Hello everyone ! Room Four have been working hard on Olympic research. We have been using our ipads and computers to find specific information about the ancient Olympics and our modern day Olympics. Mrs Millar has challenged us to find out information each day following the links on our websites.

We are watching the news and reading the newspaper to keep an eye on which New Zealand competitors are succeeding in London. We are also learning about mapping and we have to draw in the boundaries of England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic Of Ireland. This was sort of tricky !!! We also had to put in the capital cities on our map of United Kingdom and this made us think !!!

This unit is awesome and we love watching Mark Todd and the rowing. Our canoers and women's black sticks are going well.

Our Mihimihi.

Room Four have been "busy as bees" creating their own personal mihimihis. A mihimihi is a traditional form of Maori speech making. We have chosen to use fabric to tell our stories. Our mihimihi show who we are, what is important to us and where we are from. It shows our two mountains - Tarahaoa and Huatekerekere and our river - the Rangitata.

I whanau ai au i Aotearoa                       -  I was born in New Zealand.
I noho ana au i  Carew/ Peel Forest        -  I live in Carew/ Peel Forest.
Ko Tarahaoa/huatekerekere te maunga   -  Tarahaoa / Huatekerekere is my mountain.
Ko Rangitata te awa                                -  Rangitata is my river.

Our first step in the creation of our mihimihi was to make a plan in our topic books of the features that we were important to us and form an illustration of our end result. We then selected a piece of hessian that suited our plan and attached two wooden batons to the top and bottom with the staplegun to form a wall-hanging. We then began layering the background, hills and sky.

We then followed our original outline and plan and began working with the different fabric textures, colours and patterns to create our picture. We had to be very careful with the glue guns and several of us got a sharp reminder of how hot the glue was ( including Mrs Millar !!! ). We scouted around and found bark, wool and cotton balls to help us build up our mihimihi.
    

We worked hard and had to concentrate so we told the story that was important to us. It was fun watching the mihimihi come together. We managed to make a massive mess and Mrs Millar would look at it and laugh but every time  Mrs Millar was blown away by how well we always cleaned the classroom back up !!!

Our end results are special - we are special !!!