Merry Christmas, Kaitieke, New Zealand!

From your friends at Ola School, Idaho, USA

Christmas Around the World

We have been learning about Christmas around the world. One of the ways we did this was by sending emails to people who could help us learn about Christmas in their country. We have learnt some interesting things about Christmas in other countries. Here is a screen shot of the email reply I got from Egypt.

I learnt how to take a screen shot of the whole computer screen and I learnt how I can select how much I want to screen shot. I did a partial screen shot of the email so as not to include the person's email address, showing good digital citizenship.

Are you guys doing anything special for Christmas at your school?

Question

        We noticed that in some of your pictures you don't have shoes on. In our school and any public building, you have to have shoes on or else you can get kicked out. Do you have any rules like that?
Abby

Wolf Report

Thank you Ola for your answers about grey wolves around you.

We have been learning to take notes from video clips and online text. Our aim was to find out more about the grey wolves of Yellowstone National Park, having read the novel Wolf in the Wardrobe, a NZ novel by Susan Brocker. We have also been thinking about how to describe precisely using the right scientific vocabulary. This led to us learning how to use a colon to introduce a list. Can you find the colons in Jack's wolf report?

Wolves 12/10/16

Wolves are canines like dogs, they look similar to a german shepard but are a lot bigger.

Diet

Wolves eat many different ungulates: caribou, elk, bison and deer. They also eat much smaller prey too, such as rabbit, beaver and otter. They will eat the sick, old or young ones because they are easier to catch.

Hunting

When hunting, wolves will split up and chase their prey from many angles so they can trap it. The wolves will bite the legs of their prey and hold on until another wolf comes and strikes it in the throat. They can run for a long amount of time to catch their prey (at least 1 hour). Wolves are capable of running through water and snow.

Pups

The alpha male and female are the only wolves that breed in the pack. There are usually about 4-6 pups in a litter. When the pups are born, all the wolves in the pack will help to look after them. To feed the pups, the wolves will regurgitate some meat from their stomach for them.  

Communication

Wolves communicate in a few different ways: howling, barking, growling and whining. A wolf from a pack will howl to give the other wolves a warning, or to bring the pack together. Lone wolves will very rarely howl.

Annual fund raising horse trek

Hi Ola

This last weekend has been a long weekend here in New Zealand, as Monday was what we call Labour Day. Each year we run a three day horse trek, to raise funds to support our school buses. It is a lot of hard work but many people from the community help us out. The children sang a few songs on the Sunday evening to thank the trekkers for spending their long weekend in the beautiful Kaitieke Valley. Here we all are performing.




This is what some of the children wrote about the experience:

As I stood on the stage, I could see people staring at me. They looked at me unblinkingly. I felt little butterflies in my stomach. I never wanted to get up on the stage, even to sing just 4 songs. I felt nervous before I had even walked up on the stage. When I was on the stage I was so nervous I wanted to go home, but I had to do it. 

At the end, I felt like the nerves were for nothing.    Blake

As I stood on the stage I could see, old people staring at me. They were looking serious. "This better be good," I thought in my head. I could hear people talking but I could not hear the conversations because they blended together. Every noise that was made echoed in the room.When we started singing, I heard Jonny's cow boy boots tapping on the ground to join us. I never wanted to get on stage but I had to so that I could ride the bus to school and home.  At the end I felt like I earned something. Bryce

As I stood on the stage, I took a deep breath, sat down and started singing. As I looked around, I tried not to laugh,  and I realized it wasn't that bad . Well ...until my solo. The butterflies came back.
It was silent. I sung. The other girls sang after me, then the clapping echoed around the room.On to our next song- Down to the Country. The music started, so did the nerves. All of us started singing. I felt this was easier than by myself. After the song I felt way better The butterflies were gone. I wasn't the tiniest bit nervous, just relieved. Ria

My Summer Adventure

I took a hamster named Dorito, and during the summer I did 4-H with him. 4-H is where you learn about agriculture and animals. Our 4-H group is called the Ola Roughriders. I did all of the book work with him and around the first week of August, I had to show him in front of all the judges at the fair.  Dorito was very nervous because they had just got done showing the cats. I brought him up to the showing table and he crawled inside my shirt. He had started nibbling on my hands before this but it didn't hurt that much. After I got him out, he took one big chomp on my finger. I was so surprised that I flung him across the table accidentally. After I got him back the judge was right by me. She asked, "Please show me how you would check your hamster." With my fingers trembling, I had to hold him by his fur, and then lift him up on his back, without him biting me. As I was told from my friends afterward, my face was bright red. After I had put Dorito back in his cage, I washed all the blood off my fingers, and counted how many times he bit me, just counting the times he chewed through my skin, and it was 12 times! 

A few hours afterward, I was watching the sheep showing, and one of the moms came over to me. She said that she had just saved Doritos life. I went back to our canopy, and Dorito's fur was dark and wet. She said she had to pour water on him because he was in the sun for almost half an hour and was melting in his plastic cage! Now I know not to take Dorito for granted! Next time I will tell you about my chicken, Fluffy. 

