Today our Wakaaranga students visited Science Works. We had an absolutely fabulous day doing all sorts of exciting things. We got to race 'Cathy Freeman' in a sprinting race, avoid laser light beams, eat giant bowls of fruit, test our fitness and agility, shoot baskets, test your strength, look at giant fleas and bed bugs, test our eyes with optical illusions, visit a giant pump house and paint with laser lights to name just a few. This evening the students and their host families are enjoying an evening out at La Portchetta eating all the pizza and pasta they can! We are all looking forward to that! Mrs Martin, Mrs Morgan and Mr Jenkin too! Tomorrow all the Wakaaranga and Coburn homestay students are heading to Melbourne city on the train. It will be a wonderful opportunity to visit many of the fantastic sights Melbourne has to offer. more...

With a mixture of salt, flour, semolina and coffee the Year 4 students in Miss Lindsay’s class were able to make their own fossils. The used small plastic dinosaurs to make the footprints in the doughy mixture and then left them to dry over the weekend more...

The Year 1 students created these from ink, dye and crayon. They sketched several pictures of lizards and explored Maori and Pacifica patterns before bringing all their ideas together to create a Lazy Lizard picture. more...

Memories of the old favourite song "I'm a little teapot" have been circulating in the art room over the last three weeks with Year 5 children who have been creating clay teapots with Mrs Murray. more...

Here are a few photos from today and the flight over. It was terrific to see Matthew using the smart board this morning showing all the students in the class his wiki and learning completed this year. One of the Coburn students asked why did they present their work like that and it was great to hear him reply "Mrs Clay doesnt like us to write in our books all the time, she likes to see us doing learning in different ways!" Great answer Matthew more...

Our Environment councillors find a good use for old rubbish Some Year 6 students spent an interesting day at the Botanic Gardens last Friday creating birdhouses for our Senses Garden. They were also shown some sustainable ways to grow plants. more...

This year students took part in a Spellathon and raised $14,105.35. This was an outstanding effort and at the assembly last Friday the top collectors in each year group were rewarded with a voucher from the Botany Shopping Centre to the value of fifty dollars. The top collectors were Year 1 - Tyra Harrison, Year 2 - Caitlyn Alley, Year 3 - Lucas Greenwood, Year 4 - Lenny Honore, Year 5 - Emily Hooley and Year 6 Olivia Smith. more...

Room 2B children were very excited to make apple muffins using the first lot of eggs from the school's bantam hens. With the help of Mrs Warburton and Mrs Dean, they chopped, mixed, stirred and then waited patiently for the muffins to bake. The verdict - delicious! more...

Mrs Berry’s Year 1 class also had a cooking lesson from our teachers aide, Mrs Smith. They are using eggs and other ingredients to make a delicious batch of ginger bread men. They read the story in class before they made the biscuits. Let’s hope these ones don’t run away! more...

On Friday 16 March, the Year 4 students were very excited. It was their turn to put on the senior assembly. The syndicate had been studying New Zealand and they decided to show how many different cultures we had in the country that were also represented in the school. First they did a Tongan dance called the Sasa. This was followed by a group of students dressed in their national costume who gave a short explanation of what it was like to live in their country. Xander MacKay, a boy in Mrs Dale’s class, who comes from Scotland amused the audience when he said that Scotland was very much like New Zealand but the weather was rubbish! more...

The school held parent discussion meetings on Monday 19 March and Wednesday 21 March. Parents were able to see how their children have started the year and the targets that had been set for them over the next few months. more...

Mr Cameron Proctor is our latest permanent teacher. He is teaching a Year 6 class in Room 6F. He has taken over from Mrs Griffin who did an excellent job with this class in the first term. Cameron is looking forward to teaching at Wakaaranga. He has been teaching for five years and recently finished his O.E over in London. He is originally from Southland and supports the Highlanders rugby team. He is very interested in sports and history and is excited about being home and teaching in New Zealand. more...