Swimming Sports

Last Tuesday we hopped on a bus and made our way to Tawa Pool for our Year One Swimming Sports. A big well done to all the swimmers - you all tried your best in the pool and it was a fabulous way to celebrate all your hard work during our swimming lessons earlier this term. Thank you to parents and whānau who came and supported us! And a huge thank you to Max A from Rata Toru's mum for taking these marvellous photos for us!

The first races were the ping pong ball races. This is where we blow a ping pong ball across the pool as it floats on the water.

The second event was the flutter-board.

Next, we got to do an egg and spoon race.

The last event was freestyle.

A quick debrief after the race!

Awarua the Taniwha of Porirua

After reading the story of Awarua, the Taniwha of Porirua, we created our own Awarua art. Together, Rata created this lovely mural showing all of our beautiful taniwha swimming through Porirua Harbour and flying across the sky, some flattening Mana Island as they soar across it. Everyone worked so hard on their art, well done!

If you haven't already, we would love you to have a close look next time you are in Rata!

Great Stuff Adam!

We have been learning the word for a 'bug scientist' because we are going be bug scientists ourselves during our Minibeasts Inquiry. The word is "entomologist". It can be a hard word to remember and even trickier to thread onto a string with beads! Tino pai Adam!

We are entomologists!

An entomologist is a bug scientist. We are going to be entomologists in Rata as we get stuck into our new Inquiry unit about minibeasts!

We got together in Buzz Groups to brainstorm things that we can do to keep ourselves safe and care for bugs and our environment during our Inquiry unit. We talked about three important values: kaitiakitanga (guardianship), manaakitanga (kindness), and mauri (respect for all living things).
Our ideas form our tikanga matatike (code of conduct).

We went for a walk around the school to see if we could spot some bugs. We know to look but not touch any bugs we see - we don't want to hurt them!

Looking for caterpillars in the butterfly garden outside Totara Tahi 

Can you find the caterpillar and the bee in this photo?

Looking in the grass for bugs 

There is a green vegetable bug in this picture. Can you see it? It'a a bit hard to spot on the green leaves.

We spotted a vine hopper on a leaf, then we looked a little closer... 

More vine hoppers! How many can you count? 

Another full branch!

More Capital E!

Here are some short clips of one of the shows we saw on Wednesday during our trip to the Capital E! National Arts Festival.

A Busy Week!

Tino Rawe Rata Wha! You have worked so hard this busy week! On Monday we presented our awesome self-portraits at Assembly.

On Wednesday we went on a very exciting trip to the Capital E! Arts Festival. We saw three shows. It was a great day. Thank you so much to our Parent Helpers and everyone who offered to join us for the day.

We have continued our Swimming Lessons this week. Friday was our last day of Swimming Lessons for the year and we put on life jackets and learned how to stay safe in the water.