Beneath the land lies the waves of our waters,  crying for help behind closed borders. So we need to sacrifice the price for a better future, to replace the harm and produce a place to help them nurture.

The health of our waters is worse than you think, where soon our sea creatures Could be in danger of becoming extinct. As guardians of this earth we can help by wasting less, Or by making illegal dumping a spreading awareness. From the washing machines and trolleys, To microwaves and lollies, And now little to no streams, That’s not very jolly.

Another great thing you can do with your peers, is volunteering for pollution clean ups, that’s something so dear. Not only is the problem pollution and trash,  but also overfishing and creating a stash. So next time take what you need and don’t be greedy, To insist that in the future we are not needy.

How sad is it that the water and fish can’t breathe, While they are being covered by oil and debris. So next time while constructing for a building or home, Clean up after yourself so that fish can roam. Make sure to be helpful and tidy, As this will be oh so mighty.

Kaitiakitanga 

This Semester in kāhu, our theme is Kaitiakitanga/ Guardians of the galaxSea.

Kaitiakitanga simply means Guardian of the environment meaning, the sky, land and sea. With this in mind, we walked to Tōtora park and The Botanic Gardens with our iPads and used an app called Seek to help us identify things around us.

 

Tōtora Park

Walking in Tōtora park I noticed that the ground was very damp and the mud was quite slippery. I saw some really massive Tōtora trees and a big lot of stairs. The streams were quite murky and dark and were running quite slow and even some had rubbish. I could hear multiple birds in the trees and could hear the streams flowing below us as we were coming closer. I saw some really cool big leaves and sticks that had fallen or come from the trees.

 

Botanic Gardens

It was very quiet when walking around and we were mainly walking on smoother footpaths all throughout with multiple different gardens and plants. I saw where the puhinui stream continues and saw that it was quite clear and clean and was flowing quite fast. There is a stormwater pit that filters the toxic or dirty chemicals in the storm water and then flows the clean water to the stream leaving the toxins out. There were some really vibrant flowers I saw while looking around.

 

Comparison

In comparison I could see a big difference in the environment at botanic gardens compared to Tōtara park. The botanic gardens were much cleaner and there was a much bigger variety of plants than there was at Tōtora park. Tōtora park felt more ‘earthy’ with all the trees, vines and trails but botanic gardens felt much more like plant gardens. The stream was very different where at the gardens it was very clean and flowing quite fast but Tōtora park was much more murky and slow. This was very interesting to see because although they are the same stream connecting they looked completely different. Both of these places were fun to visit and I saw some really interesting things.

 

 

 

Who was or is J.R.R Tolkien? Why was and is he so famous? You may have heard of him or not, but his name is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Tolkien was an English writer, philologist and scholar. He is very well known for his very famous fantasy books: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

He was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on the 3rd of January, in 1892 to Arthur and Mabel. At age four, he was away visiting family in England, when his father soon passed away to rheumatic fever in South Africa. His family was then moving all over Birmingham, town to town, street to street, for a few years or so. During that period of time, he attended King Edward’s school and spent a brief time at Oratory school due to his mother converting to Catholicism. When he was twelve, his mother had developed diabetes with an untreatable illness leading to her death later on. Tolkien and his brother Hilary were made wards of a catholic priest but lived with aunts in multiple boarding homes not long after. At age sixteen, he met Edith Bratt, who would later on become his wife.

In his last years of school, he was very talented in modern and classical languages with 6 contributions he made to King Edward’s School. In 1911, he won a scholarship to Oxford and two years later he was able to change from classics to English with his interest in philology. In 1915 he got his degree graduating as first-class honours, then in 1916 he got married to Edith Bratt. He was then working with staff in the Oxford English Dictionary and many other jobs. During this time, he was also writing many books, poems and letters. One of them being Santa Claus letters to his kids that were then published.

Tolkien had many famous books and poems but his most famous and top selling book to this day is The Hobbit. Around 1930 he was grading students’ certificates when he came across a blank piece of paper so, with boredom he wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit”. He was inspired to add on to this fantasy as a bedtime story to entertain his 3 kids. 2 years later he ended up finishing it and showed multiple people unintentionally knowing it would become greater than that. It was then published in September 1937 with 1,500 copies sold out by December.

