Musical Meerkats

Today the Marvellous Meerkats had a musical performance in the hall. All of the IAs and High Flyers and lots of parents were watching us.

A few weeks ago, we started practicing. We had to keep trying and trying.

Our performance started with Dash. Dash played his xylophone in front of the whole school. They loved hearing and watching him play. Azlyn helped Dash out because Dash was scared.

Then J-Lynn started to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and the rest of us sang along. We used a special thing called a Makey Makey that turned Bradley, George, Natalia, Alex, Paris and Sunday into a musical instrument. All J-Lynn had to do was touch them on their hands.

Next Dakshesh played the Alphabet Song and Ryley played a special song Mr Davidson wrote. They both used the same instrument made out of the children.

When we were performing, we made mistakes but we continued. Mr Davidson didn't even help us one bit. He took this video:

We want to do this in front of the whole school again because we had so much fun. Some of us got scared, but we still tried our best and were very brave.

Our Trip to MOTAT

Yesterday the Marvellous Meerkats went to MOTAT to explore and learn about flight.

First we went to look at the exhibits. We got to play around in a room full of fun things. We also got to learn about some video games from New Zealand.

Then we took a train to the second part of MOTAT. We saw lots of big airplanes in a massive room.

Later, we got to learn about flight from Abby. We did lots of fun activities. Flight has four forces: Lift, Drag, Thrust and Weight.

We had lots of fun at MOTAT. I can't wait to go back!

Making One With Fractions

For the last two days we've been learning how to make one with different fractions. We used the iPads to take pictures of our work. Have a look at what two of our groups did today:

A Great Big Thank You!

When Mr Davidson went back home to Canada, he saw his family friend, Helen. She was always very good at knitting. When Mr Davidson was little, she made him many things: sweaters, mittens, socks, hat and other things. She knew Mr Davidson had a class of children back in New Zealand and she knew that it was winter time there (even though it was summer time in Canada). So she decided to knit hats for every single Meerkat (including Ngeru). Mr Davidson brought them back in his suitcase.

We even learned a new word from Canada: toque. It means the warm hats you wear in the winter time. 

We decided that it would be nice to send some thank you letters. A few weeks ago, we wrote our letters and Mr Davidson sent them in the mail. Now that they've arrived in Canada (on Helen's birthday!) we can share the surprise. Here are some of the letters that we wrote:

From Paris

Thank you Helen! We really enjoy the warm gloves and toques you sent us! It's really cold right now and they are coming in very handy.

GEG Student Summit

Yesterday, some of the Meerkats took a bus ride to Hobsonville Point Primary School for the Google Educator Group Student Summit. We made a presentation on how to make animations using Google Slides. Then we got to see what other students were doing in other schools. we learned how to make a blog and how to make a Google site (more on those later, or if you're clever, you'll see what we made). We had lots of fun and learned lots.  Here is the presentation that we made:

Here are some pictures of us:

Quality Work: Writing About Hazelnut and Lunar

Today we wrote descriptions of Hazelnut and Luna. Have a read of what some of us wrote:

By Natalia

 By Dizaliyah

By Mu

 By  Paris

Retelling a Story Using Puppet Pals

Last week, the Gorillas read the book: Consequences. They had a go at retelling the story using the iPad app Puppet Pals. Have a look at their work:

The Amazing Adventures of Ngeru: Part V: Chicago, The Windy City

Hi Marvellous Meerkats!

Wow, I have been so busy I haven't had time to write. But I did have time to take lots of pictures. I spent an amazing week in the city of Chicago. Did you know that there are more people in Chicago than there are in the whole country of New Zealand? Actually, there are twice as many people in Chicago as there are in New Zealand. That's a lot of people! There are lots of interesting things to do there though.

Before I left for Chicago, I was really lucky to get to see something right where I'm staying. This is a picture of the Stanley Cup. It's the trophy that they give t the best team in the National Hockey League. And I only had to walk five minutes to get to see it. Do you know which team won this last?

When I was driving to Chicago, I saw this sign. I thought someone in your class might find it interesting...

This is a baseball stadium. It's very famous because it's more than 100 years old. It has ivy on the wall instead of the regular cushions.

This is what Chicago looks like from the water. Look at all those big buildings!

I got to visit a museum all about space! They had a rock that some astronauts brought back from the moon!

Here is a model of one of the robots that they sent to Mars! I bet if you worked really hard to learn about robots, you could send one there.

This is a very cool looking stage for concerts in the park.

I really like this picture of me. The thing behind me is called "The Bean." Lots of people liked looking at it and taking pictures.

This is from a science museum. Can you see the big airplane. It's inside a building!

Can you name this dinosaur?

This is my favourite dinosaur. It's a bit harder to name. I bet you could figure it out if you were really clever.

I found a Marae in Chicago. How cool is that?!?

I went to one place and got shrunk down to a very small size. I ran into this scary thing here...

... and here too! I don't like spiders. I'm glad it already has something to eat.

Remember that tall building from the picture before? I got to go to the top and take some pictures. It was a very nice view.

There was even a place where I could stand on the floor that had a glass bottom. You could see all the way down. It was very far and very scary. But I was brave.

And this is me at the bottom of that building

Samoan Language Week Challenge 2

Ordering by Long and Short

On Wednesday the Marvellous Meerkats learned about long and short.

First we each looked for one thing that was long and one thing that was short.

Next we got into our groups.

Then we put the shortest one down and the longest one down. They have to start at the same spot.

Have a look at the pictures we took:

Learning About Animals

Mrs Lee came to teach us last week and she showed us some cool things we can do with Google Slides and You Tube. First, we had to pick an animal with our group and find a video about it on the You Tube Channel, All Things Animal TV. Mrs Lee showed us how to embed the video into a Google Slide, so that we could have it in our presentation. Then we wrote some facts that we found out about the animals. Have a look at some of the slides we made:

By Han, Paris and Koringoa

By Dakshesh and Soileti

   

By Bradley, Samuel & Trey

Making Eighteen

We're almost finished our teen numbers. Today the Parrots and Toucans made the number 18 with lots of materials. Here's their work: