Catholic Schools' Day

 Catholic Schools' Day

Last Wednesday, 29th September, all Catholic Schools around the country celebrated our Catholicity and  the reasons we love attending our special schools. We all joined in a school meet at 11am to share a beautiful Liturgy, organised by Room 7 and 8 students. It was great to connect with one another again and see our friends looking so happy. Thank you to Ms Bullot for spending many hours collating this wonderful video for us to keep looking back on, in thanks and gratitude for our fantastic school, St Patrick's.

Here is our video for you to enjoy:

Catholic Schools' Day

Lockdown Activities

Lockdown Activities

With lockdown level 4 coming to an end at midnight tonight, I thought it would be a good idea to share some of the amazing learning many of you have completed and shared with me. It's not easy to keep motivated and focused on learning when we're not in the classroom environment but you have all done a stirling job. I am proud of your efforts!


Ion doing crafts with his sister.


Eldrich playing chess and doing karate with Ezekiel





Create a word cloud promoting friendships and how important it is to feel valued.

By Daniel

Laura's fudge pudding and writing her Pepeha during Maori Language Week.

Lockdown Diary Entry: 

This morning after I woke up and brushed my teeth, I came and set up the device I was working on which was a laptop. After I set up I did some of the work Mrs. Agnew gave me. At 9:45 I had a break and after I had my break, I did my Olympic slides with my friend Daniel. Then I drew a panda for my arts and crafts time and then I carried on doing my learning. 

By Andreaus

Our Common Home - Laudato Si

                             Our responses to the BOT initiative for a better world for all.

Room 6 were inspired by the letter sent to the children of the world by Pope Francis, Laudato Si. It gave us many insights into the state of our world and how, if all people across the globe work together, we can make a difference for ourselves and others. 

We began our journey by drafting our ideas as images in our writing books. We divided the page into sections, like in a stained glass window. Then we added blurbs to go with our pictures. We coloured them in, so we could get a good idea of what the final result would look like.

When we were happy with our Draft copies, we cellotaped half a page of overhead transparency sheeting over it. Then we started the fun part of colouring and writing the final blurbs if felts. It was really important that we coloured in one direction and didn't leave any gaps because otherwise they wouldn't look like real stained glass windows. The final job was to mount them on black cardboard which Mrs Yumul did for us, and wrote our names. We were going to hang them in our windows in the classroom but they are now up in the foyer of the school.

We are proud of our efforts and we hope they will motivate those who see them to think about the actions we take and could take to make our world a better place for us all to live in.

Click on the link below and you can see our presentation to the Board of Trustees set to "Our Common Home" song. We hope you enjoy it.

Room 6

 Our Common Home - Laudato Si

Water Safety

 We had been looking forward to going to Water Awareness lessons for a long time. We were booked in for ten days of lessons from the 8 June until the 21 June. We had to plan and prepare before hand so that we all had togs, towels and most importantly swimming caps. Some of us brought our gear in early, just to make sure we had it at school.

On the first day we were so excited we could hardly do our morning learning! The buses arrived on time and we saw the senior boys leave, then the Juniors and then the Senior girls left last. This is a photo of us girls leaving on the first day:

After we arrived at the CLM pool in Morrin Rd, we went upstairs and waited on the bench for our teacher. We were beyond excited.

We have learned over the last two weeks how to keep ourselves safe around water. We were told that New Zealand is surrounded by water, either the sea or rivers and lakes and we need to be able to stay afloat until help comes. We lay on our backs and spread our legs and arms out like starfish. We also used the boards to hold onto while we put our heads under the water and kicked our legs as fast as we could.

Our favourite day by far was the last Thursday when we got to get into a real boat!! We all had to sit around the edge facing towards one another. When the teacher said 'go' we had to fall backwards into the water. It was so much fun. Also, the teachers made us sit still in the boat and they tried to capsize us but we didn't fall over.

We have really enjoyed our water awareness lessons, even though we were very tired when we went home. Also it wasn't easy getting our togs and towels to dry overnight but we managed. What a wonderful experience we will remember forever.

Table Tennis Skills

 Yesterday the children in Room 6 were fortunate enough to be chosen to attend a lunchtime skills lesson with Dinyar, who represents New Zealand Table Tennis. We have been using 'small balls' as our focus this term and building skills both individually and in pairs. The table tennis balls are certainly small and definitely lighter than the tennis balls we've been using.

Dinyar started by introducing himself to us and then took a photo of us all. He handed out the bats, which are also very small in size and our first lesson was how to hold the bat. He said he thinks the best way is to pretend you are shaking someone's hand. We got that.

Then Dinyar asked us to challenge ourselves to how many times we can hit the ball straight up and down. After that we had to count our hits by turning the bat over each time. That was a bit harder but we are fast learners.

Our very final challenge was to stand very still and try and be the last person standing while balancing the ball on the bat. It was a lot of fun but the windy day didn't help the ball stay on the bat very easily. Thank you Dinyar for sharing your time and skills with us. We hope you can come again soon.

Room 6 2021

 

In Room 6 we have started our learning journey for 2021. We are ready to continue to form strong friendships full of kindness, compassion, forgiveness and empathy...just like Jesus.