Our movie for the film festival

HES harvest festival in the hall

Balloons over Waikato Festival

Early on Friday morning some HES families turned up at Dawson Park to watch

the inflation of an enormous hot air balloon. Some lucky people also got to take off

in the balloon as well. Luckily it was tethered (held down with a rope) and we returned to earth in timefor school and positive assembly. There was also a Night Glow event at WaikatoUniversity that many of us in Room 10 went to, in this movie there is also footage and photos from the Night Glow which was beautiful to see all the balloons lit up at night.

Some interesting facts about hot air ballooning the pilot shared with us at 
positive assembly:

• the balloon can only go up to 2000 cubic feet because the aeroplanes might hit it and you get low on oxygen to breath
• you don't need a license to fly a hot air balloon 
• it can reach 500,000 feet but it's not allowed to
• the most amount of people you can hold in a basket is 35
• the pilot has been flying hot air balloons for 7 years, he has clocked up 100 hours of flying time
• it takes half an hour to pack up the hot air balloon after deflation

Powhiri at Te Kohinga Marama Marae, Waikato University

Q & A Time

Who? The whole school 

(children, teachers, Migrant mothers, 

parents and Tangata Whenua (local people/hosts)

What? Powhiri (welcome) for the manuhiri (HES visitors)

Where? Te Kohinga Marama Marae, Waikato Universtiy

When? Week 9, Thursday 27 March, 10 am

 Powhiri 

Kaumatua (elders) say speeches
We sing waiata (songs) to support the speeches

The tangata whenua and manuhiri hongi 

(press noses and mingle breath)

 Sketching time - look, draw, look at the carvings and wharenui.

Practicing our Mihimihi for the marae trip

Room 10 is looking forward to visiting Te Kohinga Marama marae this week.

Niaana has been our kaiako (teacher) this week 
leading us in our Mihimihi recording.

Alaa's mihi is extra special because she says 
hers in Te Reo and in Arabic.

We will be doing more recording in Week 9.

Race Relations Day - Friday 21 March, 2014

New Zealand is multi-cultural which means there are a lot of different people from different countries who are living in Aotearoa. They bring with them their special culture, language, clothing, religion, food and ways of doing things.

On Race Relations Day we looked at a world map to see where some people are from in Room 10. 

We found Fiji, China, India, Korea, South Africa, Sudan, Nepal and Egypt. 

12 people in Room 10 can speak another language than English and some go to a special school to learn in their home language. Other languages they can speak are Arabic, Afrikaans, Korean, Nepalese, Chinese, Hindi and Fijian.

We were lucky to have some Japanese students come and visit us at school. Here are a few photos of our afternoon.

We are learning calligraphy and origami with our
Japanese visitors.

Do you know what the Japanese writing means?

Badminton with Amy and Rm 10

On Wednesday in Week 8 we played badminton in the hall with Amy, who was a professional badminton player. Some of us didn't know what badminton was and we found out that it is a racquet sport like tennis and squash but you don't use a ball you use a shuttle cock.

Some of us thought a shuttle cock looks like a tee you use in rugby others thought it looked like feathers or a spider web. On the end of the shuttle cock is rubber/leather part like a ping pong ball that is heavy and makes it glide down. It doesn't go down fast because of the shape and the feathers.

We found out a tennis racquet shot was slower than a badminton shot - tennis is 150km and badminton was 420km!!!! OMGoodness.

Some people already knew how to play and they could hit the shuttle cock easily.

It is impossible to hit these things 
10 times in a row!

Listening carefully to the instructions...

You had to make a tick when you were holding 
the racquet for forehand shots.

Looking at yourself in the mirror
with the racquet.

The boys are showing us the backhand 
grip technique 

Careful concentration goes into making the first shot.

This is an action photo and she is moving so 
fast that the camera can't keep up with her.

Here we are practicing hitting the shuttlecock up and 
down 10 times in a row with backhand.

We are working on our hand eye
coordination tracking the shuttle cock.

"It was fun and sporty playing badminton with Amy"
"It was annoying because I kept missing it when I was trying to serve it"
"It was fun but I kept missing it but that's okay because 

you just keep on trying and we don't give up!"