Year 5 students had the most amazing Week 5 of Term 1.

Year 5 students have just completed the biggest event of our Outdoor Education programme for 2020. We spent a week doing a variety of activities, some at school and others off-site.

On Monday, each child worked to construct their own poi. This piece of equipment is a necessary part of our kapa haka programme. Now every Year 5 student has their own personalised poi for use throughout the year.

We travelled by bus to Lake Rua and spent the whole day completing a variety of water safety tasks. Kayaking, raft building and water confidence were well covered by the instructors from Kore. We were lucky and had warm but overcast weather. This kept us sun safe and water safe.

We had a morning full of group challenges on Wednesday. Canterbury Sports came to school and set up some great tasks for us. They all involved a focus on effective communication. For some of us it was a real challenge, but boy was it a blast!

On Thursday we drove into town by bus and split the year group in two. We rotated through two tasks, a scavenger hunt in the Botanic Gardens and a visit to the Art Gallery. At the gallery, we looked at a display called Hei Tiki by a New Zealand artist and then constructed our own tiki. This was a great day. We discovered new places in the gardens and learnt a bit about some of the histories of tiki.

On Friday we made our rakau sticks for kapa haka and put up tents. This was an interesting day. The teachers didn't give too many clues about how to put up a tent . . . the results were interesting but everyone managed to have a place to work in the end.  There was a whole lot of problem-solving going on today. 

A huge vote of thanks has to go out to all the parents who volunteered to support us. It was a big crew of 30+ who swam, hunted for clues in the garden, gave instructions to small groups and kept track of us while we were off-site. We could not do these types of activities without you all.

Below are some of the photos that were accumulated during the week.

We had such a lot of fun!