Samoan Language Week

Talofa lava! This week is Samoan Language Week. We have been doing some activities relating to Samoan culture. On Monday and Tuesday we read a book about making siapo (tapa) and found out how these very special textiles are made. We did some simple artworks based on some of the images we saw.

We decided to do some cooking inspired by Samoan recipes. We read a book about how Samoan people cook some food wrapped up in parcels. We found out that coconut is a very important ingredient in Samoan cooking. We decided to turn our vegetables for soup making into vegetable parcels with coconut milk. Traditionally these are wrapped in leaves, but we adapted and used foil to make parcels.

 The first job we had to do was to chop up the vegetables. We harvested some silver beet and parsley from the garden outside of our classroom too. We partly cooked the vegetables in the microwave, stirred in the coconut milk then made parcels using foil.

Fay was chief assistant chef for this project. Rawiri was very interested in the whole process.

Matthew spooned kumara into his parcel.

He added some carrots and silver beet.

Aimee-Lee thought pumpkin would be good. William had music therapy with Jenny so he didn't do cooking. He is doing so well at music - we are really proud of him! He returned to class and had a sit down after all of the great work he did.

Kyle added pumpkin to his parcel.

Aimee-Lee added kumara. We bought orange kumara at the supermarket.

We bundled up our parcels to keep the steam in.

They were like little nests.

Here they are all wrapped up and ready to go in the oven:

After they were cooked for about 45 minutes they looked like this:

The vegetables were all cooked and there was a delicious coconut sauce in the bottom. Yummy! Rawiri took one look and said "No!" but then he had a taste and decided "Yes please!".

Aimee-Lee's vegetable parcel looked so good and she ate everything.

Kyle is not a huge vegetable fan, but he tasted the different vegetables. Well done Kyle.

Matthew didn't seem to know what to think of food in a foil parcel, but he did think the veges were very delicious.

We made a parcel for William, but he had a look and decided not to test the vegetables. We will keep them for tomorrow.

We can highly recommend this technique for cooking vegetables. Samoan people also cook fish in parcels. We thought adding some curry paste to the coconut milk would liven things up a bit too, and then you'd have an Indian or Asian inspired creation.

In the morning we discussed how coconuts are harvested, and watched a video of someone climbing a tree and harvesting coconuts. Matthew also watched a fun video of a man finding a lizard in a coconut tree. He is our class expert on animals. We didn't have to climb a tree to find a coconut because we bought one from the supermarket. Sadly it didn't come with a lizard.

Fay tried to use a few different tools to get into the eyes of the coconut. We could hear the coconut water swishing around inside and wanted to get it out without making a big mess.

Finally a screwdriver turned out to be perfect. There was a little hissing sound when we got into the inside part of the coconut.

Look at what came out:

 We tried the coconut water and most of us liked it.

Then we got to the main event. Rawiri had a go at getting into the coconut.

Then Kyle gave it a few good whacks with the hammer.

And Rawiri went tap, tap, tap to open the cracks up.

 Everyone crowded around to see what was inside the coconut.

 Yes, it was fun finding out what was inside the rough, brown coconut, but it was even better getting to taste it. William, Rawiri and Aimee-Lee loved the coconut. Kyle wasn't quite sure whether it was good or bad, and Matthew wasn't impressed. He is used to his mum's wonderful cooking.

We have had a lot of fun with one coconut, a screwdriver and a hammer. I wonder what we will find out about next week?

Work is fun!

This week I thought I'd put a few picture of just some of the things we get up to during the week in Room 10. On Mondays we go on an outing in one of the school vans. We visited Eastgate Mall. Joshua discovered that there was a guitar in the library. Yes - I was surprised to find a potentially noisy musical instrument in the library, but we played with it really quietly so that we didn't annoy any other people. 

Meanwhile Rawiri headed for the library computers.

And Joshua joined him.

William had a play on the guitar. He has been attending music therapy with Jenny Lee, and has been developing his skills in strumming on the guitar.

Matthew, who loves to play with toys, got Mrs Frog to play the guitar. I think Tigger and Mrs Frog had been having a tea party before that.

