Our Movie

Here is the movie that we used as the backdrop for our dance 'Every Child Has The Right To An Education'.
We discovered that millions of children in the world don't get to go to school for lots of different reasons. Some girls have to look after their younger brothers or sisters, or they have to get married very, very young. Some children have to go out to work instead of going to school. We found out that some families cannot afford to send their children to school, and sometimes war and unrest disrupts children's education. We tried to show images that could convey messages about how sad we found this in the first bit of our film.
We did lots of philosophy and discussion work this term about why education was the right of every child, and why it is so important. For this part of our movie, and dance, we wanted to use images and colour that showed happiness, fun, laughter and joy. We chose video images that showed girls and boys going to school, even girls going to school with male teachers, children taking their younger siblings to school so everyone can learn, and lots of shots of what we love about school-books and reading, art, music, writing, maths, and PE.
The last bit of our movie had to be loaded separately for technical reasons!!  It is the video Andy shot in our classroom and put together for us. It shows us having fun. We wanted this because we think learning is fun, and we truly believe it is the right of every child.
We hope you enjoy watching them.

Our Exciting Day

This morning Sean from Black Grace came to talk to us about being a dancer. He told us about how hard dancers have to work, and how much rehearsal they have to do so that their performances look amazing. We got to ask him lots of questions about working with Black Grace, what a normal day for him looks like, and about his favourite dancers. We discovered that we have things in common with Sean- we have choreographed our dances, we want to tell stories, and we have been doing lots of rehearsals! He even did a little bit of dancing which was incredible, we thought his body looked like liquid! It was fun listening to him.

Then, after morning tea, Andy came in to help us with the 'happy education' part of our dance/movie. For this bit, we want to tell the story of how education and learning are fun and full of joy, and how it is the right of every child to have an education. Andy filmed us running, jumping, laughing, dancing.....and leaping off tables. We had a ball and can't wait to show you all our dance on Tuesday 4th October at 9.30am in the Hall.

Lilith's Andy

This morning, Lilith's step dad Andy came in to talk to us about making ads, docuamentaries and music videos. He brought in two cameras, a very modern one that shoots digitally, and an older film camera for us to have a look at. The older camera was very heavy, and it would take three people to work it, the film and the lenses on a film set. Andy showed us some of the ads he has directed, and talked to us about how the story you want to tell is the most important thing of all to think about because if you have a good story, your audience will want to watch what you have made. This gave us lots to think about as we come up with the ideas for our movie and dance about children's right to education. He also talked about how you have to work hard as a team when you are making movies, and you need to communicate clearly with everyone around you. You also have to be super organised. We thought these things sounded very like Balmoral Habits!
Thanks for coming and talking to us Andy, we had fun and learnt lots.

Our Shared Poetry Writing

This dance
 the
   always
      movement
exploding from the dancers bodies.
Twirling,
twisting,
tip toeing
tap,
tap,
tap.
Leaping,
   skipping,
       moving all around.
Pointed toes,
bent legs, straight legs,
pirouettes.
Jumping up and
going into a
spiral, swirly,
koru.

By Room 16

Is Good For You Good For Me?

Welcome to Term 3!
This term we are looking at the question: Is Good For You Good For Me? We are going to use the Arts-dance, visual art, drama and music to inform children of their rights. We will also be exploring questions around fair/unfair, citizenship and social justice.
To start us off, we looked at Picasso's Guernica and discovered a whole story we thought he wanted to tell about the horror of war, and that he told without any words. We examined the United Nations Rights of the Child, and decided we wanted to represent each Right in a picture form and put the together to make a mural, like Guernica, across our classroom.
Here are our fantastic results:

Every child should have water by Eloise and Jackson

Every child should have food by Dom and Anton

Every child should have a home by Abbey and Emily

Every child deserves a happy life by Madison and Letiara

Every child has the right to an education by Serena and Coco

Every child has the right to play by Caitlin and Dryden

Every child needs love and care by Johnson and Georgia

No child should be exploited through work by Phoebe and Michelle

No child should fight in a war by Isla and Timothy

No child should be held back by a disability by Richie and Aurora

Every child has the right to an identity by Finn and Lilith

Every child has the right to free expression by Adam

The rights are all summed up in the final one: Every child deserves a happy life.
The pictures all join up along our classroom wall to make a colourful mural. We would love you to come and see them.

Do you agree with all these Rights? Do you think all children in the world know about them? Do you think all adults in the world know about them?

The Poi Dance

Here is the poi dance that the dance group showed at the Exposition. See if you can spot: steam rising from Rotorua, beaches, the Sky Tower, planes bringing visitors to New Zealand and Eden Park. Great choreography dance group!

Room 15's Amazing Stop Motion Movie

We loved this!

Exposition of Welcomes

Here we are waiting patiently for our exposition to start. The hall looked fabulous.

Caitlin and Finn did a wonderful job welcoming everyone with our speech about what we had been learning. They spoke very clearly and with lots of expression.

David Shearer, our local MP, came to see all the fantastic work.

The brochures looked great and were full of very useful information. Well done brochure group.

The baking was very popular! Well done bakers.

