After Camp: the photos

Thanks to Mrs Whitehead and Mrs Robinson for these great photos. As you can see, we managed to have a lot of fun learning -  in spite of, and sometimes because of, the weather.

Here's the link to the video about boys learning about electric fences...

Sunrise over the last day of camp

At last - the sun! Be prepared for much wet laundry heading home - some of it mud coloured, and possibly some you've never seen before - with happy kids (and some tired ones...)

Check out some of the boys learning about farming technology - and teamwork. 

Happy Campers - Day 4

More rain today but we still managed to get a lot done:

Cooking toasted sandwiches on a hobo stove.

An early morning walk to visit the cows, orienteering, cooking on hobo stoves, a walk to Crab Island, a beach clean up and a clean up of one of the walking tracks, and the mudslide - all before dinner. Tonight's dinner: small tuna rolls and grape-juice-based sangria for tapas, empanadas with salad - and a special potato curry by Mrs Singh, one of our parent helpers; chocolate pudding,ice cream and peaches.  A very busy day and a very special evening for our last night.

More weather and science at camp. I guess we know where the real Rainbow's End is now.

Happy Campers - Day 3

Look what we found at the beach after Mrs Whitehead's lesson on the habits of the mud crab. Two of these are not mud crabs.

This is our view in the afternoon, after it stopped raining, or was it just before it started raining - or both?

Team building activities with High Wire Trust instructors. This was the winning team.

This is what happens when you are late to  High Wire instructor's activity. (It only happened once!)

A happy camper!

Day three and all's well. The day started with an early morning walk with Mrs Whitehead to meet cows. She has some great photos, but you'll have to wait to see those. We had another great activity session with the instructors from High Wire Trust, with lots of team building challenges, goal setting and self-evaluating. There was no mucking about, and no lateness was tolerated. (See photo above.)

In the afternoon, we went down to the beach to explore for evidence of mud crabs. We managed to get back before the downpour.

Dinner was hamburgers - patties cooked on the barbecue in the rain by the fathers and some of the hardier boys - and apple crumble.

There has been a bit of rain but we are all fine.

Happy Campers Day 2

View of waterspout on the Manukau Harbour this afternoon. We had a very good view of this from our cabin steps. The best kind of outdoor education!

We've had another great day - with a range of weather.  We started the day with beautiful weather and a walk around the park with the park ranger and camp manager. Students learned to climb a fence and a gate in the proper way, and how to identify electric fences. 

Students head for the cattle, after being given instructions on how to herd them.

Cattle, observing being herded by kids

 We fed huge eels and visited an old homestead of the first settler farmers here. Then we came back for homemade soup and pies for lunch, and an afternoon of games and activities. For dinner we had roast chicken and roast potatoes, carrots and peas, followed by ice cream, jelly and fruit salad - then later Milo and home baking. (We are loving the home baking, by the way.)
To finish the day, Mrs Whitehead and some of the parents took a group of students on a night walk up to the look out for a view of the lights of Auckland.

Happy campers - Day 1

We are having a wonderful time already. We are doing outdoor survival activities with the Hirewires Trust staff. Happy kids, happy parent-helpers, happy teachers.
Dinner tonight: Spanish tortilla and nachos, followed by fruit salad ans ice cream.

Information Updates

Here's a link to our latest Year 8 camp newsletter.  

Here's a link to our latest school newsletter (Term 2 Week 1).

Congratulations, team, on a very polished and well-prepared Anzac Assembly on Friday. Our guests from the Manurewa RSA, and our  other visitors  were very impressed with your work.

We will have some writing and photos of our Anzac assembly posted soon.

 - WANTED - 

Empty and cleaned

sweetened condensed milk tins 

we need these for making hobo stoves for outdoor cooking 

 and 

clean ice-cream containers - with lids 

to use for camp activities  

and

lemons 
for camp also

If you have any of these to spare, could you please bring them to us at school. 

- Thank you -    

Welcome to Term 2

We had a wet 'n' wild start to Term 2 today.  We hope the weather will be better in time for our Year 8 camp on two weeks' time.

Wanted for camp:
- clean 2 litre ice-cream containers and lids 
- clean, empty sweetened condensed milk cans

Our main focus for this week is preparing for our Anzac Assembly on Friday morning, as a follow up to  our homework research on the history of Anzac Day and the Victoria Cross.

 

Intermediate Team's Anzac Assembly 

Friday May 10 

11:00 a.m. 

The Gardens School Hall 

with special guests from the Manurewa RSA

Parents and community are invited to attend this special event, hosted and run by our Intermediate students. 

   

Lost and Found: What's living in our garden?

 Here's a link to Kereru 1's  video about bullying. It has some powerful messages.


Read the latest school newsletter; you never know when Mrs Fowler will ask us a question about it at assembly.

Our swan plant was looking pretty sick. Over Easter, the three caterpillars disappeared. We thought they weren't old enough to make a chrysalis, and wondered if someone  had taken, or harmed them.

But this week, three caterpillars appeared on another healthier swan plant at the other end of the garden. We wondered if someone had transferred them. There does not appear to be any other monarch caterpillars around our garden this year. 