Another top selling book of Tolkien is The Lord of the Rings. He started writing this book in 1937 as a follow up of The Hobbit. T.L.O.T.R took Tolkien 12 years to finish writing with many breaks along the way. In the years 1954 and 1955 it was published in three different parts and since then it has been translated into 38 languages. This book is now world wide famous with its main fame in the fantasy genre.

Tolkien’s ability to paint clear imaginiations in not only adults but children’s minds has given him a massive fan base that has carried on for generations. On September 2, 1973, Tolkien passed away in Bournemouth, England with many accomplishments and achievements throughout his life. His inspiration and legacy will, and has been carried on for years.

photo credit 

Staring at that frog as lonely as a rock

Looks like he’s trying to find his missing glock,

Strumming a song on his guitar

Retracing the steps that didn’t take him far,

The fish sprints by going splish, splash, splosh

While the frog is still thinking about his glock named Josh,

He is a broken heart on the rock

Oh look! he checks his pocket in a tock,

What was a million years later

His life teleported to something greater!

Look at that frog not as lonely as a rock

Looks like he found his missing glock.

*credit to Once upon a picture for the image.

My first week of 2024 term 1 was a hectic but enjoyable week.

The first day of school was a lot of preparing and setting ourselves up for success. We found out our classes, our new teachers and labelled all of our stationary. I was filled with excitement when I found out I got Mrs Kelly. Then for the next day or two we had kahu expectation rotations. These rotations explained more in depth on how kahu will be, what will be different, all the expectations that come with being in kahu and setting up our P.A.Ls (Portfolio of assessment and learning) and our google drives.

Along with kahu comes many leadership roles which is why we have to apply for jobs! These jobs come with a big responsibility so the teachers have to make a good but hard decision on assigning jobs which is why we have to apply. The applications make the teachers’ choices slightly easier and will help them understand what we will bring to the table.

During the week, a few of us girls had softball trials for the upcoming softball tournament in week 4 but, unfortunately, our field is under construction to prevent accidents happening so we had to walk 5 minutes up the road to a bigger area.

Lastly on Friday we had a writing assessment. We had to write a recount on a memory we had with our whānau so I wrote about going up north. Aside from the writing assessment we got to have HOUSE GAMES. House games are one of my favourite parts of the week because it’s always a fun time to have a break, do some fun activities and enjoy being active after a crazy week.

What a great week back! I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year brings in 2024

This is a photo of our hāngī while it heats up the stones, (from my nans tangi)

Thursday 8 December was my favourite day this week! The Blake foundation came to our school to talk about the pollution in our ocean, what causes it and how we can fix it. They also taught us many facts along the way. That’s not even the best part. The best part is that they brought vr sets to show us and make the experience so memorable and realistic.

As soon as the vr set went on my head the only words I could say were wow, this is so cool, im swimming with fish! And so many more. The VR set makes your mindset really believe that you are underwater or flying over beautiful mountains. The very first setting we went to was Goat Island. Goat Island had beautiful clear blue salt water, colourful vivid coral, fresh and tasty seaweed and really pretty marine life. The special thing about Goat Island is that it’s reserved meaning you have no right to go fishing, take shells or any objects found there. Basically meaning that it is forbidden to take anything from Goat Island and if you were caught you would get fined. That’s why Goat Island is very pretty and lively because you can’t take any natural resources.

Although Goat Island was a very healthy environment, the next location is not as healthy. It’s Auckland harbour. Auckland harbour is very popular for fishing or wharf jumping and that’s why it looks so horrendous. The water was all green and murky from all the algae and had so much junk at the bottom like tires, pipes and clothes. There weren’t that many fish or seaweed, meaning that it has been like that for a while. It wasn’t that interesting to look around at either considering it was hard to see from all the algae floating around. I can’t imagine how hard it was to film in this extremely filthy water. The vr had really captured up every single detail if you were to dive into the water in real life.

The Blake foundation is really inspiring, helpful and friendly for our world. The Blake foundation was made after Sir Peter Blake, a passionate and famous sailor. He was very caring for our world and wanted nothing but a better place/life. He was sadly killed by pirates on his journey through the amazon river protecting his crew members. The Blake foundation wanted to make a difference by carrying on Sir Peter Blake’s legacy of caring for our environment. The Blake Foundation has done many amazing things like beach clean ups and the main part of all is to educate people. They make their education sessions very enjoyable which is why they bring in vr sets for us. I really enjoyed this experience and learned a lot. I recommend this experience because I promise you that you’ll never forget it.

