved. Cam from the Crusaders came in for a visit and a group of tamariki created artwork of our Crusaders players as Superheros!!! This video was then shown before the Crusaders game on Saturday to introduce the line-up. If you were at the game you would have seen the video of our fantastic artists at half-time. This was such a cool opportunity to be involved in our wider community! Thanks to Cam and the Crusaders team for letting us be involved and for the goodies they gave us as well.

Check us out!

This week Whaea Emma’s maths group have been practicing the days of the week. We have talked about what special things happen on each of these 7 days. On Friday when we were learning about weekdays and weekends, we did an activity to help us remember which was which. First, we had to get 5 strips of paper the same colour and write Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday on them. These are the weekdays. Next, we got 2 strips of paper,r a different colour to write Saturday and Sunday on. These days are the weekend days. Then, we stapled them together to make a paper chain. We had lots of fun practicing our days and sharing these with our friends. What is your favourite day of the week?

What a fantastic day at the Canterbury School of Gymnastics. Running and jumping. Swinging and balancing. The rumour is that Lisa even got into the foam pit! Now we’ve had a go, we need to set some goals! How can we improve on what we have learned? What skills do you think we could work on? What would you like to see us do?

Before the Rāwhiti Records Challenge at break time, we took our studio out to practice their skills. There was a huge amount of passes and everyone participated! Kia kaha!

When it was time for our Rāwhiti Record our Juniors represented well. Our team made up of Lexi and Bella T completed 113 passes in 1 min.

Ka pai tō mahi!

This week’s Rāwhiti.           Record Challenge is theTh

This week’s Rāwhiti Record Challenge is the most basketball passes between two people in one minute. The year 1-3 need to stand one 1m apart and can use sponge ball if they choose.

For literacy, we have been learning how to set goals and we used the Rāwhiti Record Challenge as our goal for this week. Each of us came up with a goal that we wanted to achieve e.g. participating, passing it 100 times in 1 minute or catching the ball with two hands. We decided on steps we would need to do to achieve our goal, and most of us decided it would take a lot of PRACTICE! We have spent time before school and at break practising our skills.

Today is the day, the day of the Rāwhiti Record Challenge. We are excited to see how many of us can achieve our goals!

Stay tuned…

This week has been full of numbers as Papatūānuku have started their Maths routines this week!

We love working with numbers and have been hanging out for our lessons to begin.

Whaea Emma’s Maths group have been working on writing their numbers to 20 independently. As you can see we are ready to count higher! We have mastered getting the tools we need for maths, being in the right place and working hard to complete our learning task!

Lisa’s Maths group have been working on reading word problems and working out which of our maths strategies we need to use.

Whaea Kate’s Maths group have been focusing on routines and working independently.

We can’t wait for more Maths next week!

We have been loving our literacy blocks this week! Each day we have listened to a new shared book and then we have be able to get creating. The studio always gets messy but our creations are the best. Have you read the big book, Frog Finds a Home? Poor Frog isn’t a tadpole anymore so he goes on a journey to find a new home. We made it our mission to create a new home for Frog. What type of home would you create for Frog?

Although the seniors couldn’t join us, today Papatūānuku had their first morning of Choice in Challenge. We didn’t get all our favourite options but we could choose an inside or outside activity. We created amazing things, made forkies, used the maths equipment, built with lego and blocks, were monkeys on the bars, sped around the bike track and had an epic football match.

Check us out! We can’t wait for the seniors to come and run some fun activities for us soon!

On Thursday Karaka kaiawhina group read a book called Papatūānuku has a Tummy Ache. It was all about Papaptūānuku feeling sick because there was too much rubbish in the wrong place. We went out into our playground in search of rubbish! We found HEAPS of rubbish which we took back to our studio and put in the right place, the rubbish bin.

Papatūānuku doesn’t have a Rāwhiti School tummy ache any more!