Matariki Inquiry sharing

On Friday we shared the work we did for inquiry with Ngaio.  They were so impressed!

Ball free days

We had some really interesting discussion about ball-free days in Karaka (days of the week where balls are not allowed in the playground.)  At the moment balls are banned in the playground at lunchtime and morning tea on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  This came about because of concern about the style of play that often dominates the turf is not necessarily how all children want to use our playground.  The playground at Clyde Quay is very small so it's important that we work out how we can ensure it is safe, fun and fair for everyone.  Through this trial process we hope that we'll be able to find some ways around these issues.

Here's what our Karaka kids had to say:

There were lots of suggestions for slight modifications to ball free days including:

• Slightly more or fewer ball free days
• Turf to be split into different zones (eg. ball zone and non ball zone)
• Top turf is non ball / chill out, Bottom block turf is for ball games

Some children believe that balls are the main source of fun at the school so we should always be allowed to play with them

Some children thought that the main issue was balls that are kicked.  So possible solutions are:  

• Get tough on head high kicks - only kicking below the waist - otherwise you are banned from the turf for a period of time.
• Days where you can use the balls but no kicking (ie. no soccer and no kicking in other sports)
• Another suggestion was that the turf could be a ball free area for two days a week, but balls are allowed in other parts of the playground.

A lot of children expressed discontent about how things were before ball free days, or support of ball free days:

• With no balls we’ve been able to use the astro turf more - for example playing running games or doing gymnastics or looking at the clouds
• Sometimes when children play and there’s balls around they get hit by balls.  This happens even when they're playing on the neptune and the tree house.
• Some children who don’t normally play soccer on the turf would like to have a chance to play without getting hit by bigger / more confident children’s balls or be involved in the roughness / competitiveness of their play.

Other suggestions not to do with ball free days were:

• More organised games - eg. from 12.40 there’s a game that goes for ten minutes
• More equipment into the playground so that there are more options for play
• More turf (eg. next to tree house) which can be used as a chill out zone

Pyjama and electronics day

In Karaka we have a marble jar.  Marbles are put in when people make good choices:

When the jar reachers the first and second line, the class gets a reward.  When we reached number 1, we had a mini disco in the last half hour of school.  When we reached number 2, we had a class game of battle ships.  Reaching number 3 is a much bigger deal.  We reached number three last week, and this week reaped the reward: a day of playing on electronics in our pyjamas.  We looked AMAZING!

Matariki trip

After a night of thunder and lighting and a torrential downpour in the morning, we decided to car pool all the children to the City and Sea Museum for the first part of the trip. It was fantastic how many parents and our staff came together to get everyone to the museum dry. After watching a video about the Maori migration to New Zealand, Karaka was split into two groups to explore the museum. The first group explored the Attic to find objects and displays they found fascinating while the second group were shown tools used for navigation. Then they swapped.

After taking the cable car up to the lookout and then walking to Space Place, Karaka was once again split into two groups. In the first rotation, the group went into the Planetarium to watch a video about space and satellites before being shown how to find the Southern Cross and Matariki. In the next rotation, the students investigated how to make navigational tools and how GPS systems use multiple satellites to locate points. Afterwards, they made compasses using a needle and magnet and used rulers to find points on the floor.

It was impressive how quickly the students walked back to school after getting off the cable car. Best of it, we stayed dry on a very wet day.