On Friday Paul Omondi came to the library to teach the Reach group how to make plastic bag balls. Plastic bag balls require around about 50 plastic balls and a bit of string to make one strong and firm ball. Once the ball is completed, the string will form a spiderweb shape around the plastic bags. At Paul's school they had one soccer ball which was only used once a year in the soccer season. Paul also taught us a traditional song they would sing while making a plastic bag ball to make time go faster. Ceara also talked to us about the orphanage that she spent time in. Ceara has already fundraised to buy 3 goats for this orphanage and this is where our goat will go. The goats milk is full nutrition and gives the children calcium. She also taught us a hand game that we all had a go at.

Maasai bracelets!

The Reach group have been micro-financing, we are going to make some bracelets and anklets. Micro-financing is when lots of families give a little bit of money and one family uses it to buy something that will keep making money and when you have enough money you pay back each family and with the rest of the money you can buy extra things! We are going to be selling our bead creations at school so if you would like any come down to the school! We will keep updating our blog as we make different Kenyan art and craft.

PURPLE CAKE DAY

We started off Purple Cake Day with the REACH students painting symbols of hope and purple cake day on children's faces. We had parents bring in over 400 cupcakes for the year 6 students to decorate. Wow! They looked scrumptious. Thanks to all the parents for bringing in so many decorations for us to use! Everyone dressed up in purple and gathered at the top court to dance and celebrate how lucky we are. Then it was off to Te Manawa to enjoy our cupcakes! YUM! Alice and Jack then went to Countdown Stoke to sell the remaining cupcakes. Lots of people were very generous and donated money without wanting a cake. All up we raised the grand total of $991 for children in Kenya. Good Job.

Year 4 REACH Group

We have begun our Year 4 Reach Group. We have been learning about the ancient and the modern olympics. As we do this we are also learning to use different graphic organisers and thinking tools. As we talked about the Olympics we began to talk about Continents so we decided to learn a bit more about them and made a Wordle. Next we worked in pairs on differnt PMI's - One was 'Anyone found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs should be banned from all competitive sport for life' We had to think about all points of view. This was especially interesting as soon after our own Olympic Athlete Valerie Adams got Silver because of this actually happening when the gold medal winner was tested positive for drugs. Today we compared the Ancient Olympics with the Modern Olympics and completed a Venn Diagram to show the similarities and differences. I wonder what we'll learn about next week????????????????????

Suter Art Gallery Extension Programme

Wow! What amazing sessions we have had with Esther at the Suter Gallery. 15 Year 4,5 and 6 students were selected to attend three art sessions. We began by viewing a great exhibition created using photographs and a printer. The artworks are unusual as they often show two or more objects or landscapes that just don't seem to go together. Such as a train tunnel on mars?? After discussing and taking a close look at these, the students began by learning about layering. They worked with partners to use a layering collage technique similar to the artworks. Next session was back in the same exhibition taking a very close look at how the printer had shaded the different areas. The students learnt about using lines in different directions to create shading. The session ended with the students taking a small part of their collage artwork and working with fine tipped black pens to carefully show the detail using the shading technique. Great learning team - you all did so well and from your reaction I think we'll be seeing some of these techniques used back at school and at home. Well Done!

Coral is cool

The F.P.S group is working on a coral scenario. It is very interesting! We have to protect natural coral from artificial coral. Our scenario is about the Great Barrier Reef. We had to think up ten challenges and then an UP(underlying problem) Now we are working on ten solutions. FPS is about getting a really big problem and breaking it down into a smaller problem so it can be solved. Well the man is making artificial coral which might affect the natural coral. We have been figuring out solutions to help the natural coral to grow and survive.FACTS. Tiny plants called algae grow inside coral and also give them their colour. If all the algae's die then that is called coral bleaching. Coral is a animal.An estimated 25 percent of coral has already disappeared. Coral is valued because of its medical values. Hurricanes are good for coral because they cool the seas down.

By Emily, Chloe and Julia. :)

Designing a New Playground

In 2012 the inquiry group from Enner Glynn School have been designing a new playground to replace the adventure playground. So far we have had heaps of awesome ideas but unfortunately we can't use them all. We had to set criteria for our new play space This criteria was *It has to suit 5-11 year olds. *It has to be challenging but safe. *It has to be fun. *It has to enhance the environment. *It has to fit a budget. We learnt how to use bubble.us to mind map our ideas. We also used google sketch up to come up with some design ideas. Our designer came to talk to our REACH group. We shared ideas about the types of activities children at Enner Glynn like to do at lunchtime. He took our ideas to help him design our playground. Next week we will meet with him again and get to see what he has come up with! Unfortunately our designer was unavailable for next week but instead he kindly handed us his proposed plan. When we first took a look at the playground sketch we all thought it was really cool because it had a number of the ideas that we all came up with on the plan like a climbing wall and the stepping stones but when we looked more closely at the playground plan we saw that it didn't include some of our other ideas like monkey bars and a fruit/veg patch like the one that we have up by the top field.