Year 8 Leavers Movie & Farewell Songs!

Here it is...our Year 8 Leavers Movie - we're going to miss these guys! 

Teary, smiling faces when it all finished...

Bridle Path Hike & Raft Building: Awesome Way to End the Year!

Barn Dance Anyone?

Every year we have a Barn Dance to celebrate our Year 8 Leavers and for the class to have a good time together. Thank you those Year 6,7 & 8s and their parents who supported this year's Barn Dance - we all had a fantastic time!

Rimu's Last NZSL session...

We have a class of signers! In our class is Jorja, our wonderful student who is profoundly Deaf. This means we have Victoria, who is a New Zealand Sign Language Tutor come into our class each week for an hour and teach us sign language, so we can all communicate with Jorja better. This was our last session and Victoria presented us all with certificates for completing this year of NZSL.

If you would like to see Jorja's 'Sign of the Week' she does for our whole school in assemblies, please visit her blog: http://ymsjorjas.blogspot.co.nz/

Here is another great clip if you're interested in learning some basic NZSL for the classroom:

Basic NZSL

"Find Something You Like To Do" and "Choose Your Friends Wisely"...

Rimu Class had a fascinating day learning about Drugs, Alcohol and our Brains in the Life Education truck with Amanda and Harold. First we named all the bad drugs we knew - the goal was 20 - we got to 13! Then we looked at the definition of what a drug is,

 "a chemical substance that changes the way our body works."

We looked at 3 people's stories - Amy, Jason and Rita. They all came from different backgrounds - we could all relate to them at 11 and 12 years old. For different reasons, they started with the 'gateway' drugs; drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana - this soon developed into really serious drugs, like sniffing glue and taking P (or Methamphetamine).

 Their stories were so interesting, quite sad and made us realise some things...

"Choose your friends wisely - don't make silly choices" 

- Cayde

"Look up from your circle - not everyone is doing drugs" - Grace

"Go your own way; don't follow each other" 

- Paige

"Build a strong relationship with your family now just in case anything happens" 

- Nikita

"You don't have to take drugs or alcohol to fit in - just be yourself"

- Jacob

"If you're feeling sad and feel like you don't fit in - talk to your parents"  

- Bree

"If anyone asks me to take drugs I would say NO" 

- Ariana

"In some situations, try not to convince yourself that the people who you hang out with really are your friends - they might be using you" 

- Bella N

"Make the right choices" 

- Bella P

"Choose people that respect and understand you" 

- Emily

"Don't let peer pressure get to you" 

- Jack

"You don't have to be a follower" 

- Shukoor

"Make friends not "friends" "

- Tim

"Find something you enjoy to do and go down the right path" 

- Zach

What great advice from 11, 12 and 13 year olds!

Did you know Brain Development ends at the age of 25? 

We think we should be careful about putting harmful substances into our brains before then, as taking drugs and alcohol in your teenage years before our brains are fully developed makes us more likely to get addicted...and we don't want to get addicted to drugs and alcohol! 

We got a great book each to take home - lots of interesting facts and activities to do in it. 

We look forward to reading it and learning more about this topic, as education and feeling good about ourselves when we go to high school is KEY!

Can the students of Rimu Class build a waterproof and dry shelter? Let's find out...

Check out some of our short videos of our Arthur's Pass Adventures - will be updating some each day, so stay tuned!

This is Isaac & Jesse on the 300m Sensory Trail through the forest at Arthur's Pass. They were blindfolded the whole time and as you can see, there was a bit of problem solving on the way, that provided some entertainment for their teacher!

Year 7/8s preparing to send away their thank you cards to our sponsors for the William Pike Challenge Award!

Day Five: DOC Centre, Stretcher Making & Mock Rescue...Ice creams and Home!

It's raining, it's pouring...and we're off to the DOC centre to learn about the endangered animals in Arthur's Pass!

It's still raining and pouring, so we learn how to make stretchers in the community squash courts.
Why might we need to know how to make a stretcher?

Each group has 2 rain coats and 2 pieces of wood (branches).

Mr Robertson shouted us ice creams just before we left Arthur's Pass...we're so lucky!

Day Four: Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall, Orienteering, Rock Art, Sensory Trail & Geocaching!

Off on our walk up to Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall!

The puzzle, that caused tears, tantrums and sulks...but lots of thinking and teamwork...eventually!
Well done to the first group who solved it in '6 or 7' minutes!

Devil's Punchbowl Waterfall!

Halfway around Arthur's Pass Village...my group really wanted to win Orienteering...

How cool is this?!

The 'Ninja Turtles' ended up coming 2nd...with a time of 38.36 mins - 5 minutes behind the winners!

Researching about Inuksuk - Inuit Rock Art - fascinating and very creative to look at. 

On The Sensory Trail...this is about 300m through the forest. A few tricks along the way...will upload the video of Tim walking into a tree soon...

The girls chilling out before tea...

After tea we learnt about Geocaching - basically a worldwide treasure hunt. This was very cool and we can't wait to continue it back at school!

Found our first one! 

We wrote our names and the date in the miniature notebook. 

Found our second! You put in a treasure and take a treasure. Emily had a wee turtle key ring she put in for someone else to find.

These two clowns amused us for quite a while!

Trying to find our third Geocache near the waterfall behind the lodge - this one was rated as a 4.5 to find. The scale is 1-6 - 1 being the easiest; 6 being the hardest. 

Found it! Under the viewing platform - had to use our torches on our phones to see it.

Inspecting the treasures...

Who needs fancy pudding? Good ol' instant pudding and jelly works a treat - no need to do the dishes either with these scavengers cleaning up!