Our soon-to-be-beautiful garden . . .

This is our soon-to-be beautiful garden. It has a lot of beautiful flowers and an apple tree. We've found lots of junk and even a soccer ball in our garden! We plan on cleaning it and making it a wonderful garden again.

 

Garden management is done by Karmveer, Aaron, and Cameron W.
(Photos by Mwaniki)

Last week we made a lot of progress. The year 8s are preparing to get ready for camp. We've had loads of fun playing team sports and going to Spanish, art and maths.

Today, Mrs Fowler announced something amazing. . . There is going to be a water slide at school tomorrow! So don't forget your togs and towels.

Mrs Bull also revealed a linguists club for all the people in our school who speak a different language other than English. Congratulations to everyone who got a badge.

Everyone also seems to be enjoying some of their classroom jobs.

Mr Fowler, with the year 8s, is building a playground for the small kids. 

Sports
Last week The Gardens School participated in water polo. We won by 8 points! In the boys' cricket team, we won by 89 runs. For the girls' cricket they won their first match but unfortunately,  they lost their second.

Weekly Opinions
"It was really cool because we got to do lots of gardening." Karmveer
"It was cool last week because I got a certificate for 3000 Mathletics points." Aaron
"It was pretty good last week because I got selected to represent the school for inter-school cricket against Remuera." Sukhdev

Written and Published by Karmveer and Mwaniki.

Three Weeks of Fun

Year 7s are writing another blog while the Year 8s are in Poutama, making a new junior playground with Mr Fowler. 

~ o O 0 O o  ~

Things we have discovered about being an Intermediate:

- I have to be a role model to the younger children (Sukhdev)
- I am lucky to learn Spanish at this school because some schools don't learn Spanish (Karmveer)
- I have to take responsibility for sports gear, even if the little kids leave it lying around (Tara)
- I still have to respect the Year 8s (Aaron)
- I have to take on more responsibilities (Corbin)
- I have hard work - but fair (Amber)
- I get to use electronic devices more, and with more freedom (Mwaniki)
- I have different classses for maths, technology, Spanish and art (Syvannah)
- I have a "to do" list to help me remember all my homework and other tasks (Lili)

Things we have learnt:

Some Spanish:  

¡Hola!, ¿Cómo estas?  ¡Gracias! ¡Fantastico!

Capital letters are used for people's names and initials,  and for headings and titles in our work,  and  forholidays or festivals - such as Valentine's Day. We also learnt that Valentine's Day ALWAYS has an apostrophe.

In PE we are doing ultra-rip and are learning how to defend our tags and how to attack.

In social studies we have learnt about how to make Cool Choices: we can choose between cool, ugly and weak choices, but making cool choices is obviously the best choice.

We are also learning about what happened in New Zealand leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi:

Once it was discovered the kauri trees made very good spars for ships, a lot of ships came to New Zealand to  cut down kauri trees to sell in England. (Corbin)

Kauri trees were up to 30 metres high before the branches started, so this made kauri very good for round spars.(Amber)

Photo of young kauri

Thomas Fyshe Palmer was a released convict who came to New Zealand to look for kauri spars. He was a convict because it was illegal to publically campaign for the right for everyone to vote (universal suffrage). (Karmveer) 
In England, you could get jailed for trapping someone else's rabbits. (Syvannah)

Some explorers never returned to England. (Tara)

Governor King, from New South Wales, gave Maori from the Bay of Islands some potatoes and pigs when two kidnapped Maori were returned to New Zealand in the 1790s. (Tara)

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, people in England could get a seven-year jail sentence in Australia for something as petty as stealing a loaf of bread. (Mwaniki)

People could be hanged for stealing food; for example, in Sydney, in 1805, 2 men were condemned to be hanged because they stole some pork. (Aaron)

 The Maori rangatira, Te Pahi, was visiting Governor King. He begged for a reprieve for the condemned convicts because, in New Zealand, everyone was entitled to eat, and all food was shared; there was no such thing as stealing food. (Sukhdev)

Te Pahi

Seven years was the shortest sentence convicts had to serve in  Australia. (Lili)

Hone Heke and Kawiti were competitive; Hone Heke signed the treaty first, but Kawiti later wrote his name above Heke's. (Karmveer)

Huia 1 Year 7, 2013

Year 7s have had an awesome start to the year, and we hope that this will carry on.

Already we have learnt that Hone Heke was the first to sign the Treaty of Waitangi,  and the Queen of England at the time was Queen Victoria.

We have learned how to count up to 25 in Spanish because there are 25 students in the class - not counting the one who is still away.

We are all in different art classes and Spanish classes on Fridays.

Huia 1 has  five students  new to our school this year: Mwaniki, Syvannah, Joanna, Tara and Sukhdev.


When we asked them what they liked about The Gardens School, this is what they said:

Mwaniki: "I like the size the school. It's bigger than other schools. It means there will be more places to play and bigger places to explore."

 

Syvannah: "I like having friends. My new friends are LiLi, Brylee and Amber."

Tara: "I like that it's clean and it hasn't got rubbish in it. There are two drop off and pick up zones for parents. It's got lots of sports gear."

Joanna: "I like that it's bigger and there's more electronic devices - computers and iPads."

 Sukhdev: "I like that the school has more technology. It's bigger and there are more people to be friends with."

Today, in technology, we looked at the Huia 1 blog and learnt how to use the chatbox.

The chatbox rules are:
-  Use correct spelling and punctuation, for example, use a comma before someone's name if you are talking to them - such as:  "Nice comment, Aaron. ".
-  Use correct English - no text language  (you not u, for not 4).
-  Be polite.
-  Write about things that are relevant.
-  Double check before you press "Enter" because you cannot delete anything or undo a post. (Mrs Vincent can.)
-  If you find any inappropriate use of the chat box, enter enough happy face symbols to make the ugly comment scroll out of sight.
- We use first names only.

- Our blog is a friendly, happy, interesting place. 

Aaron 

Lili

Amber

Absent: Shehjadpreet and Karmveer.

Huia 1 2013

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Here's what Huia 1 looks like this year:

Welcome to Huia 1: Corbin, Alex, Mason, DC, Sukhdev, Jason, Cameron W, Kylah, Karmveer, Aiden, Dominic, Cameron M, Mwaniki, Aaron, Jamarl, Alisha, Amber-Lee, LiLi, Vanshika, Ramandeep, Jupman, Tara, Joanna, Syvannah and Brylee.