This week, Piwakawaka team has been learning about Under the Sea and the creatures underneath the water. Some students from the Piwakawaka team shared some information on what they were learning:

Evan: My favourite part was finding out that there were about 440 different types of sharks in the world! We also did art, for the art we had to get newspaper and then cut it into the shape of a shark’s head. To decorate the shark, we added googly eyes. For the background we had blue paper that we cut into waves and stuck the shark to it. We learnt that sharks eat a lot of food in a day, so that they only have to eat every few days. We sharks go to sleep, only half of their brain sleep so that they don’t get eaten by whales that could eat them. If we had anything at home that was based on things under the sea we could bring it to school to show the class. I brought a book to school as well, that was called “Cimiu the seal’, it’s about when Cimiu and her pup nearly got eaten by a killer whale, but luckily they managed to escape, but then they realized they didn’t have enough food to eat so they had to swim deeper into the ocean. I brought another book to school that was called ‘X-ray shark’, it was true book that had a lot of facts about sharks in it. On story online we were able to read a story called ‘Rainbow Fish”, some of his friends asked if they could have one of his silver scales because they didn’t have any, but he said no. Once he said no, his friends no longer played with him, he then went to sea Wise Octopus to see why they weren’t playing with because he was sad and lonely, Wise Octopus told him he had to give them each one of his silver scales, so he did, and his friends began playing with him again. We read another story of rainbow fish that was called ‘Rainbow fish into the dark’. What happened in the story was that Rainbow fish lost his last silver scale and had to swim down into the darkness to go get it back. When he got down to the bottom, he saw a strange animal. The strange animal was a glowing pink octopus. The two became friends, and the glowing pink octopus helped rainbow fish search for his missing scale. On the way to find the scale, the two met many other underwater animals. At the end, they found the scale and began their search for a way out of the darkness.The struggled to find their way out because of how dark it was, luckily, they had help from other strange creatures to find their way out.

Daisy: My favourite part about learning under the sea was getting to know about the sharks in Fiji. Sharks have very sharp teeth that help them to catch fish for them to eat. They also use their fins to help them swim. Sharks have a pointy fin called a dorsal fin that’s on the top of their backs. I brought a shark book to school, it was called ‘Shark in the dark’, it was about a shark that was trying to get some fish to eat, but the fish were clever and they made a whale shape to scare off the shark. A few years ago when I went to Fiji, I got to see a blue starfish, we then went to an island and got on a boat so we could see the fish under the water. There was a rainbow fish, and a lot of teeny weeny blue fish there was also another really big fish that was just gray. 

Benjamin: I liked learning about sea-horses. I liked learning about them because they’re different from the earth ponies because they’re under the sea. Seahorse’s have spikes on their tails that curl, and they can be blue or orange. We learned that seahorses are much smaller than the ponies on land.

Some fish under the sea are very poisonous that could be very dangerous to eat or touch, some fish are a little bit deadly to touch, kind of like touching a poisonous spider. Some poisonous fish are like sharks but a little bit smaller. Under the sea there are a lot of fish, such as tiger fish. Some fish have spots and patterns on them with many colours from the rainbow, and some fish are slimy! There are some fish that are camouflaged so it’s harder for sharks to find. Ms.Ruiter taught us that there are poisonous fish that looked like they were on lily pads.

Autumn: I liked sharks because we did a lot of under the sea shark art on newspaper, we stuck googly eyes on it. We cut out a shark out of the newspaper with scissors. For the sharks, we made an ocean. We got dark blue cardboard that we had to cut into curvy waves so it would seem more realistic.

Sharks have dorsal fins and there are many, many sharks in the ocean that we are not able to sea. New Zealand doesn’t have many sharks since they prefer warmer water. And they attack their prey. Sharks help balance out the sea and how many creatures are in the waters so they sea can’t suffer by having too many fish in it.