Niuean Language Week - Goodbye and Thank you Monica!

Last week was Niuean Language Week. We celebrated this during our opening and closing assemblies through the Niuean language, listening to prayer, singing songs and watching performances by our amazing Niuean Culture group.

This year we had a special focus which was farewelling our Niuean treasure Monica who has been a special part of BMPS but who has sadly left. Luckily we still see Monica around school as she works at SKIDS.

The ‘challenge’ for each class was to create a farewell gift which was presented on Friday. Room 8 decided to bake cookies. Alongside this, we worked with a buddy to write recipes for Monica. This was a fun and creative activity. Some of the ingredients the we came up with were...

* 2 cups of cool Niuean dance moves

* A sprinkle of cheekiness 

* 4 heaped tablespoons of love

* 1 large loving heart

Baking the biscuits required careful reading, following step by step instructions, communication and teamwork as well as applying our maths skills in a real life situation. Take a look at the messy deliciousness!

Thank you Monica all that you’ve done for us. We will miss you!

BMPS Athletics Day

What a fantastic day we had on Friday! It is always great when our whole school gets together and athletics day is always a highlight.

There were a mixture of emotions...nerves...excitement but everyone did their absolute best and should be very proud of themselves.

Congratulations to those children who placed in the finals, particularly the Room 8 relay team which came first, even beating the parents team! 

Our vision for BMPS

At BMPS our staff and community have begun creating a vision for the future of our school. This term Room 8 added their thoughts and ideas about what they love about their school and ways they believe it could be even better.

We brainstormed our thoughts and presented them as word clouds

 We created vision boards with ideas for the future:

We also created a video - check out our acting skills!

...and we designed new school logos!

 
On Thursday we presented our learning to Mr Lyth, Mrs McAree, Miss Peter and Wayne.

It was so great to be able to share our learning with an audience.

Even though we are year 6 children and only have 1 more term at BMPS, we feel proud that our ideas may benefit children at our school in the future.

Weaving

Last week was Maori language week for 2018.

Room 8 spent time learning about Maori vowels and consonants, how to correctly pronounce NZ place names and the meaning being Maori place names. We sung songs, read stories, leant action songs with our buddy class and even had a go at weaving our own putiputi from harakeke.

Some parts were a bit tricky, but we helped each other and persevered to create a lovely flower.

We spent time learning about the tikanga involved with weaving flax.

We know:

• A karakia is said before harvesting the flax. This is to give thanks, to ask that no harm comes to the harvester, the weaver or whoever will receive the finished product. I also acknowledges that harakeke is a taonga - a gift.
• When cutting harakeke you should cut from both sides of the plant to keep it balanced. It's also important to only cut the outer leaves, not the inner ones as that is where the new flax grows from. 
• Pregnant women should not harvest harakeke - they are tapu.
• Harakeke should be harvested during fine days, not at night or in the rain as that can affect the quality of the harakeke.
• The first item you make should be given away.

Some of the new vocabulary we learnt...

Harakeke - Flax

Raranaga - To weave

Tikanga - custom

Putiputi - flower

Tapu - sacred 

Tongan Language Week 2018 Challenge

The challenge for Tongan Language week this year has been to create a piece of traditional Tongan clothing which was to be modelled at the closing assembly on Friday.

We had a lot of fun learning about different types of clothing such as the ta'aovala, lei, kiekie, tekiteki and kafa.

Room 8 decided to make it all! 

We watched videos such as this one which taught us about the process of making ngatu - Tongan tapa:

We then explored Tongan patterns and made out own 'ngatu'

Aphrodite and Tia designed and created a beautiful tekiteki

A group of girls worked hard on the lei...

And another group worked on the Keikei...

We were very proud of our final creation. Sulyne modelled it beautifully.

Making Otai

This week has been Tongan Language week. The theme this year is...

What better way to celebrate than with making the delicious traditional Tongan drink...Otai.

This is the recipe we followed:

• 1 seedless watermelon grated
• 3 cups water
• 1 15.25 oz can crushed pineapple
• 1 12 oz can evaporated milk
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 2 tbsp white sugar (optional) or to taste
• 1/2 lime juiced

It was a bit tricky trying to get all the seeds out of the watermelon!

Lots of grating!

Lots of fun and joking around!

Pouring, combining, mixing...

...And of course our favourite part...drinking it at the end!

Harvest Time!

Remember when we gave the garden a makeover earlier in the year? Well things have been busy growing and as part of our gardening rotation a few weeks ago, we decided it was time to harvest our vegetables.

It was a fun and busy time pulling up carrots, snipping kale and spinach, cutting cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower.

We gave them as wash (and carefully removed the slugs!). We were so impressed with what we had grown.

Some children took vegetables home but we had so many that we decided we would gift the rest, so Tia delivered them to our local food pantry where they were hopefully made into a delicious dinner.

We have started planting some of the seedlings that we have raised in our greenhouse, and we can't wait for our next harvest in a few months time.