Botany Downs Teachers Flashmob - Christmas 2015

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day!

On Sunday it was the Christmas Parade and Santa Claus came to Howick!

The Kids from Botany Downs School were magical! 

Santa's workshop at the North Pole was filled with mischievous elves busily making toys and Santa's list was being written - he knows if you've been good!! 

The toy workshop was filled with sweet candy canes and delicious gingerbread men. The toy soldiers marched proudly in their smart red uniforms with shiny brass buttons and happily played their tin drums. The sweetest sugar plum fairy led the soldiers with her graceful dance. Her clockwork key was wound only once and she danced for the entire time until the music stopped. The Christmas gifts followed, carefully wrapped in their festive paper and silvery ribbons. The music played and the crowd loved it.

So, is there a Santa Claus? 

Here is a piece written by Francis Church back in 1897:

"Yes, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to our life its highest beauty and joy.

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no ‘you’. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Is it all real? In all this world there is nothing else as real and abiding.

No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and he lives forever. 

A thousand years from now, maybe ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of children."

Enjoy the video…

Sausage Making Process

By Charlotte.

One day Rosie the cow was having a calf! She was moaning and groaning… hours later that day the farmer saw the beautiful calf drinking from Rosie’s tummy.

The farmer picked the baby calf up, and put it in a different paddock and took good care of it and decided to call it Diggy!

Four years went past, Diggy became a fully grown bull. When it was time to send Diggy to the butcher, the farmer put him in the back of his truck and drove off not really caring about Diggy in the back, tied up. When it was time to say goodbye, the farmer got Diggy out of the back of the truck, tied him up outside and went to get the butcher!

The butcher came outside and collected Diggy, and took him out the back to kill and chop him up! 

After about an hour, the butcher had chopped up Diggy. He put him in a mince making machine. 20 minutes later, Diggy the bull was not a bull anymore, he was mince!

The Mince Collectors came to pick up all of the mince, and placed it in the supermarket in a freezer!! The mince was just sitting there waiting to be bought. 

My teacher, Mr Huskinson came across it and bought it. After he bought the mince, he took it to room 14 (my class) and we got to make sausages using a sausage making machine!

Matthew (Jayden's dad, who is a chef) came to help us make the sausages! We needed lamb intestine, herbs, spices and of course mince to make the sausages.

First we put the intestine on the little tubes on the machine, next we put the mince inside the machine, and Mr fillet pumped the sausages out. We got to hold the tray! (intestine is the outside of the sausage).

After all of that Mr Huskinson had other supermarket pork and beef sausages. Ms McClean cooked the sausages on the BQQ, and Kaylin helped cook the pork sausages, (lucky).

After they were all cooked, we had a taste test! Before I go on to that the year 5’s made the homemade beef sausages and the year 6’s made the homemade lamb sausages!

My favourite was homemade lamb!. The class liked the beef sausages we made the best, the lamb sausages we made were second favourite, and the beef and pork supermarket 
sausages were the least favourite in our class.

How high can you grow?

Recently we grew some grass seeds. To make it interesting, we made grass heads (hairy characters). This is how to make a grass head.
Items needed: plastic cup, a pin, soil, grass seeds, funny photo
Method:
Step 1: Tape the funny photo on to the plastic cup.
Step 2: With the pin, poke seven holes in the bottom.

Step 3: Carefully spoon a reasonable amount of soil into your plastic cup (+-3/4 cup).

Step 4: Carefully place your cup on a plastic plate and water the soil.

Step 5: Carefully spoon one spoonful of grass seeds onto your soil.

Step 6: Carefully push your seeds +- 3 centimetre underneath the soil.

Step 7: Place your plate and cup on the bookshelf/ window sill.

Step 8: Remember to water your plant sensibly every day.

Step 9: Hypothesise on how high it might grow and compare the heights of different grass heads.  

Step 10: Take photos to see how the grass/hair grows.

