Today we made the most of our excess carrots and bananas that we had delivered as part of our Fruit in Schools programme. We have had lovely roasted carrots for the last three days. The smell of them cooking made all of our tummies rumble each morning and the tamariki gobbled them up so fast when they came out of the oven.  Miss Corry and a small team of professional bakers whipped up two banana cakes today for the tamariki to eat. There were queues for a piece of lovely cake at the start of lunchtime today. We love having a kitchen to be able to learn in and would hugely appreciate any donations of baking ingredients that you could spare to keep our tamariki learning such wonderful and practical life skills. Olivia mashing the bananas. Miss Corry helping with the measurements. Olivia and Amira leading the washing up team. Gobbling up the roasted carrots. Deegan measuring the butter. Impatient kids waiting for the microwave to finish. 6 minutes is a lon...

Last week we were lucky enough to have a visit from the Duffy Theatre Show. It is always so exciting at the beginning of each year to watch the very funny and entertaining theatre show. This year Duffy showed us how the power of reading can help bullies learn to use kind words and change their attitudes towards others. We also something else really cool about reading, it is a great tool to relax. This means it is awesome to read before you go to bed so you're nice and relaxed and fall asleep really easily! Look at this awesome Duffy song with sign language included!

We had let our sunflowers dry out for a few weeks and today it was time to remove the seeds from the plants. There were excited squeals as we gathered together and scraped and flicked the seeds out of the flower heads. Seeds flew everywhere! We ended up with a lot of seeds. We are going to prepare some of them to eat and put away some of them to plant next spring! Lucy, Casey and Hakeem removing the seeds from the biggest flowers. Rylan was so excited to find big fat seeds that he put some in his pocket to take home! Natania and Payton loved picking the little seeds out of the smaller sunflowers. Olivia and Hakeem showed great attention to detail, leaving no seed behind!

Today we were able to harvest many of the vegetables that we planted at the end of last year. Kale, corn and tomatoes were all ready to be picked! There were very excited squeals as we peeked inside the leaves of the corn to see if it was ready and we saw the beautiful yellow kernels emerge.    The tamariki dug over our first garden and have prepared it for our next planting. They tidied up after themselves, cleaned our tools and put all our waste into the compost.  They are so proud of what they have grown and they are looking forward to being brave and trying some kale chips tomorrow! Our kale, corn and the first of our tomatoes This garden is all ready to plant again. Our next plants will be beans and lots of radishes in this garden.

Te Rōpū Kura Pounamu were very proud of themselves during their Te Reo lesson last week. They all managed to stick their own Mihi into their books all by themselves. Gluing things into books can be tricky, but not for these kids! They are developing their independence and insisted on managing this task all on their own.  Tino pai mahi Te Rōpū Kura Pounamu. Ka rawe!