Visiting Hukanui Marae

 We went to Hukanui Marae on bus on Monday. Everyone was really excited. We waited in front of the gateway and followed the karanga. We slowly walked in. 

We listened to the speakers welcoming us. We sang some songs. We sketched the wharenui. It was such a beautiful day. When we got on the bus to go home, we saw lots of cows close to the bus saying good bye to us! 

Learning about wharenui

 To prepare us to go to Hukanui Marae next week, we have been learning about wharenui. 

We learnt about different parts of wharenui. Koruru is the face of wharenui. Maihi are the arms. Amo are the legs of wharenui and Raparapa are the fingers which are open to welcome visitors. 

We explored making wharenui using different materials. 

We then drew wharenui and painted with dye. 

I will upload the finished artwork next week. 

Learning about sunflowers

 This week, we have been learning about how sunflowers grow. Our children have been really excited as they also are observing how caterpillars are changing into chrysalises this week. They are interested in how insects/plants grow. It is so awesome to see changes step by step. 

We got a dried sunflower from Whaea Georgia and it had a lot of sunflower seeds. We learnt that there are tiny little flowers in the middle of a sunflower and those all become seeds in the end. 

We used those seeds to plant. Reading a book called "Sunflowers don't grow in winter." helped everyone learn how to plant a seed.

We put some dirt in a pot. Poked a hole using a finger and drop a sunflower seed in the hole. We patted the surface. We then watered but made sure it wasn't too wet! 

We also worked on painting sunflowers this week. We talked about parts of sunflowers. 

We used glue and black ink mixed in a bottle to do the outlines of the sunflowers and then painted in dye. Some children said using a bottle to trace their pencil lines was really hard and they had to take a rest in between so that they can keep concentrating. What a wonderful strategy they developed! 

There was also a talk about how sunflowers make us feel. Lots of children said "Happy" and when asked why, it was because yellow is a happy colour which we read in "Colour Monster" book.