God is Creator

In Room 2 we have been reading the first book in the Bible called Genesis. Now when we look at a beautiful spring flower, a baby lamb, a rainbow or a snowy mountain, we are in awe of the wonders that God created and we say thank you to God for His gifts.

Pekapeka - Native Bat of Aotearoa

This term we have been learning about some of the weird and wonderful creatures that live in New Zealand. Did you know that pekapeka was the first mammal to live here? 

Bats are also the only mammals in the world that can fly.   New Zealand bats are small and can can fit in the palm of your hand but with their wings open they are about 28 centimetres wide. Pekapeka are nocturnal. At night they fly down to the bush floor to eat worms and insects. We made pekapeka models and wrote pekapeka reports. We chose some of the facts we wrote to display on a model. 

The Feast Day of St Mary of the Cross

On Friday the 8th of August Good Shepherd School celebrated the feast day of Mary MacKillop, St Mary of the Cross. We began the day by going to Mass, where all the  new students got candles to welcome them to our school. We had written stories during the week about Mary MacKillop's favourite saying, 

"Never see a need without 

  doing something about it." 

When we got back to school we published our stories and shared them with the class. Next we had fun making Mary MacKillop peg dolls. As a special feast day treat we were all given a sausage to eat which was really appreciated on such a cold day.

Maori Language Week

During Maori Language Week we read 'Taniwha' by Robyn Kahukiwa. We looked at lots of different taniwha books and talked about the Maori patterns we could see. Next we drew our own taniwha. We used vivid pen, crayon and dye. When they were finished we talked about the Maori patterns we could see in our taniwha artworks.