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.