Kowhai Hub Jump Off

We have been learning to skip. On Friday, all of Kowhai hub got together for a JUMP OFF !

We saw lots of determination and perseverance in learning to skip lots of different ways.

Tennis

We had a special visitor, Mr Cottrell, who came and taught us tennis skills.  

We learnt how to hold the tennis racket correctly.

We hold the end of the racket so we can reach further with our racket.

We hold the racket on top (we put the racket on the ground and pick it up to get our grip right). 

We also learnt to play a forehand shot.
Our feet are sideways
We point with our left hand to where we want to hot the ball
We swing the racket through like an aeroplane and catch in our other hand after we have hit the ball. 

Mr Cottrell showing us a forehand shot

Maia controlling the ball with her racket
So much concentration

Walking or running with the ball
on our racket

Coopa's follow through

Sienna keeping her eyes on the ball

Charlie pointing with his right hand

Angus being very determined

Mac has his eyes on the ball

Marshall moving towards the ball

Maia catching the racket in her other hand

Maddie hitting a great forehand

Marshall catching the racket

Thank you so much Mr Cottrell we had so much fun and can't wait for you to come again so we can learn some more. 

Art Exhibition

Come to The Parkvale School Art Exhibition 'Visual Art Inspired by Artists of Aotearoa' We are so proud of our art and how we told 'The Story of Us'.

Compositions from tracey hill on Vimeo.

All the children of Parkvale School have created a special piece of art. Make it a family outing to the exhibition. It is open before school, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, this week and until 6pm each night.

Harakeke

We have been learning about harakeke

We have been learning to weave and Cortney (Naomi's Mum) taught us how to make putiputi. We have been challenged but it has brought out the best in us. We supported each other, showed appreciation and were very determined. 

Weaving on PhotoPeach

1. Look on some of our individual blogs to find out how to weave.

A big thank you to Cortney and Miss Sampson for giving up their time to help us with our weaving. 

Reports

We have been learning to write reports.

We have read lots of different reports and looked at what is different between reports and stories. 

We created our own mixed up animals and wrote reports about them.

BEARFLY

A bearfly swarms through the sky just like a butterfly. They are wondercrump creatures. the bearfly has big red googly eyes. Also a bearfly has brown coloured ears. Inside the ears is pink fur. A bearfly has a jet black wet nose. The bearfly has wondercrump wings. the colour on the wings are sky blue, canary yellow and lime green. The colour of the skin is cocoa brownish gold. It has a pink furry belly with rough pink pieces of skin on the paws. A bearflys first favourite food is fruit. the second favourite is vegetables. It nibbles quickly on the food and swallows it down. A bearfly lives in a pitch black den that is spooky slimy and smelly. It lives with its babies. the enemy is a great white shark. Something about a bearfly is that it can fly fast. Another thing that is special to a bearfly is it can stay alive for millions of years. Have you seen a bearfly? 

Created and written by Emily

GORLION

A gorlion is an odd animal. it is part gorilla and part lion. 

Appearance and Movement

My animals body is gold and furry. My animal can run and jump to other trees.  A gorlion has a furry branch like tail and flappy flying fly swat at the bottom of the tail. He has cocoa eyes and white eyes too. 

Habitat

They live with their families in the forest. There home is far away from New Zealand it is overseas. 

Diet

The grolion munches up the stripy lemurs. He camouflages and goes and hides in the golden grass. When the lemurs get close the gorlion jumps out and catches the lemur with his sharp claws. 

Predators

The gorlions enemy is the giant cheetahs. The gorlion tries to hide from the giant cheetah. He climbs a big tree. There is lots of animals at their home so the cheetahs run away. 

Created and written by Damarco  

CATCRAB

A catcrab is a much more dangerous animal than any other crabs in the world. It has two sandy sharp nippers and eight bendy crab legs, poking out eyes and shiny wet claws and two sharp incisors for biting its prey. A cat crabs body is covered in thick ginger fur. It also has a stubby fluffy ginger tail.

Movement

It scuttles sideways and sneaks like a crab. A catcrab climbs a tree and it pounces .

Diet and Habitat

It gobbles fish, seeds, baby fish, bugs, food scraps and jelly meat. It lives in the sandy beach, rocks pools and underwater in the ocean. Catcrabs as pets like to sleep on the side of the bed. Catcrabs snap at noses and play with bugs.

Enemies

Sealions, killer whales and dogs like to hunt catcrabs. 

Unique Characteristics

Catcrabs purr like a cat.

There were thousands of catcrabs then humans killed hundreds to cook them in a restaurant to get thousands of dollars of cash then catcrabs were getting endangered. So there were only 10 catcrabs left in the world.

Created and Written By Sam

GUINPUS

A guinpus is half penguin and half octopus. they have a pointy beak and eight long tentacles with sticky suckers that stick to anything. It also has lumpy eyes and flippers for arms on the side. 

How does a Guinpus move? 

A guinpus moves by wiggling side to side and sways. A guinpus can also move by floating in the water and using his flipper to glide. 

Diet

A guinpus eats snapper and shark and sea snails. 

Habitat 

A guinpus lives in cold water that is really sparkly like a shiny castle. 

Enemies

A guipus' enemies is a grey shark and sperm whale and fishermen. Fishermen are an enemy because they catch the guinpus on purpose to eat. 

Unique Characteristics

A guinpus is special because they spread their ink all over enemies actually it kills their enemies. There is only one left in the world. It is endangered now and when that one dies it will be extinct.

Created and Wriiten by Pinenga

FISHCAT

A fish cat is extremely so so cute and very unique. A fishcat is half cat and half fish.

Appearance

The fishcat has shiny scales on most of her skinny body. She has long spiky whiskers and she has red and green striped fins. A catfish also has furry legs with soft small paws on the end, a wide mouth and small round lemon golden eyes. Her tail is pink and dotty.

