The Wonderful Zoo Trip

Yesterday Room 16 visited Auckland Zoo. We went there to learn about animal patterns for our work for the art exhibition next term.
We split into groups and walked around looking at the animals. The weather was mostly fine, which meant that most of the animals were active. We thought the otters were cute and crazy, because they were showing off in the water. The spider monkeys were cuddled up in their hut when it was raining.
At 12 o'clock we went into the Kahurangi room. Helene talked to us about why animals have different patterns on their fur. One of the reasons is so that you can tell which animal is which. They also have these patterns to camouflage them, so they can hunt for food without being seen, or so that they can hide from their predators. Each animal's pattern is unique.
The zoo trip was really interesting and we learnt an awful lot!

It's Begun!

Buried Alive in Milk Bottles!

We've almost made our target of 500 milk bottles and have found ourselves buried in them! The bottles that have had cream in them are very difficult to clean, so we send those ones for recycling. Next week we finally get to start building our igloo.

By Daniel, Jamie and Adam

Milk Bottle Mania!

We're going to build a milk bottle igloo! To do that we need to collect lots of milk bottles. So far we have 260 and people are still bringing them in. Each bottle is worth 5 house points.

When people bring the bottles in, we ask them which house they are in and award them the right number of house points. Then the bottles go to the washing station. When we have time we clean them, by shaking them with water in them and wiping the tops with a cloth. After that they are left to dry. We tie them in bundles of 10 so they are easy to count.

When we have 500 bottles, we'll begin building our igloo. Watch this space!

By Victoria, Daniel, Jessica, Matthew, Manleen and Janice.

Colour Bursts

We've been creating exciting colour bursts in our art time. First we studied the primary colours (red, blue and yellow) and the secondary colours (orange, purple and green) and chose a primary colour for the centre of our work. Then we mixed different colours of paint to create the other colours in the rings. When our work was dry we discussed contrasting colours, by looking at opposite sides of the colour wheel. We used pastel to make extraordinary patterns on top of the paint. Don't they look fabulous?!

By Ha Jin, Victoria, Janice & Manleen.