Room 15 JH

Athletics at Botany Downs

Athletics day

On Friday it was athletics day. We all had to be ready in sports gear. Then we had to meet at the hall to get ready to go to our first event.  We were split into age groups and some of the school did non- competitive and some chose competitive activities.

First we did high jump. The starting height was one metre. Most of the people were able to jump that height. Then it was increased to one metre five. Most people were moaning and groaning that it was going to be too high. The highest was one metre fifteen, which four people cleared.

Nervously I was standing on the starting line waiting for the clapper to bang. Then we started to run as fast as the wind. I could hear all my friends cheering loudly - all the way to the finish line! Then I waited to see if I made it into the top 3 for the semi–final. I was so disappointed!  I finished 4^th so I didn’t make the semi-finals.

Using what I learnt at ball throw practices I hoped to get through to inter schools. I was standing behind the line, hoping not to step over it, trying to focus on my technique. I pushed the ball as hard as I could and watch it fly into the air. I was really ecstatic that I came first for the 11 yr. old girls.

AM, KF & IS Room 15

Sid the blue tongued skink!

Sid is a beautiful blue tongued skink, he comes from the Australian Outback, but was found in home and was not cared for properly.  He was found in his tank with a tub yoghurt and a tin of cat food which is the worst thing for a lizard. 

So Danni’s mum, Sally, rescued him and now he is being looked after properly. Guess what! Sids real name was Billy but Sally didn't like the name so she changed it to Sid. And now Sid has a "Happily Ever After" home and nice people to take care of him. 

His dream has finally come true at last!                 

By Haylee!

Thursday 5 November 2015

Sid the blue tongue lizard

Aim: to write a report on sid the blue tongue lizard.

 
Today the 5th of November Sally Blackwell came to room 14 to show us her new pet lizard, called Sid. She got him from an abandoned house.  
She told us some facts, asked us some questions. some of the questions she asked we did not know the answers so we have to research them by ourselves.
Some of the questions she asked were;

• What sort of plants can we put in Sid’sCage that can handle 40 degrees?
• What is the temperature that Sid has to be in night and day? 

We asked her some questions too , like…

• Can his scales go different colours?
• How often does he eat? 
• How many degrees can Sid’s neck turn? 

She told us some facts. The mothers give birth to live lizard not eggs , that Sid’s food is 50 percent vegetables 40  percent meat and 10 percent fruit.

So this is my report on Sid the friendly blue tongue lizard. 

By Eva room 14 :)

The Value of Determination

We have been learning about the value of determination.

After much discussion we all agreed that determination is “deciding that it’s worth it, to finish what you’ve started”.

Here are some inspiring quotes and phrases that we like:

“Whatever your dreams, the difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination”.

“When you feel like quitting think about why you started”.

“Dream big, set goals, take action”.

We discussed the differences between long, medium and short term goals. Sometimes the dreams are so big it will take years of determination to complete, such as learning a new language or a musical instrument. Sometimes the goals can be reached in a few weeks or months of determination like learning how to use a skateboard or improving your swimming technique. Sometimes determination is shown when completing a quick fun activity that just requires us to overcome mild frustration, such a completing a crossword or a sudoku puzzle.

In class we have been having fun using our determination to complete challenges. Recently, our mission was to stack 28 plastic cups in a pyramid using just an elastic band and some string. It took a while, but with determination and lots of laughs, we succeeded.

Take a look at our video to see how we did it!

Rugby World Cup

Rugby is rough
Uniforms look awesome
Great players show off their skills
Bumps and bruises
Yawning at the end of the game

World cup madness
Oval ball
Roaring crowds
Loud fans
Diving tries

Conversion is over
Under the goal posts
Popular people




Rugby
Uplifting
Getting a goal
Ball
Yelling from the crowd

Working as a team
Over the scoring line
Running across the field
Landing a goal for your team
Defence

Coach
USA
Players

Room 15 MB and JDW

The Big Escape

The Big Escape

The dark suddenly stopped, blurs of colour moved around. Had I woken up? The figures finally came into good detail, my heart pounded. Was this a dream or are these children staring at me?

