Harvest Festival

We celebrated Harvest Festival this week by painting our pumpkins using watercolours...

and baking Spiced Pumpkin Bread.

Find our paintings and work on our individual Blog posts.

Then we got to eat it. Delicious!

Try our Bread recipe at home. 
Tell us if you like it!

Pumpkin Spiced Bread Recipe

Ingredients

1¾ cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp ginger

2 eggs beaten

1 cup pumpkin puree

50 g butter

¼ cup vegetable oil

1½ cups brown sugar

2/3 cup water

Directions

1.    Preheat oven to 160 deg C on fan bake. Lightly grease one 23 x 13cm loaf pan.

2.  Combine 1¾ cups of flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger in a large bowl and set aside.

3.  Beat the pumpkin puree, eggs, butter, vegetable oil, 1½ cups brown sugar and 2/3 cup water until well blended.

4.  Gently combine the flour mixture with the pumpkin mixture.

5.  Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes.

6.  Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.

School Kit Writing

Thanks School Kit, what an amazing adventure we have had being part of the Get NZ Writing Programme. We really enjoyed writing our metaphors and completing our poster.

3000 classrooms have taken part in the project this year, which means that roughly 96,000 students have been involved. We have sent our kit away to Hornby, in Christchurch, and are looking forward to one arriving for us soon.

We discovered how to write a Found poem and had fun creating our own.

Metaphor Writing with School Kit

As part of our School Kit Writing activities, we learned how to use metaphors in our writing. 
We were inspired by the poem called "The Iain Sharp Poem'.

The Iain Sharp Poem

Iain Sharp is a fat parcel of mixed groceries tied with a clumsy knot.

Iain Sharp is a black kite adrift on changeable winds.

Iain Sharp is a pile of scoria tricking softly to the sea.

Whenever I peep in mirrors Iain Sharp frowns back at me.

It’s terrifying.

Iain Sharp is a runaway tramcar.

Iain Sharp is a chunk of moonrock.

Iain Sharp is nine letters wrenched from the Roman Alphabet.

Our Room 20 Poem

Room 20 is a shiny, red motorbike, as fast as lightning.

Room 20 is a big, strong, old, prickly totara tree.

Stronger than any other tree in the forest.

Room 20 is Seeley’s Gully, a trickling stream with twittering fantails,

flittering around and snatching the insects.

Room 20 is a crunchy ham and cheese special subway sandwich.

Room 20 is a pair of red swimming shorts with yellow lightning bolts.

Hukanui Marae Visit

What an amazing visit we had!

We were welcomed.

We shared stories and songs.

Our wonderful Kapa Haka performed our farewell.

Cicadas

Clickety-Clack Cicada

Clickety-clack cicada

Clinging to the wall,

When the sun is sleeping

You don’t sing at all.

But when the sun is shining

On summer days so long,

Clickety-clack cicada

What a noisy song!

We have so many cicadas singing outside our classroom and in the playground.

We have been collecting the skins that the cicada nymph sheds when it becomes an adult.

Did you know a cicada nymph can live for more than 7 years underground before it climbs up a tree to change into an adult cicada?

We enjoyed sketching cicadas. 

Look on our individual Blogger posts for our sketchings.

Challenge:

Do you know how a cicada makes it's noise?

Clue:

It is not by rubbing his wings.

Swimming Survival

It's our favourite swimming lesson day again!

First we had to put on our lifejackets and learn how to fall safely BACK into the pool.

Falling into the Pool from Ham East on Vimeo.

Next, we made a safe huddle to keep ourselves warm while we wait to be rescued.

Rescuing a Buddy</

Then we learnt how to pull a buddy safely down the length of the pool.

Finally, we finished with a race. 

We got into teams and kicked hard, all the way to the end of the pool!

Rescue Race

Rescue Race from Ham East on Vimeo.