Food for Thought!

Te Waka Ako has been very lucky to be a part of the Heart Foundation Food for Thought program. With nutritional advisor Isabelle, we looked at making healthy food choices and how these affect our tinana. 
We learned about the different food groups, how to read food labels and the sugar content in sugary drinks. We were all very surprised about the sugar content in some drinks. Did you know that a  350 ml bottle of fruit juice has 10 teaspoons of sugar? Or that a 600ml bottle of soft drink has 16 teaspoons of sugar?
The program was topped with a visit to our local New World supermarket. Here we had to put our new food label reading skills to the test. We had to identify what foods could be classified as 'Everyday' foods or 'Sometimes' foods. Our results were surprising. Foods we thought were good choices, we found were actually 'Sometimes' foods when we analyzed the labels more closely.

Futsal!

This term the seniors are learning how to play Futsal. If you don't know what that is, it is a variant of association football played on a hard court, smaller than a football pitch, and mainly indoors. It features similarities to five-a-side football. Futsal is played between two teams of five players each, one of whom is the goalkeeper.
Our coaches Kingsley and Luke have been teaching us how to 'dribble', 'juggle' and freeze. We do warm ups where they call "dribble!" And we all dribble our balls around the hall till they call a part of our body out like "Elbow." We then have to stop our ball and put that part of the body on the ball, holding it still without using our hands. This is a lot of fun.
We also play Numbers, this is where we are numbered up in two lines 1-10 opposite each other. Kingsley calls one or two numbers and we race to the centre and try to score a goal against the opposing person with the same number. 
We are really enjoying Futsal and can't wait till we start playing a full game. Our dribbling skills are improving each week.

Our Hauora House

Our overall Inquiry theme for the year has been Wellbeing - Hauora. We sectioned the learning into four terms and focused on one 'wall' each term. The Hauora House has Taha tinana or Physical Wellbeing, Taha Whanau or Social Wellbeing, Taha Wairua or Spiritual Wellbeing and Taha hinengaro or Mental Wellbeing. We used an activity created by the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation about Te Whare Tapa Wha; finding our balance.  It is a model of health that helps us to identify where we need extra support. Finally a connection with the land or whenua forms the foundation. Everyone thought about their strengths and weaknesses in these four areas and completed the chart. Here are few ideas people had about themselves. Many of the students wrote very honestly. The second activity they completed was to create an animation of the Hauora House showing all the different parts.  Below are some examples of both activities.

Toby's thinking about his 'walls'

Ama's thinking about her 'walls'

Atreyu's thinking about his 'walls'

Below are animations done by Ishaan and Jaimie, showing the different walls we need to build to be a healthy person. Click through the slideshows.

Ruapehu Rap

On the bus trip back from camp, Donald (Neeve and Indie's Dad) and the students made up a rap about camp. At Waitemata's assembly we decided to perform it... with our orange beanies on of course! Have a look.