ANZAC Day 2013

Even though it is the middle of our two-week term break, many of our students attended today's community parade to commemorate ANZAC Day.

ANZAC stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. 

On April 25 1915 New Zealand and Australia forces landed in Gallipoli during the First World War. 

The events of that campaign led to many casualties, but also helped to create a sense of national identity in both countries. 

ANZAC Day has been marked in New Zealand since 1916. 

It is now the day where we remember all who have lost their lives in any military operation that our country has been involved in.

In our small town a dawn service is held at 6am followed by a community parade at 10am. 

The Pipe Band (which comes each year from Westport) leads the veterans; the two schools; the scouts; and other community groups.

Did you attend an ANZAC Day service?
Do you have a relative who has served their country?

Beautiful Baked-dough Birds

As the culminating activity for the art unit on New Zealand birds (see our 'Cheeky Keas' and 'Perky Pukekos') the children made birds from dough, which were then 

baked and painted.

Here are some of the 'practice' birds:

and the completed birds:

What do you think of our birds?

Have you ever made art from dough?

Mystery Skype

Last week we did a mystery skype.

Mrs McKenzie first learned about mystery skpe calls from our friend in California, Mrs Yollis.

In a Mystery Skype call we have to find out the location of the other callers, hopefully before they guess where we are!

Before the call we prepared some questions to eliminate or confirm some areas of the world.

The questions had to be closed questions - the answers could only be YES or NO. 

Everyone had a job to do. 

The SPEAKERS asked and answered the questions.

Other students used the CAMERAS.

The ATLAS people were busy using the answers to the questions we asked. 

They had to eliminate or suggest locations.

The HELPERS took suggestions from the ATLAS people to the SPEAKERS.

The other class guessed first that we lived in New Zealand,  

but WE were the first to guess the actual location of the callers.

They were from Miss Panther's class in Greymouth, only 80km away from us!

Have you ever done a mystery skype?

What was your job during the mystery skype?

Here's Harold!

We've been visiting with Harold this week, 

in his Life Education mobile classroom.

During this year's visit we learned about the journey our food takes through our bodies.
We also learned about the food pyramid. 
The biggest part, at the bottom of the triangle is green, for foods that come from the ground.
(Most of our food each day should come from this group).

The middle part is orange, 
and covers foods that come from animals.
(Some of our food each day could come from this group).

The small tip of the triangle is red, 
for foods that have ingredients, particularly salt, sugar and fat.
(Very little of our food should come from this group).

What have you learned from Harold's classroom?
Does Harold come to your school?

Our World, Our Numbers: Topic 5 - Animals

The 5th topic on the Our World, Our Numbers project 

is all about animals.

We enjoyed learning about Canadian animals from 

Mrs Watson's K/1/2/3 class 

and about kelp forests from Mrs Yollis' class.

We've put up a post about two of our iconic 

New Zealand animals.

The kiwi is a bird native to New Zealand. It is a flightless, nocturnal bird.

What does nocturnal mean?

Attribution: dancedancewerefallingapart

One of the nicknames for people from New Zealand is ‘kiwi’!

Five species of kiwi are found in New Zealand, but all are endangered due to predators such as ferrets, rats and cats and dogs.This is because kiwis live on the forest floor.

Did you know that kiwis can not fly?

You might like to read this legend 

– ‘How the Kiwi Lost its Wings.”

We have some number facts about the kiwi:

In the wild kiwis can live for up to 20 years.

The kiwi egg is the biggest of any bird in proportion to the female’s body.

The average weight of an ostrich egg is 2% of the female’s body weight whereas the average weight of a kiwi egg is 20% of the female’s body weight. 

The kiwi has a long beak and amazingly the nostrils are at the very tip! That’s a very useful adaptation as the kiwi probes in the forest floor for grubs, insects, earthworms and other food.

The kiwi’s beak is about 1/3 the length of its body.

If the bird’s body was 36 cm long how long would the beak be?

The kiwi weighs about 3kg.

How many pounds would that be?

The kiwi is about 45cm tall.

How many inches would that be?

The average body temperature of a kiwi bird is 38˚C.

What is the body temperature of a human?

Another special animal native to New Zealand is the tuatara.

The tuatara is an ancient type of reptile.

Photo credit: ajft / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Read the links about tuatuaras here and here then head over to Our World, Our Numbers and leave us a comment with a number fact that you found out about tuataras! 

Cheeky Keas

This term's art has been around native New Zealand birds. 

Check out the pukeko art works that we did 

earlier in the term.

Now we've used water-colour pencils to make pictures of another New Zealand bird - the kea.

'Keas' by B4 on PhotoPeach

What do you think of our cheeky New Zealand parrots?

Have you ever used water-colour pencils?