Te Kinga's Big Day Out.

 Yesterday Te Kinga had their "big day out" and it was a lot of fun (even though it was raining a little bit). Before we left for our "day out" we were put into groups of 4 for challenges. One of the challenges was a first aid challenge and how we will react in situations if our classmates were injured. We were walking along the Arnold river track, and one of our group members (Jimi) fell and pretended to break his arm. The rest of our group, which consisted of Aroha, Grace and I had to help our group member. When we were helping Jimi we had to check for dangers, make sure Jimi was responding and sitting up. We were going alright until we had to put a sling around his neck and arm, because when we tied up it kept on falling off. Here's Jimi with his broken arm:

When our class had got down to the beach near the swing bridge, the class was put into 2 groups, and we had to build our own shelter because it was raining. Solomon and Flynn knew exactly how to build shelters, so everyone followed their lead. We had decided to put the end of our tarp (which was our roof) on some tree branches using some flax as rope. We stuck giant sticks in the ground and used it to hold up the other side of the tarp. Nic told us to get under our shelter, and Alice (Solomon's mum) grabbed a bucket of water and tipped it on the roof of our shelter. Luckily, the shelter had survived and stayed up. The other group weren't so lucky cause when Alice poured another bucket of water on their shelter it broke and fell on them, but no one got fully wet.

My favourite challenge though was building a fire, which was fun. So I dug a small pit and got some dry wood and put it in a small TP formation. Underneath the TP I put newspaper and dry grass. When my group was ready to start the fire, we were given 2 matches and a match box. The first time I tried lighting the fire the match blew out, and the second time I tried lighting the fire the match also got blown out. So I decided to steal someone else's fire. I got prepared by grabbing a stick with newspaper on it and then I went to the lucky victim's fire when they weren't looking and light my stick on fire. I went slowly to my fire so it didn't blow out and put the stick on the paper and voila, my fire was ready. On top of making a fire, I got to make and eat smores which was fun because there were giant marshmallows to go with it.

So overall it was a good day and everyone had so much fun.

Captions

 Today in Te Kinga we were captioning our camp photos.

Here is an example of whet were doing in class.

Topic

 Last week Blake and I were doing a Topic challenge with the rest of the class. Our Topic was to see who can make a boat out of flax and flax flowers, everyone made a boat in the given amount of time so our next challenge was to float them. Everyone's boat floated so we did another challenge which was throwing them off the swing bridge and racing them. Everyone threw their boats and none of them broke but the boats were speeding down the river. I don't think any of them sunk except for me and Blake's boat which was half above the water.

Do you think you can make a boat?

Our visit with Mike O'Driscoll.

 Today Te Kinga went for a walk down to the lake to learn what Mike (Solomon's dad) did for his job. Mike once a month goes to Lake Brunner and does some tests to see if the water isn't contaminated and is safe for the environment. Some of the tests are testing the temperature and also doing a Black disc visibility check, which is seeing how far he can see under the water. There is another test to see how much dissolved oxygen is in the water. The reason Mike sees how much dissolved oxygen is in the water is to see if the fish can breathe under water or not.

Here is a picture of today:

Literacy Task.

Last week for literacy I did some work about a Roald Dahl book called Danny the champion of the world. The work I did for the book is novel studies. Novel studies has a bunch of questions for each chapter for the book I am reading. The questions that were given to me were hard and it made me read the chapters over and over again. So my novel studies work is challenging which is a good thing to help me learn.

Topic

 Last week for topic I learned about hydro powered dams. Hydro powered dams are dams that create electricity from water. The way the dams work is that the water from a lake or river goes through a tunnel and pushes the blades which are connected to a turbine making them spin. The turbine is connected to a generator, so when it spins its powering the generator. The generator then passes through electricity to power lines which powers houses and buildings. Our school is powered by a dam called the Arnold dam which uses Lake Brunners water.

What im looking forward to this Term...

 What i'm looking forward to this term, is the sports. In winter time there is usually a lot of sports to do. This terms sport that we are learning is handball. Handball is a mixture of Netball and Basketball, Handball teaches you about communication, throwing and passing skills and of course teamwork. Along with sports my goal for this term is to get better at my basic multiplication. I'm already good at my multiplication but I want to be able to quickly know the answer if its on a test. So what i'm looking forward to this term is sports. And my goal for this term is to get better at my multiplication.