Do you have anything like 4-H? Do you have pets at your house?
-Hailey

Girl band

And here is the girls band.

Music

Here is the latest boy band to come out of the Kaitieke Valley! Not bad when you think the oldest child is 10 years old.

Apples

  In first and second grade we are studying apples.  We learned what made apples turn brown.  We are doing an experiment.  We put 5 pieces of apple in a cup with water, a cup with oil, a cup with vinegar, and a cup with nothing.We made a prediction in our journal.  Which one do you predict will keep the apples white?
We will find out on Monday.

Questions about wolves

This week we are writing a scientific report about Grey Wolves. We have been doing lots of reading about them but thought it would be great to ask you some questions, as you have wolves near you. We don't get wolves in New Zealand at all.

Firstly, you mentioned in one of your posts about ranchers. What are ranchers?

Have any of you been to Yellowstone National Park? What is it like?

Have any of you actually seen a wolf? Can you describe it for us?

Have you seen wolves attacking your animals? What do you do about this? Are you allowed to shoot them?

What are your thoughts about wolves being reintroduced to Yellowstone Park? Are you for or against this? What are your reasons?

If you see wolves, where do you normally see them?

We will send some of our reports when they are finished, so that you can give us some feedback.
The Seniors

Chrome Books

    Hello! My name is Abby. Last month the 5th and 6th graders got Chrome books. Chrome books are like mini-laptops.We use them for many things such as  research, writing, Moby Max, and testing.

10 Apples up on Top!

In first and second grade, we have been doing several activities with apples.
First, we read the book by Theo. LeSieg called Ten Apples up on Top!
We checked to see how many apples we could stack on our table. Our predictions were not very close.  We tried different strategies and wrote in our journals. Then we tried to stack them on our heads.  Here are the pictures:

                   

The next day we had to design and build an apple carrier out of just a few materials, like pipe cleaners, cards, popsicle sticks, paper and straws.  We had to be able to carry at least three apples for ten steps.  It was fun. Tomorrow we are experimenting with rotting apples.

Our Art

Lately we have been studying optical art. We did the Fall-Aways, optical tunnels with a vanishing point, and we made the hand art that you made.

Echo the Gecko

Echo is our Leopard Gecko. Her head and tail are soft, but her body is rough. Geckos are ectothermic. They like their temperature around 80-90 oF

This Is Our Hamster, Peanut!

 

Peanut is a dwarf hamster and is two years old. She had five babies named Dorito,Walnut,Cheese,Speedo, and Cheeto. Do you have any class pets??

-Hannah

Ski Days

This term, Kaitieke School went skiing at Mt Ruapehu  for three days. The seniors and Luca got to try new places like The Waterfall and  the Knoll Ridge t-bar.  Some of us got to go up to the Valley t-bar too. Using T bars was new to us. Instead of it being a chair lift, you just rest your bottom on a bar and it pulls you up the slope. 
We had three beautifully sunny days up there and my skiing really improved.
Do you have ski fields near you? Does your school take you skiing?

This is at Happy Valley  near the magic carpet.

Our Musical Production

This term we have been practicing for our musical play called  The Big Adventures of  Little Red  . Our play includes a lot of different fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs, Rapunzel, Three Billy Goats Gruff and  Jack and the Beanstalk.The play has lots of songs to go with the fairy tales. We performed the play on Monday afternoon to two other schools. There was about 120 children watching us. Then we did it again on Thursday evening for our families. I was Little Red and my sister was Rapunzel.
We are going to try and make a DVD of the show when we come back after the holiday. We will send you one.
     Little Red and Rapunzel

Cross Country Running

 In term 3, Kaitieke School went to the cross country race at Owhango School. The distance you have to run depends on how old you are. I am 10, so I had to run 2.5km. We all did well at Owhango School and so we all went to the inter schools cross country event, when we had to run against the fastest runners from 15 other schools. I came 4th in my race. It was a fun day for us.
Do you do cross country running as part of your PE?

Wolf in the Wardrobe

This term we have been reading the Wolf In The Wardrobe. This story really pulled me in, in the way they  described with words  and how it was very interesting. I learnt  more and more things about when you are writing a story. The story is about a kid called Fin and his dad. When they went to the circus, there was two wolves, a male wolf and the female wolf. They had to jump through a flaming hoop of fire and if they didn't the clown would hurt  them. The best bit is when the clown said to Fin "Cackles is watching you!". Lupa means she wolf.
I wondered if you have wild wolves near you because in the story, which takes place in New Zealand, Fin chooses to send Lupa back to Yellowstone National Park which is in the USA?

3D Art work

We have been doing a bit of art this term, and one piece of art we did was trying to draw a 3D hand using just lines. For some of us it was quite easy but some of us found it challenging. To do this we lightly traced our hand vertically on the paper, then we drew some horizontal lines across the paper but when we got to the hand we created a mound over to the other side of the hand. It was a really simple idea, but it turned out quite effective. Give it a go and let us know how you get on.

