Halloween by Tumanako

The tradition of halloween is to celebrate the friends and family that have passed away. Halloween is taken way back, like in the olden days when there was an ancient celtic festival known as samhain. During medieval times in Ireland and Scotland, the Samhain festival was held at sunset on October 31st and lasted through daylight on November 1st.  It marked the ending of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the “dark season.”people believed that the dead would return as ghosts so people would put food and wine outside of their house for the ghost’s to take. People would dress up as ghosts so they would be mistaken as one of them. Halloween was brought to the US by Irish and Scottish immigrants during the late 18th century to the early 19th century.

Today people celebrate halloween by putting pumpkins with carved faces in them spider webs around their houses and other things that scare off people for halloween. People still dress up as ghosts but they also dress up as monsters, vampires, the devil and other scary things too. As for the kids, they dress up in fairy tail people like, princesses, something mythical, something off a kids movie or anything that relates to being a kids costume. They go around house to house saying “trick or treat” and to be funny “trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something nice to eat”. They walk around with pumpkin buckets or anything else they can store their lollies in. As you can see over the time traditions began to change.

We can carry on celebrating the way that we are because there is nothing wrong with how we are celebrating but there might be some people that

are dressing up in costumes to blend, in but really they're just doing that because they want to kidnap a child or person! They could even be the people that live in the houses that your kids going to! So the parents are letting their children/child go by themselves/self, DON’T because one day they won’t be coming home!

In Mexico they celebrate Días de los muertos or Day of the Dead on November 1st.  It is a big celebration that honors family and friends who have passed away.
In Hong Kong Halloween celebrations are known as Yue Lan  meaning Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. During Yue Lan celebrations fires are lit and food and gifts are offered to angry ghosts looking for revenge.

Halloween by Dekorah

Why do people celebrate Halloween?

As you know Halloween is a holiday event that happens once a year at the end of October,but does anyone know why we celebrate it,or what even is Halloween? Did it have a name before Halloween?  Here is an explanation about what Halloween is and it’s history.

Halloween all started with a tradition that was celebrated over two thousand years ago. It was known and named as “The day of the dead” or in other terms “All Hallows”(this name was called by the saints on November the 1st.)The tradition of celebrating All Hallows was believed that the dead ascended from a door that lead into the underworld opened and let all sorts of spirits through.People believed and that the spirits would come and bring harm to their town’s and families.So during the Samhain festival people would leave offerings and food outside their houses so they would take the food instead of the people.Towards this people dressed up like a ghost or a dead being that made the spirits think that they are dead and would let people pass by.When people did this they could enjoy their times by passing house to house celebrating the festival of Samhain.

In in this event other countries also celebrated it but named it different things,and believed in different reasons.Here are what some countries celebrated it like,and what they called it.Halloween was accompanied by a Celtic festival of Samhain on which was called by “Summer’s end” for it was to be the end of Summer and the beginning of Winter,this was also a common reason why they celebrated this festival of Halloween.Medieval times in Ireland and Scotland,the Samhain festival was held at dawn on October the 31st towards the daylight of November the 1st,it was called “Dark season” which meant it highlighted the last day of harvesting,and the new day of winter. Over time Halloween was brought to the US by the Irish and Scottish people living in the united states during the 18th and 19th century.Ever since then traditions began to change.

Now Halloween is just celebrated by going other people’s doors and saying “Trick or treat” to get candy,or Halloween is just to have a family get together party,or even just partying.In the modern days though this event is mostly popular with children,in the original days trick-or-treaters mostly received fruits,nuts,money, and wine to contribute to their delight.In the present days Halloween Trick-or-Treaters became more popular in the US for all of the shops went all out of selling products contributing to Halloween,and sells 6 million each year just because of Halloween and its contents.

There are more and more reasons to why Halloween is celebrated and how other countries had celebrated it back in the day.We shouldn’t forget why is was created and all of its history,for Halloween has more to it than just getting free candy and sweets by just saying a phrase at someone’s door.

Feuerstein

This year Winnie, Po, Simeon, Pelenise, Fasi, Amelia and Maselino have been part of a Feuerstein group with Mrs Raj. This programme supports children to develop metacognitive skills; to consider thinking and learning in an organised, structured way.