Movement

The fishcat always like to cattypaddle through the sea. A fishcat opens and closes its mouth when it is eating fish and other seafood. 

Habitat

It lives in the deep sea with the swaying seaweed. 

Predators

A fishcat's predators is a whaleshark, sea sharks and octopus of course. An octopus can eat fishcats. The fishcats can swim faster before the octopus gobbles it all up because the tentacles are too short. 

Endangered

This amazing species is endangered. There  are four more left. If you catch one drop your fishing line we don't want to eat any. We can protect the fishcat by making a marine reserve where their predators can not get them.

Created and Written by Marcus

LIBUN

A libun has a big fluffy mane around her neck and a peachy coloured body and sharp claws to catch its feast. It also has a cute fluffy round cream coloured tail.

How does a libun move?

A libun sprints on two legs and bolts on four legs and hops on one leg. 

Diet

A libun catches fish with its sharp claws and a libun hunts people to eat. A libun gobbles its prey up. 

Habitat

A libun lives in a deep dark cave and a pitch black den with all sorts of insects and family.

Enemies

A libuns predators is a sea lion and dogs and cats. They creep up on a libun. To protect  themselves they hop into a hole. The predator scrapes the skin off it.

A libun is the fastest animal in the world and has a man around its neck even when it is a lioness. 

Created and Written by Gwen 

DOGISH

A dogish is half fish and half dog.

Appearance

It has enormous gross lips and fat scales. It has two fins on the side and three

fins at the back.The fins are special because each one is colourful.

Habitat

A dogish lives in a mammoth sea all the way at the bottom of the sea. It lives with a school of other dogish.

Diet

A dogish eats starfish and nemo fish, and sometimes when its really hungry it eats seaweed.

Predators

A Dogish predator is an ugly electric eel who tries to sting him. The dogish protects itself by using its strong tail to swim away and hit the eel on its face.

Endangered

A dogish is endangered because people have been going in the sea and wrecking their home. If you do want a dogish to survive STOP wrecking their home.

Created and Wriiten By Nevaeh

EAGSHARK

An Eagshark is an unique  animal. It is half Eagle and half Shark.

Appearance

An Eagshark has a large 3 meter tail that steers the Eagshark ,a yellow beak that is very sharp ,brown face feathers that keep its face warm. An Eagshark  has 15cm fins that helps it glide through the water and 1m pomamanya (dorsal fin).

Habitat

An Eagshark lives in a sea cave underwater. A Eagsharks sea cave is full of coral and sea kelp. It lives on its own.

Predator

A great white shark tears the Eagshark apart. The Eagshark protects itself by stopping like its frozen and then ...

4 boxes come out both sides and top and bottom. There is a speedy engine part on the back and a gun part on the front .

Diet

A Eagshark is an omnivore. It eats whale sharks and basking sharks because they are sluggish and easy to catch. They also eat coral and sea kelp.

Created and written by James

Our next challenge is to find information about a real animal and write a report.
Keep an eye on the blog for some of these reports over the next few weeks. 

How many parts make a whole

We are learning how many parts make a whole. We have learnt that all parts of a fraction need to be the same size. 

Our challenge was to make a cake shop. In cake shops the cakes are cut up into parts so pieces can be sold. We had to cut the cakes up into different fractions and write the number sentence to show how many parts make up 1 whole. 

Created by Janice and Damarco

Created by Chahat

Created by Blake

Created by Blair

Created by Angus M and Whetu

Created by Kamora-Lee

Created by Holly

Created by Sam

Buster the Rabbit

Room 1617 have a travel bug called Buster the Bunny. Buster the Bunny is going to go travelling around the New Zealand and hopefully the world. Whenever Buster the Bunny goes somewhere new  a message is sent to us and we can find out where he is on the maps in our classroom. 

We walked down to a special place to leave Buster for somebody else to pick up and take on a journey somewhere. 

When we walked to Busters' drop off we needed to cross roads safely. We have been learning how to cross the road and keep ourselves safe. We looked left, right and left again and listened carefully. We noticed cars along the road, cars turning, cars coming out of driveways and bicycles. 

Sienna placing Buster ready for his next adventure

If you would like to know how Buster travels around the world visit www.geocaching.com.

A big thank you to Gwen's Mum for walking with us and helping us cross the road. 

Tuakana Teina

We are learning to read maps, cross roads safely and appreciate art in our environment. 

Using a map of our school we followed an art trail around our school. 

It is tricky reading a map. We used the landmarks on the map to help us figure out where to find different pieces of art around our school. We learnt to look down on the map like a bird (birds eye view).

Room 1617 were buddies for the Year 1 and 2 children in our hub.

Erin being a caring buddy

Gemma showing her buddy how to cross the
road safely

Marcus and his buddy counting blackbirds together

Rain and her buddy looking at the
map to see where to go next 

They found Maui

Damarco and Noah having lots of fun

Jack talking to his buddy about what
they can see arounf Maui's neck

All the children waiting to cross the road
safely

Looking for south on the painting

Charlotte and her buddy discussing what is in the umbrella

Buddies having so much fun together

Riley and buddy looking both ways before
crossing the road

Looking carefully to find the information

Louisa helping her buddy to write
the answers

Georgina talking to her buddy about the painting

Ruben being a great teacher

Looking at the PRIDE wall to find the answer

Jack and buddy discussing the answers

Hmmm what bird is that? 

Holly and her buddy looking both ways before
crossing the street

Janice and her buddy re-counting the blackbirds
on the mural

Tuakana Teina is when an older person teaches a younger person. Room 1617 did a great job of teaching their buddies and
showing them how to complete the trail rather than doing it all for them.