The students in Ruru have been learning how to use adjectives to accurately describe themselves. They then had to draw a self-portrait based on their description. Ruru students now know how to draw key parts of their face as well. We used a combination of pastels and paint for our art.
"I am proud of the effort each student put into their artwork and descriptive writing!"
Izzy Clapham

In Term 2, the students in Kakariki have been rocketed into learning all about the Solar System. They’ve had a number of learning experiences outside, charting the sun’s position from East to West across the sky by observing shadows - and by interacting with digital models of Planetary Orbit! Kakariki has explored the order and positions of the planets through some of their writing activities, and even a few songs.

Kakariki has also engaged with the Term’s Topic by creating some incredible pieces of mixed-material visual art - already they’ve made Night Sky Vignettes from paint and baking soda; Geometric Shape Aliens from glue and paper card; Astronauts from pastel on black paper; UFOs from paper plates; and coming soon, the class will be constructing a vibrant, colourful model of the Solar System from papier mache balloons!

Weka students have had a busy and exciting start to Term 2.  They have made the most of the beautiful sunshine by tracing their shadows to investigate the position of the sun.  Also they have been exploring measurement using non-standard and standard units of measurement to measure distance.

A special highlight to start off their term was creating their Mother's Day gift.  These were made with huge amounts of love just for their mums!

"We are looking forward very much to an awesome term of learning and growing together!"  Tamlyn Leal

Takahe have been learning about lines of symmetry in maths and positive and negative space in art.

They were able to cleverly combine the two. Through creating positive space (where the shape is) and negative space (where the shape is no longer) a line of symmetry is visible.

"The children enjoyed experimenting with these concepts and created some amazing designs."   June Ivamy

Tui class undertook an ambitious art project this term and after weeks of hard work, they have produced some spectacular self-portraits inspired by the work of Chuck Close.
This American artist's abstract and mosaic style is labelled 'photorealism' and it is a combination of both a photograph and a painting.  Close creates his portraits by enlarging a photograph onto a grid and then painting the squares with different colours and symbols.  In Tui class, they followed a similar method.  The students began by using the ipads to take a portrait photograph of each other, thinking carefully about size, proportion and lighting.  The pictures were printed out as A3 size and the portrait outlines were traced onto gridded paper.  They discussed selecting different hues of a colour to outline the squares of a specific shape in their portrait with felt pen.  The inside of the squares were then lightly shaded with the same hue using coloured pencil.  After brainstorming a variety of patterns that they could make using lines, patterns were added to randomly selected squares.

"I am incredibly proud of the student's efforts and I hope that you enjoy their art.  Can you identify who they are?" Julia Wise

Some of our Kiwi Hub students made this art based on the Winter Olympics.  They chose the opposite colours to cold as they wanted a warm feel to contrast with the sport.  The black icons were based on the actual ones used to represent the Winter Olympics.  Dye was used for the background and the colours were blended light to dark.

Our Weka children were very excited to celebrate Her Majesty, The Queen's birthday by honouring her with a royal portrait.  Mrs Leal said that a lot of love went into creating their artwork and the pride they displayed was heartwarming.

The Library runs different challenges during lunchtimes in it's 'Makerspace' area.  These have included Leprechaun Traps, Pots of Gold, various Lego and Duplo Challenges.  They are voluntary STEM activities to enhance children's science based learning and creative thinking.

A recent one was our Balloon Lego Car Challenge where children designed their fastest possible Lego car, powered by a balloon.

Coming up are Space Challenges, Unicorn Challenges, Ocean Challenges and many more.

To start our new school year we decided to have a look at being a 'Mt Carmel kid'.  The Kea children went outside to have a look at the Mt Carmel Kid mural on the wall and discuss ways in which we can become Mt Carmel kids by setting goals, seeking challenges and solving problems. This sparked our interest in self-portraits and puppet creating, by declaring and displaying  the children's unique and own identity showing how strong, imaginative and self-confident they all are.

All the children have been learning about bees and the importance of them. Everyone has really enjoyed drawing, painting and describing bees and their habitats.