Mrs Raj has been really happy with the students progress and so she asked them to share their learning in assembly. Each learner spoke very clearly and confidently about what they have learnt at Feuerstein and they explained how the programme is structured.

Riveting Riddles!

Today in Kiwican we were learning about respecting ourselves and our strengths. We first played a game where we had to tag people by jumping every time a whistle was blown, which was lots of fun for us all!

Then we had a discussion about respect before the next activity was introduced. In this activity, we were split into two teams. The first team went to room 11 with Miss Tuia while the second team stayed with Mr Numia. Miss Tuia's team were given a page of riddles to solve. This involved lots of discussion and sharing of ideas, as the riddles were very challenging.
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Mr Numia's team had to throw a hula hoop over a cone, which was harder than it looked as it could not knock the cone over. We had so much fun taking part in these activities we wanted to continue when the bell rang! Thank you Kiwican for another awesome session.

Friday Afternoon

This afternoon we took our writing to  Room 1 and Mrs Ripata. Earlier in the week we had written stories that would entertain younger children so we thought we would share them with the new entrant and year one students.

After reading our writing we also read some published childrens' books with them. We really enjoyed talking to the children about what they liked in the story and it was interesting to see what they found funny! When we were finished with our reading we helped them to play on the playground. We all had a wonderful time!

Diwali!

This week we have been celebrating Diwali, the festival of light. Mrs Raj came in and talked to us about the way that the festival is celebrated in India and we watched some videos about the story of Diwali. It was great to learn more about a different culture and religion.

Miss Stone asked us to create some Rangoli patterns. Traditionally these are made out of coloured sand and they are used to decorate the entrance to a house. We used felts instead, but we did place our finished designs on the door to our classroom! We also got to try some Indian sweets that Mrs Nath made. These reminded us a bit of donuts as we could taste pastry, butter and sugar.

Te Reo Bingo!

This week in te reo Maori we learnt the name for some of our favourite food and some common foods in te reo Maori. This was to support our current learning which is focused on food and drink.
We will continue to focus on this for the first part of the term, so keep a look out for some of the flash cards that we will be creating!

Buddy Reading

This week we discussed writing for a specific audience, so we decided to write stories and recounts that would entertain the younger students at our school. We spent the first few days of the week writing and illustrating these stories and we all had lots of different ideas - Miss Stone was very impressed!

Here is the beginning of Alex's story, about his early visit from Santa!

Last week on Sunday, Santa came to my house to play with me. We had lots of fun. Santa came in his sleigh with his 8 reindeer and they were all very friendly.

The first place we visited using Santa's sleigh was the candy farm. When we got there we ate lots of chocolate and lollipops and they tasted sweet like honey. When I ate the chocolate it melted in my mouth with joy. After eating all those sweets Santa got FATTER, his face grew more round, his stomach grew out of his shirt and his pants ripped! I asked him if he was okay and he just replied “Ho Ho Ho”.   

Check out Davarni's story about 3 bears:

                  

First Day Highlights

Today we had a class decision regarding the topic "are learning and behaviour the same?".
Some of us argued that we need the right attitude in order to be able to learn and that traits such as determination, resilience, motivation and drive for learning make it more possible for us to learn and achieve more.

However,  other mentioned that learning is not the same as behaviour, because behaviour involves controlling our emotions but learning involves developing knowledge and skills.

We decided to make up a profile of what we consider an active learner to be. We came up with the following:

• Determined to try their best
• Take risks
• Challenge themselves
• Share their ideas with others
• actively listen to others
• Are not afraid to ask for help
• Think critically about what they are learning
• Take responsibility for their learning 
• Take risks and are not afraid to fail
• Take opportunities that you are given e.g. to demonstrate your strategy with the class.
• Set and follow learning goals.

We worked on becoming active learners in our writing lesson, where we worked really hard to meet our writing goals.

Then we focussed on our behaviour in our class soccer match. We made sure that we were respectful and that we acted as team players.

Ignition Assembly: the Conservation of Animals

This term we will be focusing on the conservation of animals. We will be investigating different endangered animals and identifying the factors that put them at risk. Miss Stone made this video to introduce the topic:

                 

After watching this video, what questions do you have about the conservation of animals?