Olympics day

Today we decorated ourselves up in our house colours ready for the Opening Ceremony.

 

We sang our Olympic song and watched the Olympic flame being brought up to the stage.

 

Let the games begin!

Sock wrestling

Tug of war pulling

Stilt chariot racing

 

 A great day was had by all!

 

Our gold medals

Clay was used to make medals.

We needed to squash it down and roll it out to make it soft.



We used rolling pins and playdough cutting tools to shape and decorate the clay.

There were lots of different designs.

 

Once the clay was dry we painted them with gold paint and glitter paint.

We showed them off at our Junior Assembly and to the New Zealand gold medalists who drove past. 

 

 We were 'gold medal' cooperators!

New Zealand Olympic athletes

"The Olympians threw a hat".  - Sophie

"Ilam school children waved the New Zealand flag". - Gabriella

"They threw a flag down from the double decker bus". - Navia

"They waved at us". - Poppy

"We were waving our flags and thunder sticks at them because we wanted them to know we like them". - Daisy

"I liked seeing the fat medals". - Sage

"I felt happy because I liked seeing their shiny medals". - Faris

Japanese Calligraphy

Sage's Mum came to Room 12 and showed us how to do Japanese calligraphy on Thursday.

We stood up straight and bowed at the end

of the session and said 'domo arigato gozaimasu' (thank you).

Japanese Tea Ceremony

Yamato's Mum came to Room 12 dressed in a tradtional Japanese kimono this morning.

She showed us the Japanese tea ceremony.

The tea ceremony is performed on a tatami mat made of bamboo.

She is getting some hot water from the water pot
which is usually heated over a fire.

Japanese green tea is bitter.

It is not sweet like hot chocolate.



"How does it feel when you do it", asked Daisy

"I feel very calm", answered Yamato's Mum

These socks are called 'tabi socks' and are
worn with Japanese shoes.

Thank you for sharing the tea ceremony with us!

An English Legend - St George and the Dragon

This morning Daisy's Mum came and shared the story of 'St George and the dragon'. This is an old legend from England.

Then we sang 'Puff the magic dragon' and used the percussian instruments.

Finally we dressed up as fair maidens, knights and dragons and created some paper characters and masks. 

Thank you Kirsten!








Turkestan

Today Faris and his Mother wore their traditional clothes from Turkestan to school. Turkestan is next to China and has lots of poor places where they don't have electricity or water in their houses.

They showed us some instruments called 'rawab'. They have five strings and sound like a quiet guitar.

Dresses are made from cotton and are handmade.

We all thought that Faris looked like a Prince.

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful dancing and Culture!

Learning about Nepal

Suryanshu's Dad came and talked to us about Nepal. He showed us a map with snowy mountains.

Mount Everest is the highest
mountain in the world.

Nepal is the birthplace of
Buddha.



We looked at a photo of a
bride wearing a red dress.
Red clothes are worn for
special ceremonies.

We also found out that there are lots of rhinos and tigers in Nepal.

Thank you for teaching us about Nepal.



Life in Burma

On Monday Eain Si's mum came to Room 12 wearing her beautiful Burmese dress and shared some photos of life in Burma and taught us some Burmese dancing.

Encouraging words and Perseverance

In Room 12 we've been learning to use encouraging words to help people persevere and feel happy.

What might it sound like or look like?

"Keep trying"

"Try your best"!

"You can do it"!

"Go go go"

"Yay"

"Good job"

People clap  

People cheer
Thumbs up

People wave flags for their country team at the Olympics.  

 

We are a team. Let's encourage each other!

We made streamers to cheer people on at our Olympics day.

Some people used  their house team colours and some people wanted to encourage everyone so used all the colours.

 Children practised cheering people

on as they tried

their best at

the straw

javelin event.

Room 12 Olympics

Today we cheered each other on as we tried our best at some throwing, stretching, jumping and grabbing events.

We made sure that we started at 0 when we measured how far we could step, jump or throw. We recorded our results on our recording sheet.

Preparing for shot put

Giant step



Making flags with our buddies

Room 19 and Room 14 came to our classroom today and we all made a flag to wear at next Thursday's Olympic's day.

We then went outside and practised a torch relay.