In celebration of Book Week, Arohanui presented their poem “Saw My Teacher on a Saturday” by Dave Crawley at our Crazy Hair Day Assembly. What a fun week we’ve had focusing on poetry.
Many of us brushed, styled, coloured, dyed, plaited, wigged our hair to create some crazy styles.
We started Book Week with an amazing assembly. We were excited to invite illustrator Michel Mulipola to show his work with us. We learned that he has had some great jobs including designing cartoon cards for Marvel! He is also a successful gamer and wrestler. We loved hearing about his passion and ambitions as a child to be a comic book illustrator and how reading helped him in all of his jobs. Here are some photos from his talk this morning. You may notice that he has illustrated some of the books we read in school! When it was question time we asked Michel questions like
“What is your favourite Spiderman character?” “What are the challenges of being an illustrator?” “What would your job be, if you weren’t an illustrator?”
We learnt so much!
Last week we celebrated Book Week at Holy Cross School. Our theme was Ethnic Responsibility. Our Syndicate chose to enjoy the book called “The Hidden Treasure” – it was a tale from Sri Lanka.
We enjoyed listening to the story of the loving father who told his sons before he died that his treasure was hidden in the field. The brothers looked and looked for it. They worked and worked in the field together, growing food and selling it. They finally realised that the way they lived and worked together as a family was the real treasure!
We also linked this story with two of Jesus Parables. One was called ‘The Parable of the Hidden Treasure, found in Matthew 13:44 and the other was ‘The Precious Pearl’ in Matthew 13:45-45. We watched the stories on YouTube and acted them out.
On Friday we each brought along to school a precious treasure from home.
Here are some of them!
We made a lovely display on the table that Mrs B decorated. We were allowed to look but not touch as they were all very special.
We each shared with the syndicate about our special treasure. We told everyone what it was, where we got it from and why it was so special to us.
All of our ‘treasures’ were special to us. They had happy memories. Often someone close to us had given them to us.
It was the beginning of a lovely day!
During Book
Week Room 19 was lucky enough to get together with the children in Room 5 and share all the things we had been reading during that week.
Room 19 created a Healthy Habits ebook to share with our buddies in Room 5. Our poems were based on the Dr Seuss inspired book “Oh the things you can do that are good for you” by Tish Rabe.
What a great way to end the term by extending our Matariki Celebrations right through to Book Week. We celebrated by making a class korowai and painted our rākau sticks before playing Mauī, Matau. We made porotiti and most of us either made or tasted rewena bread. In addition to making kites there were plenty of games played including knuckle bones Kōruru and sang waiata E pāpā Waiari playing with ti rakau (short sticks).
It was an enjoyable time of reading Māori Myths and Legends as a syndicate and engaging our creative thinking by innovating on these texts. There were some great arguments written about why Matariki should be celebrated as a public holiday but one of the highlights would have to be the whole school haka!
Class Korowai. Includes individually painted A3 sized feathers showing our painting techniques and smaller feathers embed with our inquiry questions.
R19 boys enjoying Rēwena bread made by our R18 neighbours. Great job Atawhai chefs!
Mostly everyone had a chance to wear the class korowai before it was displayed proudly on our class wall.
A reflection by Grace Stowers Y5 – The Significance of Flying Kites during Matariki celebrations.
This week is Book Week at Holy Cross School. Room 12 is looking at the four Maori Myths in the book called Riding the Waves written by Gavin Bishop.
A sequel or companion book to TAMING THE SUN, Gavin Bishop’s four more Maori myths, including two well-known legends (Maui finds his family and Maui and the goddess of fire) and two less well-known legends (Hatupatu and the birdwoman and Rata and his waka). The myths are simply and yet elegantly written. Gavin’s characteristic sense of humour is evident in all of the stories, and while each story is exciting and often a little bit scary, they are resolved beautifully. Gavin allows the essence of the original myths to remain while also re-telling them for a new generation of children. The illustrations are stunning – the different colour palette for each story and the strong mix of techniques create bold and beautiful images that integrate with the words in a powerful and meaningful way.