The mural group did a wonderful job explaining their ideas to our guests, and their art was beautiful. Well done artists.

The dance group did very well too, even coping with some tangled poi!The video of their dance was watched by lots of people.
Well done everyone, I am very proud of your hard work and how much you have learnt about belonging and welcoming.

Still Getting Ready....

We have been making poi ready for the dance group to perform on Friday. Rosie managed to plait her cord by using her toe as a holder!

Luckily we had Jennie to help because the plaiting was actually quite hard. The poi look amazing though.

Today has been a baking day, ANZAC biscuits and dulce de leche biscuits. More baking tomorrow when we make the lamingtons and cupcakes. We have had fun making them and are very grateful to Janine, Jill, Jennie and Sophie for coming and helping us. You will be able to taste all our delicious treats on Friday when you come to the Exposition of Welcomes. See you there.

Getting ready for the Exposition

We are very nearly ready to share our amazing ideas for how to welcome visitors to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup. It would be fantastic to see you all in the Hall on Friday at 9.30am. We hope you can make it!

Hundertwasser Buildings

We looked at a whole lot of different buildings from all the World Cup countries. We also looked at buildings and art by Hundertwasser and Gaudi and saw that they loved using colour and pattern. Next we designed our own buildings that incorporated bits and pieces from all the buildings we had looked like. We drew them in the style of Hundertwasser, and coloured them with black felt tip and dye. Gorgeous!

Yum, Yum and a Blue Day

We have been enjoying some delicious treats lately, thanks to some fabulous cooking homework. We have discovered that sharing food is a very important way of welcoming people in many cultures and have been lucky enough to have had food from America, Japan, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands. Thank you to all the wonderful parents and grandparents who have been helping with this homework.

Here we are all in blue to raise money for the School Council's legacy project. The money is going towards a piece of art, which we in Room 16 think is a great idea.We look forward to seeing what it is.

Explanation Writing

We have been learning about how different cultures welcome others. We have also been learning how to write an explanation.In Room 16, we chose Argentina to study and have written this explanation of how we would welcome any visitors from Argentina when the World Cup is on. Do you think our explanation answers the question: how would you welcome someone from Argentina to New Zealand, and make them feel at home?

Welcome to Argentina

Our class, Room 16, have been researching about Argentina because that is the country we chose to study from all the countries coming to play in the Rugby World Cup. We want to know about them so we can welcome the people from these countries to New Zealand.
We wanted to know about Argentine sports. We found out that the national sport of Argentina is football. They also play twenty one other sports. They are: boxing, cycling, field hockey, fishing, golf, handball, mountaineering, athletics, auto racing, basketball, paddle tennis, polo, roller hockey, rugby union, rowing, sailing, skiing, swimming, tennis and volleyball. Their football team is known as Argentina National Football team. The Argentine football team has won the football World Cup twice, in 1978 and 1986. Argentines are very good at football. Sport is very important to Argentine people.
Food is an important part of welcoming people. We wondered what food they eat in Argentina. One of the traditional foods in Argentina is beef. They sometimes cook the beef on asodos, which is a barbeque. Argentines also make these little pastries that are called empadas. In them are beef, vegetables, cheese. You can sometimes get fruit empadas. Sometimes in Argentina they eat horse meat. For breakfast they mostly eat rolls with jam and coffee. For lunch they normally eat meat and salad. For dinner they mostly eat beef. Dulce de leche is a caramel sauce that is very popular and very delicious when served with crepes. Argentines are very lucky because they get to eat yummy foods.
Do Argentines live in the same sort of houses as us? We discovered the houses are mostly made of concrete and wood. The houses sometimes are very colourful and some have musical notes on them. They have lots of windows because Argentina is very hot. Most people live in cities. There are 39,022,185 people in Argentina.
One group has been learning about the language of Argentina. Everybody speaks the same language in Argentina, they speak Spanish. Hola. This is how you say ‘hello’. This is how you count to ten: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez. You say gracias if you want to say ‘thank you’ and adios is ‘good bye’.
We also studied Argentines or Argentinos and their ancestors. They originated in Italy and Spain but today they are a mix of Italian, Spanish and French. The languages are similar because they all evolved around the same language, Latin, because the Latin speakers conquered those countries and each country put their own twist on the language and made accents. Ancient Argentines had black hair and wore loose fitting robes that were probably made form animal skins. Also, they had lots of jewellery with blue, red and gold beads. The warriors had black stripes like whiskers on their cheeks, heavy armour and carried spears. Mostly ancient Argentine people lived in the Patagonian regions. Famous people in Argentina are not known in other countries. They include Juan Manuel Fangio, Roldolfo Walsh and Beatriz Guido. These last two are writers. Ancient Argentines were very interesting. A lot of them were warriors.
As a group we found out that most of the people in Argentina like to dance the tango and the salsa. The tango is a ballroom dance that was made up by the poor people in Buenos Aires and it tells the story of how hard their lives were. Argentines love to paint bodies and portraits and they like to make lovely sculptures. Lots of people in Argentina like to plant pink daisies and bauhinias which is a type of flower. They also like to plant yellow things. Some of the buildings in Argentina are some of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Argentines love to sing pop, rock and country. Argentina is a beautiful place.
What about Argentine celebrations and beliefs? We found out that celebrations are held all over the country. A famous celebration is called Carnival. People are involved in processions, have elaborate, sparkly costumes, drinking, dancing and music. Día de la Tradición (Day of Tradition) is actually a whole week of celebrations and fiesta in honour of Argentina's Gaucho tradition. You would see lots of cowboy activities, traditional food and drink, music and dancing all in the heart of Gaucho land, Las Pampas. Most people are Roman Catholic.
We also have been researching about clothing in Argentina. We found out that traditional clothes of the gauchos (cowboys) are a wide brimmed hat, a poncho and a loose pair of trousers. The Argentine people from the city wear similar clothes we do in New Zealand. Argentine people live to dress well.
So, in conclusion, if we were to welcome people from Argentina we would: cook some beef for them, make them some coffee and dulce de leche; put a game of football on the TV for them to watch; we would also do a tango for them in their traditional clothing, including a poncho!

