This Week's Update - Written work from Camp

This week we have been getting back into our routine and catching up on some work.

It has been two weeks since we have been back from camp. Camp was awesome. We all enjoyed it and loved our great experience and are catching up on some work - like recounts, "Inside Me" poems, explanation writing and getting back into our SSR (Sustained Silent Reading).

Here is some of the students' explanation writing on hobo stoves:

Explanation Writing - Hobo Stoves

A hobo stove is a fun and easy way to cook and prepare simple meals.

A hobo stove is a tin stove which is roughly a 17-18 cm long stove and the little tin is 8 cm long. The little tin has some wax and spiral shaped cardboard so you can light it. The little tin is actually a condensed milk or baked bean tin, and they work perfectly! The bigger tin is for cooking similar to a fry pan. You can cook almost anything on it - for instance sausages, pikelets or pancakes etc.

When you want to cook or start cooking on a hobo stove, you first light up the small tin. Once it has been lit, you cover the bigger tin over the smaller tin which makes it all hot when you leave it for approximately 2-3 minutes. Once it is heated, you can add a little bit of olive oil and once you have poured the oil you can start cooking - which is a lot of fun!

When you have finished cooking, you can carefully remove the bigger tin and blow out the smaller tin. Leave it for a while to cool and once it has cooled down you can wash it.

Nikeeta
25 May 2010



2.
A hobo stove is used for outside cooking. It is great for camps.

A hobo stove has two units. There is the outside unit and it has to be 17.5 cm or bigger. It has holes around the top and bottom. The top hole lets smoke and carbon dioxide out and the bottom lets air come in. The second unit is a small can about as big as 8.5cm. This can is used for the flame. It has card board and wax in it.

You first light a match and place it on the card board and wait for a flame then put the big can on top.

When you have finished put the big can over the small one and the flame will be gone.

But I think no one under about 10 or 11 should use the hobo stove without a parent or guardian with them. But over all, hobo stoves are fun to use. Nikhil 25 May 2010

3.

A hobo stove is something that you use to cook on. Hobo stoves are made from a large steel tin and a small steel tin filled with corrugated cardboard covered in wax.

When you light a hobo stove with a match, it is the small tin with corrugated cardboard and wax in it that you light. Then you put the large tin on top to let oxygen get in and out of it.

When you start to cook anything you need to oil the cooking surface. On a hobo stove you can cook pancakes, fruit, sausages and toast in sandwiches in tin foil when it has heated up.

When you have finished using the hobo stove, lift up the bottom of the hobo stove and turn it so the part that you were cooking is facing the ground. Then put it on top of the little tin. Leave it for a little while to cool down. Wash it when it has cooled down.

Hobo stoves are fun to cook on.

Brittany
25 May 2010

A few groups of students had a competition to create a camp alphabet in less than 5 minutes. Here are the combined results:

Awhitu Alphabet

A - Awhitu, awesome, apple crumble, aqua shoes

B - Bolivia, burgers, ball, bed, beach

C - Cabins, cans, crabs, camp, cliffs

D - Dads, dinner, dirty, dishes

E - Electric fence, eels, ensalada, espanolF- Fun, friendship, fences, fishing

G - Grounds, grass, girls versus guys games

H - Hose, hobo stoves, helado,

I - Ice-cream, idiots, intense, I made new friends


J - Jelly, jogging, jueves, juice

K - Kids, kauri tree, kind parents

L - Lighthouse, la comida, lentils, lookout

M - Mexico, mud, museum, marshmallow

N - Native, nature, nobody left out

O - Orpheus, orienteering, our times have been fun


P - Posts, pohutukawa, pies, pikelets

Q - Queues, quail,

R - Road, rimu, rocks, rescuing sausages

S - Sunset, sunrise, sea, soccer

T - Tide, tins, toilets, towels, trees

U - Undies, ukulele, urinal,

V - Venezuela, vegetarian, verandah

W - Walking, wind, wet, water

X- Extreme, extraordinary

Y- You're always having fun

Z - Zoom slide, zebra-coloured cows

Our Camp Visit to the Manukau Light House

In our team we are learning to write a recount which is a non-fiction account of an event or something which has happened. First we looked at what the features of a recount were. Then we practised writing a few sentences to make a short recount and after that we wrote this together as a class- with much discussion and many additions and alterations as we went.