The aphids - and lady birds are back.

You can almost see the bee's knees . . .

Another caterpillar in our garden. This is not a monarch caterpillar. Is it helpful or  harmful? What kind of butterfly or moth will it change into?

We enjoyed reading about  Mrs Whitehead's pigeon (kerereu) rescue. You can find out more about it here.   We are looking forward to hearing about its progress.

On Sunday, Karmveer and Corbin are representing us at the Sunrise Walk to help raise funds for the local hospice. The class have brought donations to help support our two boys and the cause.

Our Rugby Picks for the Weekend:
(Winning team and winning margins written first)
Brumbies 13+ against Highlanders Picked the winner but not the right margin
Chiefs 1 - 12 against Reds
Blues 1 - 12 against Hurricanes
Rebels 1 12 against Kings
Crusaders 13+ against Force
Sharks 1- 12 against Stormers
Cheetahs 1-12 against Bulls

Caterpillars Up Close

Here's our current school newsletter.

 At lunchtime we saw three caterpillars on the stalks of the swan plant. We were going to relocate them to a healthier plant, but they were too hard to pick up. We will try it again when they are on a leaf, so we can pick the leaf off and then wait for them to crawl onto a leaf on the new plant.

The caterpillars were moving their heads a bit. (Well, we think they were their heads - it could have been their tails.) We need to work out which end is which.

I wonder if the aphids worry about the caterpillars?

Can you tell the anterior (front) from the posterior (rear)?

The head must be the end that is munching on the leaf. We think there are longer antennae at the head than at the tail.  At the posterior,  the feet are like suckers holding onto the stalk; at the anterior,  they are just like little fingers - not suckers.

By Alisha and Ramandeep

Our rugby picks for this week (Round 6) are:

Highlanders win 1 - 12 against Reds

Hurricanes win 13+ against Kings

Chiefs win 1 - 12 against Blues 

Brumbies win 1 - 12 against Bulls 

Cheetahs win 1 - 12 against Rebels

Crusaders win 1 - 12 against Stormers
Waratahs 1 - 12 against Force

Our current results are:

• Season Score:  132

  Round Score:  31

• Current Rank:  33,796 Out of 75,605

  
  

Look Who's Back in our Garden ...

How many caterpillars can you see?
Can you see the tiny aphids?

Photos by Alisha

Our Rugby Picks for this week

 Here is this week's school newsletter.

Here are our choices for the Super Rugby games this weekend:

Chiefs  win by 13+ points against Highlanders

Result: Chiefs 19,  Highlanders 7. Well, we predicted a win, anyway, but we were wrong about the margin. 
 

Crusaders win by 13+ points against Kings
Result: Crusaders, 55 Kings 20. We predicted this one correct correctly. 
 
Bulls win by 1 - 12 points against Reds   
Results: Bulls 18, Reds 23. We got this one wrong.

Cheetahs win by 1 - 12 points against the Force
Results: Cheetahs 19, Force 10. We picked this one, too.  

Sharks win by 1 - 12 points against  Rebels
Results: Sharks 64, Rebels 7. We picked the winners - but not the margin.

Stormers win by 1 -12 points against the Brumbies
Results: Stormers 35, Brumbies 22. Our margin was only one  point out. Not a bad prediction!

Blues win by 13+ points against the Waratahs
Results: Blues 27, Waratahs 30. We were well out on this one. 

oooO0Oooo

And here's a link to the video/advertisement called: Paper is not dead.  It's our favourite video of the week - so far.

Bits and Pieces

This week's school newsletter. 

Our Class Treaty signing:

We have been learning about the Treaty of Waitangi, and based our own classroom treaty on events which happened at Waitangi in 1840.

Amber (as Captain William Hobson) reads the treaty to those gathered at the meeting. The class discuss it and give their opinions.

Everyone signs it. There is a bit of competition to to be Hone Heke (who signs it first) and Kawiti (who doesn't sign it on the day, but adds his name above Heke's at a later date.)

The completed Treaty:

 We, the students of Huia 1, 

agree to:

be in the right place,

at the right time,

doing the right thing,

which would be making 

cool choices. 

---- o 0 o ---- 

 More Fun with Puns: 

Well done, Ramandeep, for finding this example of a pun.   

Can you work it out?

Origin of photo unknown. 

 

 Spot the mistakes: 

Here are three photos of interesting errors found in Cambridge this past weekend. Can you work out what the interesting error is in each photo? 

 Heteronyms:
We have been learning about heteronyms. These are two or more words which have the same spelling but have different pronunciations and meanings. 

Can you think of different ways to pronounce, and different meanings for these heteronyms:  sow and sow, does and does, record and record, and buffet and buffet? 

Heres is a quite challenging game to place to  find the heteronym  to match each meaning.
Here is another game to find the heteronym - part II.

 Here are some pictorial heteronyms: Can you work out what they are? (Origins of images unknown) 

Pun With Comprehension

 From Grammarly.com 


The Year 7s had fun trying to work out what each animal is saying. We had turns reading it out aloud - as if we were each animal.
We learnt what a pun is . . . 

Unsure of origin of this comic.

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.