Two Visitors and a Sunflower

John Stawbridge is the Traffic Manager for the Rugby World Cup. he came to speak to us about how people will get to Eden Park. We found out they expect 17,000 people to travel by train, 12,000 by coach, and 3,000 will walk on a special walking route. John Strawbridge will be in a Command Centre which is a box shaped room which has heaps of TV screens so they can see all the traffic. He will be able to control the traffic lights (actually a lady who works for him will control them). He will not get to see any games! He was very helpful for our Statistics investigation.

Almaz and Lemlem came to show us a welcolming ceremony from Ethiopia. They showed us some green coffee beans being roasted, and they let us smell some special wood that they burn in their homes. During the coffee ceremony you have to drink three cups of coffee. If you don't, then you are showing that you don't truly respect your hosts. The cups are all washed between the times you drink from them. Almaz and Lemlem made us some delicious bread that Ethiopian people eat during the coffee ceremony. The oldest person in the house always cuts the bread.

Dryden brought in this big, bright, bold and beautiful sunflower that he grew for our Rich Task on plants. Sunflowers in the garden turn to face the sun. Dryden's sunflower was the baby of his plants and did not get much sun, but it turned out to have a wonderful flower. A seed has already fallen out of it.

Eden Park

Last Tuesday we went for a walk to Eden Park to find out all about statistics and numbers.
We were able to go into the changing rooms, we walked down the players' tunnel nearly onto the field, which looked like beautiful green carpet, and up into the coach's box. We discovered there are two spa pools in the changing room, and one is filled with hot water and one with cold water for the players

after the games. We also found out they mow the grass twice a week. We were amazed because our Balmoral logo was up on the two big screens and the 260 televisions around the stadium. It looked amazing.
Some numbers we discovered: 60,000 people will be able to fit in the finished stadium; the two big screens cost $1,500,000; there are 752 toilets; 4000 cartons of chips are consumed during an average Blues game, and 700 hot dogs!
This week, John Strawbridge, the Traffic Project Manager for the Rugby World Cup is coming to speak to us. We have thought up all sorts of number traffic questions for him.
Thank you to all the parents who came on the walk with us, we look forward to sharing our graphs, data and statistics with you.

Coco's Friday Night

On Friday night me and Texas were selling chocolate for Balmoral School when the rugby game was on.
We had a little shop out the front of our house under a tent.
When the game was playing we had a break and watched a movie called Jurassic Pork – scary but fun!
We were exhausted when we went back outside to sell the last chocolate but we kept going. Mum made some bags to sell and we gave away apples from our tree.
People were very nice to us and it was so much fun. We sold every chocolate bar.
By Coco

The Art Gallery

We had a wonderful day at the Art Gallery yesterday looking at signs and symbols in paintings. I was really impressed with how deeply you thought about the questions the gallery educators were asking, and the great answers you gave.

We then went into the studio and created great pieces of art based on symbols that represented you with pencil, pastel, felt tip and dye. They look fabulous!

Lastly we had a ball running around in Albert Park, and making our own 'body sculptures' in amongst that beautiful autumn leaves.
What was your favourite part of the day?

Welcome Back!

Welcome to Term 2. This term our Rich Task question is 'How Would You Know You Were One Of Us?'and it is all about belonging and welcoming people.

The Maori word we are thinking about is Turangawaewae. We will be going to the Art Gallery, and Eden Park as part of our Rich Task.
This week I would like you to talk to your family about what belonging means and write a comment that answers this question-how do we know we belong in New Zealand?

Our Native Plant Research

We worked in groups to find out how Maori people in the past and today use native plants for medicine. We chose a plant we were interested in and learnt all about it. Here are photos of us with our presentations.

This is the manuka group with their fantastic honey pot.

This is the harakeke group with their beautiful flax leaves.

This is the first of our kowhai groups.

Here are the koromiko group.

This is the second kowhai group.

Here are the ngaio group making sure everyone knows the ngaio is poisonous to eat!

Last but not least the karamu group.

We would love you to come into our class and read our amazing research about the medical uses for all these plants.
We have also been busy designing our medicinal garden and finding out the best place in the school for it to go....stay tuned to find out more.