Our Arataki Trip

We recently went to Arataki Visitors centre in the Waitakeres.

 

When we got there we had to spray our shoes to protect the Kauri trees from disease.

 

We split into groups and one group went on the nature trail first. We heard lots of birds but we didn't see many. Long ago it used to be a potato farm before it was a forest.

We saw Rimu trees and years ago, the leaves were used as hair combs.

 

Birds eat the berries and then poop out the seeds which then grow into more trees. "I think its very good because when trees get broken down they get replaced with a new tree". (Ella M)

 

"If the seeds that the birds poop out, if they are on top of eachother the seed on the bottom will push the other one out." (Ida)

 

We made a forest with our bodies. "Canopy is the top trees and it blocks some sun." (Ella R)  

The sub canopy is made of plants like ferns.

"Plants need light to grow so they need space." (Josh)  

Then comes the shrubs and ground cover.

 

The giant Kauri is the king of the forest. The biggest Kauri tree there is 600 years old but they can live for 2000 years!

 

"We learnt how old a baby tree is. A baby Kauri is 15-20 years old." (Lily).

 

"When Nikau palms are babies they look like grass but they're not." (George)

 

One tree we stopped to look at was the Tea Tree, known as Manuka. Captain Cook used to make tea out of the leaves when he came here.

 

There were a lot of spider webs in the forest and some were made by sheet spiders. Their webs were flat like a sheet of paper.

 

We learnt about when the trees die bugs and insects eat into them and make air gaps. The wood gets crumbly (decomposes) and ends up on the forest floor, becoming part of the soil.   This soil feeds the new trees growing so it is recycled.

Poem of the week

listen to ‘Poetry reading by Dinosaurs group’ on Audioboo

Bugs Poem Reading

listen to ‘Bugs poem reading’ on Audioboo

Nika's Memory Box

Memory Boxes

Chinese Performers

Today we watched a performance of some Chinese martial art students and their teachers.
The youngest student was 15 years old and she was amazing. She used a great big long stick which made a loud bang on the floor. She also did a fan martial art dance.

We loved the musicians who played beautifully and really fast. We liked the bamboo flute played by Mr Wong. Some of the students acted as the animal characters from Kung Fu Panda and we had to guess which animal they were.

There were also Tai Chi and Kung Fu performances. It was very interesting that the master who could lift his body off the ground and swing a long chain underneath is one of the few people in the world who can do that.

By Room 4

Memory Boxes & Magazines

Room 4 students need to have a shoe box or other lidded box of similiar size ready for week 3.

If anyone has any magazines that you have finished with, we would appreciate some for classroom activities.

Thanks.

Joanne