Malaysian Martial Art display

Members of our Malaysian community shared some of their culture with us and we had a wonderful performance of Malaysian martial art. It was amazing and looked really difficult to perform. It was really special and was something that many of us had not seen before.

Teaching our teacher - Samoan dancing

We learn from each other. Rita, Junior and Soli taught Mrs Probert how to do a Samoan dance. She really enjoyed dancing but found it quite difficult. She really had to concentrate.Soli, Rita and Junior (and Dawane who is not in the picture) presented our school with a lovely kava bowl before they returned to live in Samoa. It is a beautiful and very special present and we felt very honoured to be given such a special gift.
Soli lead the school in some Samoan song and dance. His mother helped him to do so. He did it really well and we had great fun.
Rita explains to the whole school about the kava bowl that her family gifted to the school.

Sri Lankan dancing

We are very fortunate to have people in our school community who are willing to share their culture with us in a variety of ways. We really enjoyed this beautiful Sri Lankan dancing.

Indian potato curry

Kirit and Madhu came to school to show us how to make potato curry as part of our cultural cooking day.

Kirit is holding the wok whilst Madhu is mixing up the potato cubes and spices. There is some freshly chopped coriander on the top which he is also mixing into the potato curry.

Madhu cooked us a yummy butter chicken dish too. Everyone in our school loved eating the butter chicken.

Madhu is wearing an apron and a hat on his head as part of his chef uniform. Madhu cooks in an Indian restaurant and cooks delicious food.

Learning from each other

We share many things together in our conversation group. We enjoy learning from each other about different cultures.

We celebrated Korean New Year together and James taught us how to play Yut (Ute). This is a game often played at New Year by Korean families when they are together. It is great fun and we had many laughs learning how to play this game.

James is holding the Ute sticks and is preparing to throw them and Zul, Rajendra, Rashmin and Madhu are waiting to see what he will score.

New learners of English

When children are new learners of English, we provide them with one to one language support until they feel more secure and able to "manage" in the mainstream with their peers. They spend most of their school day with their peers who provide them with an age appropriate model of English language.

Farewell to friends

We have had a few changes in our school recently. Some of our school friends have returned to their home countries and we had to say "Farewell". We look forward to keeping in touch with our friends around the world. It is sad to say goodbye, but it is exciting to hear from them when they get time to contact us. We love to know how they are getting on.

Alif, Amiru and Arif left our school and returned to Malaysia with their parents Zul and Ani. Everyone in our school misses them very much. We keep in touch via email. Zul came to our conversation classes once and week and he made many new friends there. Zul and Ani often helped us with things at school including helping cook delicious Malaysian food with Nik for our cultural day. All the boys made some wonderful duality maps which we displayed at school. They taught us a lot about life in Malaysia - we discovered things that were different to New Zealand as well as some things that were the same .

Yiyi and her Dad, Dawai returned to China where they joined Hong (Mum) who returned to China earlier than them. Yiyi also made a very large duality map and taught us a lot about China. Yiyi also helped us to learn about Chinese New Year and Dawai made some delicious Chinese dumplings for us to eat. Yiyi had some lovely new clothes for Chinese New Year - she looked beautiful in her bright red and lovely coloured clothes.

Braden returned with his family to United States of America. His class (Room 10) have written on their blog about the lovely farewell party they had together before he left.