Reading in the Sun

A picture says a thousand words = who wouldn't want to do this on a beautiful winters day?!

One legged man - what?

Do you know who this guy is? He's pretty amazing. About 10 years ago, when he was climbing Mt Ruapehu it erupted causing 60 olympic sized swimming pools worth of rock and debris to come crashing down on the mountain and on the hut he was staying in crushing his leg.

Luckily for him and for us he survived (with one less leg), but that hasn't stopped him living life to the fullest and he has created the William Pike Challenge Award. Our senior leaders are involved in this award and they are all working hard to meet the requirements.

On Wednesday William popped in for half an hour. He shared a little of his story for the benefit of those that didn't know (Year 5/6 students). Base and Jacob shared some of what we have been doing and other students shared some of their projects and community service.

Right at the end we took a photo or two with William. It was so great to have him pop in and it has inspired us to keep working hard on our challenge.

Thanks William!

P.S. Prudence has blogged about this so you can go to her blog to get a student's voice on the experience.

Books, books, books! RImu LOVES books!

What excited faces! We were at St Margaret's College to listen to 6 authors/illustrators share their books. These books aren't just any books, they are finalists in the NZ Book Awards for children and young adults. What was going to happen? Would we like any of them? Would we learn anything? Would we want to take books home?

And then we were off. There were 3 authors and each shared for around 12 minutes. Their books were very different and everyone had a different favourite. You can read about each of them on Prudence's blog, Chloe's blog or Ian's blog.

After a break we were back in for the next 3 authors. These stories were a bit different and the presentations were also very different. One involved bugs and creepy crawly stories, one involved the illustration process and one involved blowing up a cat balloon and another balloon. So very different!

Many of our students have shared have written great blog posts about the day, the authors and what they thought about the books. We highly recommend that you read these students blogs to find out more: Isaac's, Lucy's, Abby's, Saxon's, Mia's and Eben's.

(We also got to enjoy the sun and the St Margaret's grass! Thanks St Margaret's!!)