I was strolling through the city admiring the shimmering lights and shooting stars when I suddenly bumped into a strange looking wall. I stepped back and took a seat to refresh my eyes. The wall suddenly lit up with a door appearing. I couldn’t control myself from not opening the door until a sudden portal sucked me in without a sound! I open my eyes to see a frightening  black room with nothing but shadows! Woofneiggghhh, woofneiggghhh. What’s that sound? I feel around for a lightswitch but nothing is near. I call for help until……

An imposing black figure flies through the shadow. I try to make aware of what this creature is. It’s big with enormous beautiful white wings! I can’t make out if it’s a horse with wings or a dragon. Finally lights appear! OMG! IT’S A GIGANTIC DOG WITH WINGS! Its razor sharp teeth shine in the light! I’m guessing this creature is a male. His eyes are so cute but they are haunting me! WOOFNEIGGGHHH! His breath stinks so much. It smells like gherkin and lucky charms. A creepy clown appears in the distance threatening me with his frightening eyes and black teeth. The mysterious creature plunked me on his back and teleported us to a…..

Fairy tale land filled with prepossessing unicorns, puppies and fairies. I finally got a proper glimpse of this creature. He was surprisingly so cute! His gigantic paws and big black eyes weren’t so scary after all. I’m very glad he saved me. I just can’t make out what his name is? Omg he is a dogasus! I’m reading about this in my book. It’s a horse sized dog that can fly. 

Wake up! Wake up! Huh, what. Hhmmm. Where was I? “Get ready you’re late for school’’ says my mum. What do you mean? Wait! That was all just a dream/nightmare. Phew I really didn’t want to be kept away from my normal size dog! Layla, Layla come. Oh no, not again. Now my dog has wings.

Live in 3, 2, 1 action! Hello and welcome back to Yes, that’s news. My name is Georgia and I will be your host for this session. Today we will be reviewing and looking at The Gardens School science fair led by students and teachers. This science fair has many types of categories like, fabrics, water, building, fiber, health and safety and many more interesting things. We have picked 6 of my personal favourite conceptions/creations to review. The 6 chosen ones are Greek pottery by Tui, Body health by Kahu, Volcano display by Kahu, Pressed flowers by Kakapo and Fibres and Fabric by Tui.

Our first review for today will be drum roll please……the volcano display!! There were about 10 different volcanoes but one specific volcano caught my attention. The name of that volcano is Whakarii mountain. It is 48 km from the north island bay of plenty with the elevation of 321 meters above sea level. The last eruption of this volcano was December 9 2019. I rate this creation a 9.5/10. Next up is pressed flowers by the Kakapo. They were testing out if dried up flowers worked better than fresh flowers. Their final pieces look absolutely astonishing! It was very bright but simple which is why I rate it a 8/10. 

This next one is a big favourite of mine, It’s the Greek pottery by the Tui’s. They made portraits of the famous vase of greek. They used to use the vase to tell stories about gods and heroes of Greek myths which is pretty cool. Their portraits were very creative, elegant and a very great representation of the original piece. 9.5/10. Sorry everyone, we will have to pause for a moment while we have had a little mishap of some kids spilling some experiment on the floor. Please bear with us for a moment as we deal with this. Thankyou for waiting patiently. Let’s carry on.

Next up is body health by Kahu. Their station had a mixture of exercises, what foods are good for you and hot to keep your body nice and healthy. I enjoyed their demonstrations of the exercise and seeing all the delicious food. It was very helpful and useful because half of these things I never knew. I think that they deserve a 9/10. Last but not least is fibres and fabric by tui hapori. For their experiment they were testing what materials can keep us warm, dry and the hardest fabric to catch on fire. They found that……………………………………………. Lots of this information was very new and very surprising. I also really enjoyed seeing their tents they built to demonstrate. 8.5/10

Overall their science fair was a really fun experiment! I would very much enjoy going again! What was your favorite creation/ or creations?

Pigs going Moo!
Cows going Oink!

Am I on a farm, or am I on a zoo!

I certainly don’t know what to do!

Cows don’t go oink 

And pigs don’t goo Moo

I must be stuck In between two!