Category: Ako | Learn

Our beautiful butterflies

Our monarch butterflies have officially completed their full lifecycle, from tiny egg to beautiful butterfly! We have been amazed by every stage of their transformation. They were wonderful visitors to have in Weka Iti, and it was a special moment when we finally set them free to explore the big, wide world. Check out our slides below to see the highlights of their incredible journey with us!

Manaakitanga

This term we have been learning about one of our four school values. Our value is Manaakitanga which is respect. We are learning to: Care, be respectful and show kindness to ourselves and others. In Weka Iti this means we are caring by being helpful, being kind, being an active listener and learning to recognise and use our manners. Here is the Manaakitanga poster we use at our school.

We talked about what Manaakitanga would look like in our learning space and we all shared our ideas. We then put all our ideas onto a poster so we could practise and look for examples of when we and our classmates demonstrate these. Here is the poster we created:

Here are some examples of us showing Manaakitanga.

T Shirts by Weka Iti

One of our big books for a week was called ‘T Shirts’ written by Estelle Corney. We really enjoyed this book and the different words each of the family members had on their coloured t-shirts.

So, as a class we decided to create our own T-Shirts book which was written by and illustrated by Weka Iti. We enjoyed beginning the book by painting our own t shirt in a colour of our choice. Check out our version of our own T-Shirts book.

And here we are reading our story to you……

We dressed in purple to support Epilepsy

On Thursday 26th March we had ‘Purple Day’ which is an international epilepsy awareness day. We were able to wear mufti and dress in purple if we had that colour and bring along a gold coin donation for a fundraiser. Our school’s, gold coin contributions goes toward supporting New Zealander’s living with epilepsy and their whānau. We looked great.

Mrs Wishy Washy

We are learning to retell a story in the correct order. We read the story Mrs Wish Washy. We all really enjoyed this story.

We talked about the characters in the story and what happened at the beginning of the story, what happened next and what happened at the end of the story. We then made stick puppets of the characters and the other things that were in the story, like the mud, the soap and the tub.

In groups we retold the story using our stick puppets.

We did a great job at retelling the story in the correct order and trying hard to use expression when the characters in the story were talking. Tino pai Weka Iti, what a super effort for your 1st time at doing this.

Our Compost Monster

We have been finding out what makes good compost for our school garden. We learnt that ‘compost’ is like magic dirt. It turns “yucky” waste into “yummy” food for our school garden! A compost bin is like a “tummy” that needs the right food to stay healthy. To make the best compost we mix a layer of green things and then a layer of brown things and repeat this.

We decided to turn our compost knowledge into a compost monster as a sign for the compost bin in our classroom. This will help us to know what to put in our compost bin in our learning space so that we can then transfer this to our school compost. We are going to invite Trevor, our school caretaker into our class to see if he can help us with helping to give our school compost a tummy that is getting the right food.

We also learnt that there are some foods that are not good for our compost. We have to be careful not to attract “unwanted guests” like mice, rats or possums. These foods are not OK for our compost…. meat or dairy. No leftover ham sandwiches or cheese. No plastic. No glad wrap, chip packets, or fruit stickers and no bread as this can attract pests.

Check out our Compost Monster