Monarch butterflies

Room 13 has a close relationship with the butterfly garden. Ms Daniels brought some of the caterpillars and chrysalis's inside in term two because it was getting cold and wet. Maybe the caterpillars would have a better chance of turning into butterflies if they were inside the classroom.

Well, they did, and here is some art inspired by the beautiful butterflies.

First we drew a butterfly in pencil

Then we enlarged our sketches and used creative paint to make a raised outline in black.

We cut out our butterflies

...then painted them with dye

Standing Tall Art Exhibition

The Hamilton East School Art Exhibition was brilliant.

Our own contributions to the exhibition were really high quality.

Here are some images from the exhibition:

Room 11 self portraits
Inspired by Chuck Close

Sunflowers were a popular subject

Tom Foote
Self portrait
Chalf pastel on black paper

Paper mache owls and fantail made by Room 11

Monarch butterflies
Room 13

Sunflowers.

Modigliani inspired self portraits by Room 13

Compost Update

Here is our compost movie that we made for the school film festival. It was shot completely by the students and Ms Jones edited it and added the music track. We hope it inspires you to to compost your own food scraps at home.

Term 2

Room 13 had a great holiday and came back to school to work with their reliever teacher Ms Daniels, and Whaea Katrina. Ms Jones is away recovering from ankle surgery.

To mark Anzac day, they made Anzac biscuits. Here are some photos of the process .....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Ms Jones has been adjusting to a very different pace of life, with her leg up on the couch. She had her ankle fused because she damaged it in a motocycle accident fourteen years ago. Now she has a bone graft and some metal plates and screws which mean she will have a bionic ankle when it all heals up. It will take a long time. Ms Jones is not allowed to put any weight on her ankle for six long weeks.

Here is a photo of her blue plaster cast with a toe cosy to keep her toes warm.

The best part of not being able to walk is the cool knee scooter she was given to get around.

What a brilliant invention. Ms Jones can't wait to come to school and show the children.

Meanwhile, at the end of last term the giant pumpkin that was grown last summer and carved to look like a taniwha. was laid to rest with Oscar and Elmo, the two bush-heads in the Butterfly garden. Here they are enjoying the peace of two weeks holidays.

Smashing Pumpkins

This video shows the Hamilton Gardens giant pumpkin competition from last year.

Look at all the fantastic things you can do with pumpkins. Imagine growing ones as big as the two ginormous ones on the trailer!!! 

We grew giant pumpkins at school again this year.  

Ms Jones collected the seeds for them from the mess of smashed pumpkins at Hamilton Gardens last year after they were rolled down the hill. The seeds came from a whole lot of different pumpkins so that's why the pumpkins grown by the classes this year were all different shapes, colours and sizes.

We carved the biggest pumpkin into a taniwha.

We collected the seeds from inside the pumpkin so we can grow giant pumpkins again next year.

Ahhhh  ha   ha!!!!

Preparing for the art exhibition

We are excited about the school art exhibition that will be held next term.
As our sunflowers have been spectacular this year we decided to make collage art about them.

First we drew our sunflowers with sharpie. They had to be big. 

They also had to overlap in places.

Then we dyed them.

Next we added collage to the centres of the sunflowers to create the effect of seeds and the frilly green edges of the sunflower centres.

This is how they turned out.

We will mount them for the exhibition later.

What fabulous artists the children of Room 13 are.