On a cloudy, dull-weathered Wednesday morning we arrived enthusiastically at the historic Manukau Heads lighthouse, about 20 minutes by bus from our camp at Matakawau on the Awhitu Peninsula. We were excited because we wanted to see where the Orpheus shipwreck happened, since we had learned about it in class.

We were met by Paul Dixon and Sue Johns and their dog, Toru - our tour guides. Toru was wearing a lighthouse jacket with a cross-stitch picture of the lighthouse on it.


First we climbed a flight of steps (about 119 of them) up a steep hill to reach the lighthouse and the lookout where we sat and listened to a talk by Paul who told us about the history of the original lighthouse which was first built after the Orpheus shipwreck in February 1863.

Paul also told us that the original lighthouse was across the valley. He explained that a group of locals organised refurbishing it and making it an exact replica of the original lighthouse. He told us about the wood carving nearby which was done by a man in memory of his mother and wife.

We learned that the Manukau peninsula is made of sand and across the harbour is made of volcanic rock. Paul showed us a piece of metal which had come from a shipwreck in the harbour and had been discovered on the beach.

Paul asked us, "Who can guess how Toru got his name?" Rosie guessed it was because the dog had three patches on his back. Toru means 'three' in Maori.

Then we split into groups to explore the lighthouse, to go to the lookout and to have a quiz with the teachers and parents.

In the lighthouse we learned about the light and the prisms and that they are now obsolete. "It is one of a kind," said Paul about the light. He values the prisms as diamonds. "If you cut your finger on one, it would really hurt," he added.

The original lighthouse used paraffin for the light and needed two men to keep it going in six hour shifts. We learned that you could not live in the lighthouse because it leaked. From the deck we could see the exact point where the Orpheus sank on the sand bar. We could see hugely strong currents in the water and a small boat struggling through the waves which were bigger than they looked from our position. We could also see where the old signal point used to be and where the Tasman Sea meets the Manukau Harbour. In the distance we could see Auckland city and the Skytower.

It was a peaceful and calm place because it was so quiet.

At the lookout we learned more about the Orpheus shipwreck which happened at 2 oclock on a sunny afternoon in good weather and quite close to land. It sank because it hit the sand bar in shallow water. Many people on board could not swim and 189 lives were lost. It is New Zealand's greatest maritime disaster.

At the end of our visit, we thanked Paul, Sue and Toru and got back on the bus to go to the Orua Bay Bird Park. We had learned a lot that day and many of us decided that we would like to return with our families so we can show them what we had experienced.

Here is an article about our visit, published in the Waiuku Post.

For other links to the lighthouse click here.

If you would like to have a guided tour of the lighthouse, phone 092351458.

Huia 1 and Kea 1's camp at the Awhitu Environmental Camp

This is where we have been for a week.

and here.

Here are some random photos from our camp at the Awhitu Environmental Camp last week.


They are in no particular order but will give you an idea of some of the activities we did and the experiences we had.


There are still lots more photos to come.

There are some places along the road to Awhitu where you look right down into valleys and out to the west coast.




Fun on the rope swing - over a creek which got deeper as the tide came in and swept away Stanley's bridge and dam.


Red-billed gulls who shared some of our biscuits for morning tea on Thursday.


We went for a long walk to find the eels - and to entice them out of the water with some of our luncheon sausage. They got quite good at standing up on their tails to 'beg' for food after a while.




Recreating a scene from World War 1.


Some of us had a cold swim.


The zoom slide - getting wet and wild... and dirty. And, that wasn't only the students.

Well, you didn't think you'd get me on the zoom slide, did you?

At the light house at the tip of the Awhitu peninsula - investigating the Orpheus shipwreck.







A walk through the Awhitu Regional Park.



We found a nest of plover eggs in the paddock. (Mrs Whitehead knew they were plovers).


Hobo stove cooking - Master Chef-style.






And then we had to speak Spanish to say what we wanted for meals.





We went to the Orua Bay bird park - and fed the birds.








The men taught the boys how to light a barbecue.


We saw the sun rise and we had a beautiful full moon.