The 'Pad Mobile' designed by Room 13 and Kyle Pickerill

Room 13 worked hard designing a new iPad mover as a learning inquiry this year. I was so thrilled to see it finished and it will make my job so much easier as I move from class to class with the devices. A big thank needs to go to Kyrie Pickerill from Quest Fabrication Limited who took the ideas and made them into a reality. What a talented person. Thank you so much Kyrie. It is fantastic!
Mr Brown

The Latest Kids Snippets!

Check out the latest Kids Snippets GHS. Well done to Mr Wesbonk and everyone involved. Merry Christmas!

Mathletics Triumphs

Check Out The Mathletics Scores. Go Room 13 and 14!

The Stadium Fly at Hobbs Wharf!

What a great day at Hobbs Wharf. Well done to the Stadium and everyone involved!

Room 6's Amazing Bird Feeder Prototypes

Motu Aotea (Room 6) have made some great prototype bird feeders. The next step is to review the designs and then make the real ones. Go Motu Aotea!

Year 8 Students at Tongariro Camp

Our Year 8 students headed off on Sunday for their big Tongariro camp. Everyone is very excited! You can follow them on facebook... 'The Stadium'.

Number One in Mathletics!

George from Room 26 came running up to me this morning absolutely beaming that he was number one in NZ on Mathletics!  He should be beaming go George!

Mrs Kiata

Winners of The Hibiscus Coast Writers Competition 2013

We have the winners!!

But, first some feedback from the judges:

Thank you to ALL the children who gave it a go!  Our task as judges was extremely difficult this year as there were many excellent entries. 

-          However, some very well written Fiction pieces were incomplete, ie: great intro and body, but no ending.

-          A few of the Non Fiction pieces were more like reports and not personal experiences, as the rules stipulated.

-          The standard of the Poetry was very good.

Overall winner, and winner of the Val Shearer Trophy

SASKIA WIGMAN - Warkworth Primary School

‘Wish’

‘Leaf Boat Race’

‘By the River’

Poetry Winner

ABIGAIL DALZIELLE-FROUDE - Whangaparaoa Primary School

‘Imagine’

Non-Fiction Winner

KATE DE BEER - Red Beach School

‘Sutton Hoo, Out to Boo You’

Fiction Winner

DANIEL McMURRAY - HBC Homeschooler

‘The Slave Trader’s Boy’

Congratulations and well done, Guys!!!                

All those being published are:-

GULF HARBOUR SCHOOL

Bella Bullivant

The Trip to Aussie

The Stormy Night

Terror in the Amazon

Blake Wood

The Wave

Camping on Pirongia

Erin Johnson

Coming to New Zealand

HBS HOMESCHOOLER

Daniel McMurray

The Slave Trader’s Boy

A Guide to the Sky Tower

KINGSWAY PRIMARY SCHOOL

Ashleigh Davies

Love

Charlotte Duncan

My Blank Piece of Paper

Danielle Dixon

Car Crash

Cross Country

Nancy Xu

Cross Country

Up in the Trees

Thomas Bennett

Dogfight

RED BEACH SCHOOL

Aiden Allen

Volcano

Alissa Gibbs

For I Am (A Road)

Rats

Camille Bennett

For I Am (A Pyramid)

Emperor Penguins

Earth is Out

Charlotte Gobbie

Meatball

The School Swim Carnival

Imogen McIntyre

For I Am (Aborigine)

Diary of Dorothy Wenslec

Kate de Beer

Sutton Hoo, Out to Boo You

The Dirt on Red Beach School

Nina Harris

A Christmas Memory

For I Am (Mud Pool)

Sophie Shannon

For I Am (A Geyser)

Cut the Congestion

WARKWORTH PRIMARY SCHOOL

Saskia Wigman

Wish

Leaf Boat Race

By the River

Talia Bentley

Speck

WHANGAPARAOA PRIMARY SCHOOL

Abigail Dalzielle-Froude

Imagine

Nightmare Flight

Che McKennan Mahon

Mansion House

Ice Cream

The House

Stella Beatie

Cross Country

I’m Different

Hearty congratulations once again! 

Kindest regards,

HCW Judges

Tanya Gouws, Gillian Henderson and Marion Duncan

Hibiscus Coast Writers

www.HibiscusCoastWriters.weebly.com

If you are interested in illustration competition for the booklet to be published look here...
http://gulfharbourschoolnews.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/hibiscus-coast-writers-illustration.html

Technology Term

This term we are having a school wide technology focus and following what we call the 'Tech Think' process. It involves students working to solve a particular technology based problem. How can this fly?  How do I create a container for something? Already classes are immersing themselves in challenges...

