Hippos

This week in reading my group read a book called Under Cover Of Darkness. It was all about lots of different nocturnal animals. After we had read the book we had to pick one of the animals to do a small poster on. I chose to do hippos. The reason I chose hippos was I didn't know much about them and they are my dad's favourite animal. On my poster I wrote about what hippos do in the day and night, what they eat and how they got their name. Then I drew some pictures. One of a hippo opening its mouth. Another one of hippo tracks and the last of a hippo's head half above the water.  Here is my finished poster. 

Saint Poster

This term we are learning about lots of different saints. We got to choose a saint to research. I chose to do Saint Clare of Assisi. The reason I chose her was because she was the saint I chose for my Confirmation saint. Another reason I chose her was because I liked that she refused to be pushed around by her parents and by men. Here is a picture of my finished saint poster.

Possum Problems

This week my reading group read a book about possums. Once we had finished reading the article in our books we had to write lots of reasons why possums are bad for the NZ wildlife. Here are my reasons.

1. Possums eat most of our native plants and birds. This is one of the main reasons are native plants and birds/animals are becoming more and more endangered.

2. Possums can carry a disease called bovine tuberculosis which they caught from infected cows. Cows can recatch it from possums if the sniff or lick them.

3. Possums have a massive effect on wildlife so people try poison and shoot them. But there is a problem. Hunters can accidentally shoot or trap native wildlife and sometimes native wildlife eat the poison.

4. In my opinion we should try get all/most of the possums deported or try to run more over.

5. Possums are destroying our native bush. There are no predators to eat or hunt them so they roam free with no worry.

In conclusion possums are very bad for our native animals and plants. They are very dangerous and if we don't do something about them soon all our wildlife will disappear for good.

Bike Course

Yesterday and today we had a visit from Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a bike company that comes to schools to teach the Year Five and Six children bike safety. In our first lesson we didn't actually ride our bikes. It was more about learning the safety aspects so when we ride our bikes out and about we know how to be safe. Today we got  out onto the courts to put some of our learning into action. We learnt more things like ; how to indicate you are turning and which way you are turning. Another thing we learnt was how to check our bike was safe before we ride it. Here is a picture of me in action. 

My Shield

During this week we started the Kia Kaha programme. Kia Kaha is run by the New Zealand police  force and it teaches us about bullying and why its not ok. We also learn about how we are all unique and different to everyone else around us. Even though we learn about how we are different we also learn about our similarities and how to work together in a team. We made shields, on one side it said I am unique because... here we had to put why we aren't like anyone else in the world. On the other side it said Our class is special because.... here we had to put reasons our class altogether was special. Here is a picture of my shield. 

Calendar Art

Every year everyone in the school has to make a calendar art. My class coloured in a piece of mindfulness colouring each.  After the long time of colouring and concentrating they were finished. The next thing we needed to do was on the back carefully draw our sun and suns rays. This was because we were cutting up our colouring to make a sun. It was great fun and I can't wait for our next art project. Here is a picture of my nearly finished colouring.

Rainforest Diorama

In the past two weeks every chose a habitat and researched it. Then when we had done some writing on it we got to make a diorama of that habitat. I chose to do the rainforest because I didn't know much about it and also because there are so many life forms. It took me three or four days to do it. In my diorama I put in five animals. They were a bird of paradise, a sloth, a snake, a fish and two butterflies. I also put in quite a few plants like trees, grass and bush. Here is a picture of my finished diorama.