Jack's 3D hand art.

Kaitieke School Gardens

Hi Ola School
New School Garden                                             
This term we have planned and built a new school garden. The new school garden was built by Jason Smalley and Luke Green. The school is trying to plant some seeds to get the gardens full of plants. There was a truck that came to school and its company was Jileson. It brought the dirt and some bark to put around the garden boxes. We are going to plant tomatos, sweetcorn, lettuce etc. Do you have a vegetable garden at your school? What do you grow?

school garden

Leonardo da Vinci and Simple Machines

Hi Ola School
Recently we went to the Waikato Museum to see an exhibition showing many of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions. Did you know he invented a sort of helicopter and the first hand-glider? Because we are learning how to use Google Apps for education, we took what we had learnt about da Vinci, and made a slide show collaboratively in a group.




For the next few weeks we are going to learn more about the 6 simple machines (many of which da Vinci used in his inventions) and we are going to have a science fair at the end of our learning to showcase what we have learnt.

Another option for videos...

This is how we put the video on the Blog.  We hope our directions work for you.

• Take video on camera,phone, or tablet.
• 
  
• Plug device into computer
• 
  
• Click "my Computer". It will show the device you have plugged in.
• 
  
• Click on your device and find your video. Drag it into your video folder under 'Libraries'.
• 
  
• Open your Blog and click on New Post
• 
  
• Click on 'Insert video' icon.
• 
  
• Click the blue bar that says 'Choose a video to upload'.
• 
  
• Open your video folder. Select your video; click 'Open'.
• 
  
• The video will begin transferring to your blog post.

And our videos are working!!

Gabe, third grade,age 9;  Cody, third grade, age 9;  Travis, 2nd grade, age 8;  Colton, 2nd grade, age 8;  Allie, 1st grade, age 7;  Jade, 2nd grade, age 7;  Tiffany, kindergarten, age 6;  Roslyn, kindergarten, age 6.

Including a video on a post

We learnt how to add a video to a post, when we did our little video clips introducing ourselves. So we thought we might be able to help you out with some instructions. This is how we did ours.

Take a short video clip on the I-pad
Tap on the upload icon which is a square with an arrow.
You will be given a choice of what you want to use to upload. We used Youtube (we had already downloaded the Youtube (free) app on the I-pad.
Fill in the title and a description and then click on Publish in the top right hand corner.
Once the video has been published to Youtube, you can then click on share which gives you an embed code.
Copy the embed code.
Open up your blog post and click on insert video in the top menu bar
Choose 'From Youtube' and paste the embed code in to the box and search
The video will come up and you can click on it and then click on Select in bottom left.
The video will then come up in your post.

Hope this helps you to get your video uploaded on to our blog.

We have also started to add labels, so that each time we make a post we can add a label or two. We are hoping to learn how to do things from each other as we go, so we have added the label 'How to...'

4th through 6th Graders at Ola School

Hello Kaitieke,

It sure was great to meet you and see how you have all grown since our last Skype session!

We are having some difficulty sharing our video so we are sending a photo for now. These are our 4th through 6th graders at Ola School.

Girls, From Left to Right:

Abby, age 9, grade 4;   Hailey, age 11, grade 5;   Katelyn, age 11, grade 6;   Hannah, age 10, grade 5; 

Boys, Front to Back:

Riley, age 9, grade 4;   Ezra, age 9, grade 4;   Dane, age 12, grade 6;   Ulysses, age 11, grade 5.

We will send introductions of our Kindergarten through 3rd grade students next. Have a good week!

Kaitieke Junior Introductions

Hi Ola School

This time we are introducing our 7 Junior students. You might be wondering why they are not in school uniform like the Seniors were. Well the day we filmed this it was the last day at school before our two week autumn break. We let the children wear mufti on the last day of term, because they then have to come back to school in the evening in uniform and they do a presentation of their learning for their parents and other community members. Four of these children started school at the beginning of February and the other three have been at school for between a year and two years. So here they are.




From left to right, and in order of presentation we have: Luca, Blue, Jamie, Micaela, Kaysha,Riley and Eru.
Looking forward to meeting you guys.

Kaitieke Seniors Introduce Themselves

Well here we go! Our first post on our shared blog. We are writing this together as a group today, although as we get in to the swing of regularly posting, we will have individuals send posts too.

We thought we would start by sending you a short video clip to introduce ourselves. At Kaitieke School this year we have 16 students. For three days of the week we have a second teacher working here and so we split the class in to Juniors and Seniors. The Seniors who introduce themselves below are Year 4 to Year 8 students. This makes us 8 year olds to 12 year olds.




So in order we have Nate, Codi, Kyle, Jack, Ria, Maia, Blake, Lycan and Bryce.

In our next post we will introduce our Juniors.

We look forward to 'meeting' all of you in your first posts.