Amazing Room 14 Mosaic

My class Room14 have worked hard on this mosaic and we have finally got it up. It is looking amazing! We have chosen to put it up above the student centre because it makes the place brighter and it lets people know where the student centre is. 

Each symbol has a special meaning. The koru means new growth. The stairs are the stairway of knowledge. The infinity sign means to never stop learning and the school logo represents our school. 

To make the mosaic we first had to cut the wood, we cut it into to separate triangles. Colin did that for us. We then had to smash up all the tiles. To smash the tiles we put one big tile in a pillow case. Then we hit them with a big hammer into small bits. 

The next step was to draw the design on the wood. We had to measure it all correctly and it took a long time. Next it was time to glue all the pieces on to the wood and that took us all to term 3!!! It was a big job and luckily we had FANTASTIC parent help. Special thanks to Sharon Booth, Kerry Law, Simone Scott, Robert Carter, Colin, Wayne, Soren Bock, Tanja Bock, Heritage Tiles and Mark Barrow.

When we were finished glueing we had to put up the mosaic. Finally it was up and we grouted it. It took awhile but we did it in the end. It was also a very messy job. The last step was polishing the mosaic you had to wipe it down with water until it shone. When it was done it looked amazing. We all took a picture under it. We are all very proud of it.

By Sarah 

Room14

Wow !! The mosaic is finally done after all of that time and effort everybody put in to make it. Room 14 loved creating the mosaic. Before they created the mosaic they had to find a place to put it after thinking about the place they wanted we finally choose the top of the student centre. It took two terms to complete the mosaic, everyone is very proud of their work. 

By Saphire and Olivia

Walkie Talkie Walkathon!

A blast of colour flashed though everyone's mind as Gulf Harbour Schools four hundred students and classes walked up to the start flag to do there first photo challenge. Everyone was bouncing on their feet like baby kangaroos ready to get the unique journey started.

It was a cold crisp morning on the wet grass when they found out the next photo challenge, building a human pyramid. Click with a beam of light went the camera when the teacher took the photo. One down twenty nine to go! Feet stomping the excitement buzzed of the classes as they went on there way to find the next photo challenge. Everyone was bright and colourful when they walked past each other in their different themes that they got to choose to walk in. There were spies, runners, sleepers, sick and hurt people, joggers, islanders, knights and princess's

Suddenly they felt sand in between their toes and the sound of crashing waves in their ears. The smell of the salty sea air filled their heads with a fantastic upcoming memory. Following the sanding tracks of large foot prints the wonderful different themed class's trotted along towards the muddy field. Mud sprayed up the back of everyone legs. My feet slowly took me up that enormous

giant of a hill. 

What an extraordinary event made and organise by Room Fourteen. The whole school raised more than $10 000, all that money will go towards the  loved school library and new books. It was a splendid day for everyone to enjoy. Hope we can have another awesome amazing walkathon next year. ( maybe not as awesome as ours)

Brooke and Eadie

What an enormous event! The Walkie Talkie Walkathon held by Room 14 has raised over $10,000. Four hundred children were walking around Shakespeare regional park and Gulf Harbour. They huffed and they puffed as they dragged themselves around the course. 

Room 14 created an amazing series of photo challenges for the whole school to compete in. Some classes were dressed as nerds also dressed in their pjs and lots more. The whole point of the Walkathon was to raise money for our school library, to make it more interesting and put in more books for the children to read. We think that money is going to make a great start to our goal. 

There was all types of challenges like making a human clock, doing a themed pose and many more. There were 10 challenges for the year 0 to 2, 20 challenges for the year 3 and 4s, and most of all 30 challenges for the year 5 to 8s. When the children arrived back at Gulf Harbour School they got a cold icy ice block.They needed it!

Portia

Wow !! What an amazing day the walkathon, 400 students walking the whole of Gulf Harbour in their wicked class themes. Some were princesses, some were dressed as nerds! Some in Pjs , islanders, sick people even !!! 

The amazing effort of Room 14 who organised the wonderful, fun and exciting event !! Mr Brown had everybody off and away no later than 9:45 am. Doing the 30 fun photo challenges was such fun.  All sorts of fun photo challenges happened during that day, but not all classes did all 30 challenges.

