Kayaking!

This morning we headed out to a beach in Russell with Sarah, one of the Adventure for Good guides. We were all really looking forward to this and it was a first time for the majority of us. Miss Stone was particularly looking forward to this activity as she had kayaked in her youth.

When we arrived at the beach, Dan from Bay Beach Hire fitted us all for life jackets. This was fantastic as we had all learnt about life jackets during our water safety lessons in term 1. We then had a lesson with Sarah on the shore about how to paddle and steer a kayak, before we carried the kayaks into the water in pairs.






We excitedly took off and practiced a range of maneuvers, like a 360 degree turn, kayaking to a buoy, kayaking in different directions and more! We all found it pretty simple to steer the kayaks and our strict fitness regime paid off as we all had the strength to paddle and steer for some time without any complaint! 

'


After practicing for a while we went on a tour around the bay and weaved in and out of the rock pools that lined the shore. It was a beautiful day in the bay, the water was tranquil and it was absolute bliss floating on the water.







We managed to get back to shore pretty quickly, so we asked to go swimming. Here we practiced some of the moves that we learnt in term one like the HELP position, huddle, skulling and treading water. We then had a little play and splash around before Sarah took a small group of us to swim out to a buoy and back - what a fabulous experience!

A Day in Room 8

This week, we have been establishing our class norms in room 8 and looking at how our days should run. We thought we would create a video to show our usual class timetable, on days that we do not have Kiwi Sport or Kiwi Can.

For the first half of term 1, our class will have a daily swimming lesson in our school pool. This is something our whole school takes part in, as we think it is really important to develop water safety skills. We also have 15 minutes of fitness (physical education) in between reading and writing. After lunch we cover other curricula areas, such as inquiry, health, the arts and te reo Maori.

                     

We usually blog during our lessons, but we will be blog commenting as part of our reading lessons. This not only improves our reading, but also allows us to connect with students in other schools as we are part of a Tuhi Mai, Tuhi Atu group.

We hope you enjoy our short video - it's our first for the year and we look forward to making heaps more!