Final Blog Post: Thank You for Being Part of Our Learning Journey

Kia ora koutou,

After many years of sharing the amazing learning journeys of our tamariki here, this blog will no longer be updated. It has been a privilege to celebrate the creativity, growth, and achievements of our diverse students at Ōwairaka District School.

While this blog may be closing, our commitment to sharing learning remains strong! For the latest updates, please check out our Facebook page or our school app, where we will continue to showcase student successes, events, and important learning opportunities.

Thank you for being part of our journey. Your support, encouragement, and engagement have made this space so special.

Ngā mihi nui,

Rimu Nui

Discovery Time Gardening

The last couple of weeks we have been out exploring the garden with magnifying glasses, helping weed the gardens and watering the plants. There are always bugs to be found and observed!

Another garden experience was making a perfume using the scented flowers and leaves in the garden.  This idea came from a beautiful book Carrie brought to school called Play Wild by Rachel Clare.

Pasta making

This week at Discovery time we made pasta. The ingredients are very simple: 1 egg per 100 grams of flour, but it takes a lot of kneading to get the dough soft and then lots of rolling to turn it into noodles. Lucky there were lots of helping hands!

 

Diwali Celebrations

At Discovery time it is a great opportunity to celebrate the many cultures of our school. For our Diwali celebrations we made pilau rice and tasted barfi, both were delicious! We also had henna decorations done on our hands, we made flower mandala patterns and all performed a dance. It was a very busy and exciting Discovery Time!

Discovery Time Baking

  

This week at Discovery Time we made Kawakawa Biscuits. Rimu Nui children got involved in the whole process from measuring the ingredients using scales and measuring cups and spoons, cutting up the kawakawa and mixing and shaping. We all enjoyed our morning tea treat!

Discovery Time Invertebrates

As we have been looking at invertebrates in class, we had some special visitors to class to observe. On the first week we had snails and slugs and the second week we found decomposers in the compost. The creatures doing the “chewing and pooing” to make soil. Some children made bugs out of construction materials, and some collected garden waste to feed the decomposers.

Discovery Time Mini Olympics

For the Olympics we tried out lots of different activities including throwing bean bags, ti kouka (cabbage tree) rounds and ping pong balls at and through different objects. Some Rimu Nui children invented new game out of the equipment provided. Others made medals to give out.  We finished the morning with a tug of war.