The challenges were separated 10 at a time out to 30. Years 0-2 did 1-10 if they felt up to it they might have done 12. Years 3-4 went up to 20 but they are pretty fast so they probably did 25 challenges ( probably because they were so enthusiastic!) and last but no, not least years 5-8 did all 30. I think a couple of those classes did not complete all 30. 

To all the parents that took part in our amazing Walkie Talkie Walkathon, the total over $10,000. Thank you to everybody for all of your hard work in getting money to make your library more fascinating and fun! We hope you had the time of your life. (more or less)

Olivia 

Feet stomping, excitement swirling everywhere, As four hundred children dragged themselves around Gulf Harbour. It was the Walkie Talkie Walkathon organised by Room 14. What an awesome day and guess what they raised over $ 10,000 , and somewhere over that mud track sat 30 exciting photo challenges. 

One bit that everyone liked was the theme your class had to choose.  Some came as islanders, spies and some were even in their PJs as well as lots more. 

The whole point of the Awesome Walkie Talkie Walk-Athon was to raise money for our school library and for new children's books. We think this will make a huge difference to our goal.

Annalia

Four hundred kids dressed up in awesome themes to have the walk of a life time,

with challenges created by Room 14. It was the Walkie Talkie Walkathon. There was a map to guide them on their heroic walk and their reward was a treasured ICE BLOCK at the end of the journey.

All students had lots of fun doing the challenges, like the pyramid and there were many more. All of this happened all around Gulf Harbour. At the end everyone was very tired from the big Walkathon but very happy! Go GHS!

Christopher 

Wow what a great day!. The Walkie talkie walkathon was a huge success, It was really fun because we got to dress up in a theme that our class decided on. There were costumes like spies, explorers, injured people and lots of other cool things. Along the way we did photo challenges where we would have to do something with our whole class and take a photo of it. We did were human pyramids, wheel borrowing with a partners, getting a photo with all your class and a Pukeko and lots of other cool activities.

We walked around Gulf Harbour for the whole day. Just to make sure that no one got lost each class was given two maps an A3 and an A4.

Room 14 decided to give out stickers if you reached a certain amount of sponsorship. If you managed to raise $10 or more you would get a Mr.Walkie sticker and if you managed to raise $50 or more you would get a Mr.Talkie sticker. We've managed to get over an amazing $10,000

Jonathan

WOW! What an exciting day we had...

The Walkie Talkie Walkathon was awesome. The Stadium walked the farthest out of the whole school. A special thanks to the parents who walked with us. We raised over $10 000 from the walkathon. 

We also had Ice blocks at the end. The year 0-2s walked 6km and the year 3-4 walked 8km. The year 5-8 walked 16km.

There were also photo challenges that Room 14 designed like pyramid and the Mexican wave. There were 30 photo challenges all together.There were 400 kids walking with us. What a great day!

Hayato

What a great walkathon!. Every body dressed up in there class theme. I think everyone loved the walkathon. We had to walk 16 kilometres! It was so wet there were puddles the size of ponds. Year 1-2 had to complete 10 challenges and year 3-4 had to complete 20 challenges. Year 5-8 completed 30 challenges! I think Room 14 did a great job. 

A special thanks to Mr Brown for helping us create the awesome characters Mr Walkie and Mr Talkie. It was the best walkathon ever although some people took shortcuts so that was a disappointment. We had a really great day and no kids got lost on the track. Thanks to the parents for walking and looking after the children so they didn't get lost!                             

Spencer

Sports Camp Update - Wednesday

Fierce and exhausting competition all morning. Our hockey girls are proud champions winning BOTH their draw games with Vuli and Buell each receiving a good sportsmanship ticket! Fabulous effort girls.

We were annihilated in Rugby and Touch – size was certainly not on our side! Croquet was a draw with someone pretty skillful play this morning. In Petanque we need to step up a little though are fighting hard. Had a win and a loss at Wallball though our team is feeling confident we can keep up the wins. Softball was an interesting match – great to see Mr Petrie arrive in time to help cheer us on!

Tennis has been called off due to the constant rain! It’s freezing but the kids are keeping their energy up and playing hard. Hope we don’t get the giant storm tonight though we have been warmed by the local power board that we may loose power if it does. Hmmm interesting – I wonder if Mr P has room in his car?...

A short break for lunch and duties now that back into more more more this afternoon and evening!

Facebook link here...

https://www.facebook.com/ghsyr78?hc_location=stream

Here is the Latest Kid Snippets!

The Walkathon has finished! What a Great Day!

The Walkathon has Started!