What’s good about me anyway?  When I was in the Andes mountains people thought I was stubborn, dumb and ugly. But now children are liking me. It was a first for feeling good about myself. I could definitely get used to this.

A thought struck me “Why am I here?” and “How can I get out of this cage? I need to keep my wings up to good health”. I stared around the cage “Where am I?” I growled. The children applaused and carried on looking at me.

My eyes scanned the cage, looking for a weak point. There it was - a golden brown handle. I dived, my head down to the position where the handle was. I opened my beak, then snapped it shut so I had a great grip. I leaned back.

“Look, the peregrine falcon is trying to get out!“ said a student in amazement.

“Stand back class!” shouted the teacher in a firm voice.

If leaning back wouldn’t work I guess I would have to push forward. I gathered my strength, sent it to my legs. Three, two, one, I pushed. I hurtled through the air.

“I am free!” I cried. I headed towards the window. As I reached outside, I ascended through the air past sky scrapers to just normal buildings. I suddenly stopped.

”Noooooo! Where am I”?   

Fair Go Ad Entry 'The Hot Dog'

Introducing the … hot dog, dog bed!

Our teacher introduced us to the idea of the Fair Go Ad awards and hooked our interest letting us view some of last year’s entries. We thought the children had some really good ideas. Our teacher wondered if we would be interested and of course we were delighted to give it a go, as our school motto is ‘Our best always’ – so we were going to give it our best try!

We had a lot of fun forming several small groups, brainstorming ad ideas involving an animal. We had ideas ranging from a cat eating a whole pizza to an animal teaching values. It was neat hearing our peers’ ideas. We had a class vote for the most entertaining idea and the idea that was a ‘hot’ favourite’, was a ‘dog bed with hot dog features’. Our teacher loved the idea as she absolutely loves dogs.

Following this we had auditions for the speakers. Several students in our class are really confident speakers, who are able to use clarity of voice and expression. We narrowed it down to about 7 actors, with a few substitutes as well.  We thought it would be cool to dress in mufti. All students from our class could contribute to the props. A few artistic students offered to do some signs that could be visual aids in the advertisement.

We timed our ad and realised we would need to edit some sentences as we were quite a bit over time. On the first day of filming some of us forgot our props, but it was good to practice our speaking parts. We had about 10 takes! We worked on our props and decided to use fabric to create fillings for our hot dog bed. It looked quite cool. We would have liked to have used a real dog in our ad, but then we decided to include our fluffy toy class pet called ‘Blackberry’. Blackberry had lots of adventures with different students in our class throughout the year, including going on camp. So we thought it would just be fair to let him help us with this important ad production.

Our teacher organised some permission slips to double check with our parents that it would be all good for us to appear on television. It also included our script to practice at home. Unfortunately three members of our cast were absent on the day because of winter colds. Luckily we had our back-up actors and they were thrilled to be given the opportunity to participate.

The following day we had our outfits and props organised. We had another practise in class and our teacher gave us some final suggestions. We were fortunate to have the use of the staffroom for the morning and another helpful staff member helped us with the final takes. One of our peers did the filming for us. We returned to class to show our teacher some of our best recordings. She downloaded a handful of clips and then our class mates got to view it and collaboratively we chose the best example.

Everybody congratulated us and said ‘Tino pai’ on a great effort. Our teacher downloaded our clip to her Youtube account and entered us for the competition. We hope everybody will enjoy our ad. This was a wonderful opportunity for us to shine. So here goes – “Calling all owners of doggies who are feeling the winter cold. Check out our colourful hot dog bed!”

Room 15

The History of Art

Room 15 KR

Room 14 Calendar Art

Here is the art the class has made for the Calendar Art products that can be purchased as notebooks etc.