Week 8 - Putting together our artwork

Hi Bloggers,

This term we have been working to create a piece of art for our bi-annual art show.  This year our theme for the art show is animals.  It links with our Inquiry work too.  Manukau have just about finished their pieces.  We have been combining quite a few techniques to create 3-D fish in an underwater scene.

Firstly, we created paper mache fish using water balloons, paper and paste.  While these dried we designed and created an underwater scene on A3 paper. As part of this, we were learning about mixing and blending pastels to create new colours and smooth effects. Some of us also chose to collage extra features onto our scene.  Once our balloons were dry, we cut them in half, hot glued them to cardboard then added the fins.  We chose New Zealand fish for inspiration.  With our plan ready, we then cut these out using craft knives and painted our fish appropriately.  The final stage was positioning the two fish we created on our background, again using hot glue.


Next Tuesday evening is the opening of our art show.  We hope that you can join us.  Lots of work has gone into these as you can see.  You could also check out our individual blogs to find out more about students' individual pieces of art.

Week 5 - Tiritiri Matangi

It has been a very busy week this week.  We were lucky enough to visit the Island of Tiritiri Matangi as part of Inquiry learning this term.  As a syndicate, we have been focusing on animals, curiosity, and how we can make a difference in our own area.  Tiritiri Matangi is pest free and we were really careful to make sure we kept it that way.


Our day at school started extra early (we were there by 7:30 am) to make sure we made it to the ferry.  We then had an hour and a half boat trip before we got to the island.  Once we were there, the volunteer guides took us along the wattle track and we saw heaps of different wildlife, particularly New Zealand birds.  Some of us were even lucky enough to see the endangered Takahe, we saw 3 of them, which is approximately 1% of the world population.



After that we spent time exploring the lighthouse and visitors centre area. Then we had a look at the rockpools before our ferry trip home. It was a great day, answering lots of our questions but sparking many more, the true spirit of curiosity.




To find out more from the perspective of the students please check out our individual blogs on the side of the page.  We also have lots more photos available on our senior syndicate site gallery if you would like to see more.