Planting Fruit Trees

We planted some apple and pear trees behind our classroom. We gave them lots of compost, leaf mould  and worm juice from our worm farms. We diluted the worm juice with water 1:20. Now we can watch them grow from our classroom window!

Go All whites

All the Clifton Terrace kids and even the teachers wore white clothes to school to help bring the All Whites good luck in the football world cup.

Celebrating Matariki

Room 15 had a crazy hair day to celebrate Matariki. Matariki is the Maori new year. It is when the first new moon can be seen after Pleiades returns in the eastern sky. The Pleiades star cluster is sometimes called the seven sisters because you can see seven bright stars. We had a delicious shared lunch.

The Founders' Book Fair

At Clifton Terrace School we try to reduce, re-use and recycle everything we can. Buying second hand books at the book fair was a fun way to re-use books that somebody no longer wanted. We love reading books!

Where Do Butterflies Go In The Winter?

This autumn we tagged eight of the monarch butterflies that we raised in the classroom, before we set them free. We got the tags from the Monarch Butterfly trust. We have entered  information about our butterflies on the Monarch Butterfly trust's website and if anybody finds one of our butterflies they can tell that it's ours by the number on the tag. One of our butterflies was found in Marybank two days after we set it free.

This way we hope that we can find out whether our butterflies are surviving the winter and where they go.

Our Scrumptious Harvest Feast!

We did a cook-up of veges that we grew in our school garden. The cucumber was sweet and crunchy.  We used a knife to cut up the carrots and tomatoes. We grated the zucchini and I made some muffins and we stirred the muffin mix with a spoon. When they were cooked they were delicious and lumpy. We picked the silverbeet from the garden and put it into the pastry and wrapped it up. I loved the potatoes, they were so warm. We served the food on the table. The food was yummy.
By Amy

Goodbye and Good Luck to the Godwits

• Godwits are on our school vision poster because they  help us to remember our school vision Expanding Horizons. Three ornithologists came to talk to some of the classes about the godwits' incredible migratory flight. Rob Shuckard told us how they catch the godwits in a mist net and  put transmitters on them. Then the scientists can track the godwits' journey all the way to Alaska to breed and back to New Zealand. 

Eden wrote:

Last week we went to the Boulder Bank to look at the godwits. We went with three scientists. We took our bags because we were having lunch there. We saw the godwits fly in, it was really cool, they were going round and around for a while. Then we started sketching them. I kept looking through the telescope. It was a bit blurry at first so I tried looking through the binoculars. We saw some black swans as well as the godwits and we saw some ducks too. It was really fun to watch the black swans with the godwits.

Alexi wrote:

Godwits store fuel at the bottom of their tummy for going to Alaska. First they fly from New Zealand to China and have a break there. Then they fly all the way to Alaska to lay eggs. The eggs hatch and the mother teaches them how to find food, then she sets off back to New Zealand. Soon the chicks store food to go, and then they set off to New Zealand too.

Luca wrote:

When I looked through the 'scope I saw heaps of godwits. They were flying around and around again and again. It made me dizzy. They went fast as rockets. It was cool to watch, they were good flyers. They fly a long way but they are not good swimmers. There was a swan and some seagulls. It was fun as.

Brayden wrote:

Godwits go to China and then they go to Alaska and then they go back to New Zealand. Then they are very hungry from flying. They get fatter and fatter from eating ragworms so that they can go back again.

Beautiful Butterflies

The monarch butterflies have hatched out of their chrysalises. It took 10 days. Can you see the empty chrysalis hanging off the toy's tail? We have let the butterflies go and put a swan plant outside for them to lay their eggs on so that the cycle can start all over again.

Caterpillars do some crazy things!

We have some caterpillars in our classroom. They used to be caterpillars but now there are chrysalises everywhere! There's one on the lid of a box which I think we're not allowed to open. There's one on the tail of a toy dog and one on the swan plant we've got. Its really funny.
By Alexi

The Clifton Terrace Tryathlon

On Friday last week the whole school had a tryathlon. We did it in this order: running, biking swimming. All of it was awesome, fun and easy.

By Tristan

On Friday Clifton Terrace had a surprise. We had a tryathlon and it was great but I nearly died because when I ran my breath got really cold, but I carried on. It was really fun. We had to run and bike and swim. By the time I got to the pool I was puffed. I had my hands up in the air, then I was like an old granny running but i managed to end  and when I had I was dead!

By Poppie

On Friday last week the whole school had a tryathlon. We did it in this order: running, biking swimming. All of it was awesome, fun and easy.
By Tristan

On Friday the whole school did the tryathlon. My friend Isabel in Room 3 came third. I was proud of her. When the year three girls went we biked, we did swimming and we ran. It was hard work and it was fun. I came second and I was puffed out. It was wicked.
By Mary



Last week the whole school did a tryathlon. It was fun!!!! When i got to the swimming pool I swam fast.
The wall of the pool was like the hull of the Titanic!!!! When I crossed the line I thought I was last but there were two boys  to cross the line after me.
By Jamie

 In the tryathalon I was excited! Wow! I was speeding like a rocket. I was so fast that I could not see where I was going and there was wind going through my hair and eyes.
By Lydia

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

Sarah Langi  came to talk to Room 15 about Reduce, Re-use and Recycle. The most important one is reduce. She showed us how we could reduce (make less)  rubbish by using reusable or biodegradable containers in our lunch boxes.
This is how long it takes some things to biodegrade (breakdown) when they are buried in soil.

Paper-2-4 Weeks;    
Leaves-1-3 Months; 
Orange Peel- 6 Months;       
Milk Carton- 5 years; 
Plastic Bag- 10-20 Years; 
Plastic Container- 50-80 Years; 
Aluminium Can- 80 Years; 
Tin Can- 100 Years; 
Plastic fizzy drink bottle- 450 Years; 
Glass Bottle-500 Years; 
Styrofoam-Never!


Half of the plastic ends up in the ocean.


David De Rothschild is so worried about all the plastic floating in the ocean that he has built a boat out of 12,500 plastic bottles to sail through the great Pacific garbage dump.
He has called the boat Plastiki and you can follow his journey at www.theplastiki.com.

A New Year Begins!

Yeee-haa - a brand new year of school begins!