Wearable Arts

Check out our fabulous costumes we made for the Christchurch Cultural Festival Wearable Arts section. It took us 4 weeks to plan, design and create our pieces. Well done to Marshall, Gabbie and Jemma, who successfully modeled our creations.

Our Make a Difference Movies!

Antarctica Scientist Comes To Visit!

 This morning Rhiann Salmon came to visit us and talk about Antarctica because she had been there recently.  She told us what she saw in Antarctica and what she did there.  There were lots of people on the voyage.  It was put together by Gareth Morgan. 

This is a photo of Rhiann and she put her special mask over her mouth but her breath made her eyelashes freeze!  It was -40 degrees.  Campbell's dad said when your snot freezes, it feels like a cornflake up your nose! We wonder how her eyelashes felt.  They look pretty amazing!

Thanks Rhiann - A BIG thank you for coming to Freeville School to tell us all about Antarctica and the surrounding islands.

Ruma Toru's Dragon Festival

After Christhcurch's recent Chinese lantern festival, Room 3 made dragons. Then we decided to make a movie. You can't have a dragon dance without music, so we made little chinese drums too. The quality isn't great but you get the idea! Aren't they so colourful and splendid?

Learning in the Red Zone!

Shoji Screens

A couple of weeks ago we had a go at making shoji screens.  The japanese use this style of screen as room dividers.  We went for a walk around the block to collect flowers and leaves from our neighbourhood.  Then we pressed them and finally ironed them between two sheets of wax paper.  They look amazing!

Our Week so far...

So we've had a super busy week! Check out what we've been up to...

Epic Fail...But We Are Resilient!

Awwww look at those sad faces! These are the faces of disappointment when our drums didn't work.

But we brainstormed what we could do next time and tried again and...

SUCCESS!!!

We love our drums!

Class Song Term 2 Week 10

Treasures - What do treasures tell us?

Whanau Whitu Making Fossils

We learnt about fossils and then had a go at making our own!

Making Crispy Rounds

The Peacocks reading group read about how to grow potatoes this week. There was a recipe for potatoes and we decided to do some cooking. First we had to read a mixed up recipe and put it in order. Then we went with Sharon to the staffroom and got cooking!

100 songs for kids - the wiggles - hot potato

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Phar Lap

The Royal Crown Jewels

The Heart

Porsche 911

Maori Wood Carving

Our Treasure - Our Brain

Cross Country in Steve's World

We interviewed a very important person in our school: our caretaker; Steve. we asked him what he thought about the cross country we had at school yesterday, 11/5/11. This is what he had to say:



Thanks Steve!

By Scott and Luke C.

Fun Afternoon!

Wow we had an awesome time yesterday afternoon. The Youth Alive Trust came and set up a really fun afternoon for our school. There was bouncy castles, craft tables, jewellery making, face painting, nail polish stands, puppet shows, parachute games, clowns, hip hop dancing, jugglers, skate board ramps, sports games and to top it all off, we had a sausage sizzle. We had a blast! Thank you Youth Alive Trust!

End of an Era

This is the last of our classrooms going. They are completely gone now. It feels exciting to see what is in store for us over the next few years. Bring it on!

Faraway Friends

We have some new friends from Northland. They are special to us because they have decided to help our school out by raising money and doing other things to support and encourage us after the earthquake. Glenbervie School is Tania's old school and they had a Red and Black Day to fundraise money for our school.

They raised around $1000 and there's more to come!

They also sent a performer called The Minstrel to entertain us for an afternoon. We really enjoyed his original songs and learned a lot about fishing.

Thanks so much Glenbervie School!!!

Intelligent Scientists

We are practicing being intelligent scientists.
How do we look?
Pretty good huh?

New Friends

Hi all,
In my travels yesterday I picked up four new friends who are very much looking forward to joining our whanau when we start back at school again. The only problem is, they don't have any names!

Can you please help name them?

Post your ideas on here using the comment box and I will tell you the winning names by Friday 11 March.

Number them with the same numbers as on each photo.

1. So cute and fuzzy. Lovely to cuddle.

2. Big and soft, you will have to use both arms to hug this guy!

3. A gentle lion, just waiting for a hug!

4. A cute little lamb; who could resist snuggling up with her?

Keep smiling! I can't wait to hear your ideas!

Hello Everyone!

Hi families, Whanau Whitu kids, and visitors. Who new that 6 weeks after arriving in Christchurch I would be experiencing something most people never experience in their lifetimes? Whanau Whitu did soooo well at getting down and under the tables. I was impressed with your quick responses and for listening so well to what we needed to do next. You were all great whanau members sticking together and looking after each other. I hope, wherever you are that your are safe, and looking after your whanau just like you did with your school whanau.

I went around the school community with Mrs Bourke on Saturday and here are some of the things I saw.





9 days on we still wait in hope for more news on what will be happening with our lovely school. One thing we do know is that we will not be in Ruma Whitu ever again. Unfortunately, the damage was so great that the whole block will be pulled down. We are not sure what our new classrooms will look like and we need to do something in the meantime while new classrooms are built.

So, Whanau Whitu kids, put on your GREEN thinking caps and leave comments on here with your ideas for what we could use for a classroom while we are waiting, AND, your ideas for what our new classrooms should look like at Freeville. Get creative!

I'm looking forward to your ideas.
Missing you all heaps, Tania.

Moving Milk Mysteries

Every Friday we put on our lab coats and become scientists for the morning. We are learning how to make observations and predictions. For the next few weeks we are discovering how molecules behave. You can't see molecules but you can change them to observe their behaviour.

Last Friday we looked at molecules moving. We did this by colouring water molecules in some milk and then observing as we put drops of dishwashing liquid. We watched the water molecules getting moved around as the dishwash liquid collected up all the fat molecules.

Cool aye?

Then Luke C. asked "What if we used something else instead of milk?"

This Friday we tried cream, strawberry milk and oil.

The results? There was no reaction in the oil. This is because oil is all fat and no water. There was a VERY slow reaction in the cream. This is because there is very little water in the cream and not enough to be moved around easily. The strawberry milk had a reaction but the standard milk was the fastest. From our observations we could tell there was more fat in the strawberry milk than in the standard milk.




What will we find out next week?

Welcome to 2011!!!

Hey there everyone. Well it's back to school time again! Over the last couple of days I have been lucky enough to meet a whole heap of amazing children and their parents. We have a new class in Whanau Whitu and a new teacher!

I'm Tania and I have moved to Christchurch from Whangarei. I used to live here years ago and now I have come back so that my husband can study here at the university. I am so excited to be here and look forward to having an awesome year with a fantastic bunch of kids!

Today we learned about each other a little bit, and learned how to behave in the classroom. We had lots of fun and even had time for some art! We made name bugs. It was a test of our imaginations at first but we got the hang of it and they have turned out amazing!

Watch this space!