We love to head out to our Hohepa garden. Our silver beet has been growing like mad. We all help with watering. There isn't a hose next to our garden so we have to go over a bridge and find the tap by the glasshouses, fill our watering cans and carry them carefully back.

 William is starting to get the idea. He has been in a supervisory role until recently, but has now decided to take a more hands-on approach.

 Matthew is a keen helper now. He can carry the watering cans to and from the tap.

Back at school Aimee-Lee showed us her cycling skills. We have not seen her ride a bike in several years because she decided that she didn't want to, but, as the saying goes, you never forget, and she could jump on a bike and carefully go up and down the biking area. Fantastic work Aimee-Lee.

Kyle is becoming a really enthusiastic writer. I am kept busy thinking up inspiring ideas to get everyone into writing. On Mondays we write about our weekend news. Kyle could tell us about his weekend activities, and then had a go at doing some writing independently. During the week he also wrote about the All Blacks doing the Haka.

 Alex is one person who needs no encouragement to read books. Each week we have a shared book. This week we read a wonderful book called My Red Balloon by Kazuaki Yamada. It was all about a balloon that gets lost and is chased down by an ever increasing group of animal characters. When the balloon is finally almost captured it goes "pop" - of course we had to act out the story, complete with animals and a big red balloon (every day!). Yes, the balloon went pop, much to the delight of the class.

 Each Tuesday we schedule a shopping trip. Students who wish to buy something can bring along some money and make a purchase. We support students to be as independent as they can. Rawiri chose himself a rather extravagant looking cream bun from the bakery at the supermarket. We told him it will have to be a healthy choice next week to make up for it! He bought it himself.

 I think the most important thing we all do during the week is communication. We base the whole programme around providing opportunities for communication. This week William used his i-Pad to share his thoughts for two great pieces of writing. On Thursday (soup day) he created a recipe for olive soup which we all thought was brilliant. William loves olives with a passion and his soup recipe contained corn, black olives and green olives. Not sure how the finished product would be, but he seemed to be very pleased with himself.

So, as you can see, we have a lot of fun at school. I hope you all have a fun weekend too. Next week we have a performance to go to by the Strike percussion group. Exciting!

Muscles!

Each Wednesday some people from Room 10 go to Funky Movements at Jellie Park. It is an exercise/dance fitness class. Sometimes we work around a rotation. Sometimes we work with partners or groups. We use exercise equipment to help us build up our muscles. Our instructor at Funky Movements is Michelle. She loves to see us get involved and do our best. She plays cool music.

Last week five people from Room 10 went along to Funky Movements.

Matthew discovered that he looks really cool working on weight training.

Kyle also worked incredibly hard on building up his muscles.

Rawiri was lifting the weight up and down.

Aimee-Lee had the heavier weight.

Michelle said "Up high Rawiri!"

Alex could lift the weight too.

And Matthew kept on working really hard. Can you see Rawiri with two weights?

Funky Movements is a special exercise class for people of all abilities. We are so pleased to be able to attend and have met lots of lovely people. We always like to see our friend James who attends with his day programme group. Exercise classes are a great post-school activity for keeping fit and having fun with other awesome people.

I would just like to say how impressed I am with the progress the Funky Movers have made. Matthew hid in the corner on the first two sessions. Look at how great he is doing now! Rawiri knows what to do now, and likes to remind Michelle what comes next. Everyone who attends has learned about the routines and expectations.

We don't send everyone out each week to activities, but always make sure there are other things going on that work better. Josh loves a more freestyle dance session, so we can make that work for him. Will doesn't always feel like being in a noisy environment, so we see how he is feeling and decide each week whether he is going to have fun. The Transition Programme at Allenvale is all about making sure everyone tries new things and then builds on what is most successful.

Have a great Friday everyone! We hope the weather will be good for a visit to our garden at Hohepa.

An Autumn Adventure

Welcome back everyone! Great to see you all again. It was lovely to see how happy everyone was to return to school after a break. Most people had quiet holidays. We have been so lucky with the beautiful weather.

On Monday we decided to head out for an expedition to look for autumn treasures.

We parked in the Botanical Gardens car park and walked around the river along the Kate Shepherd walk and through the Arboretum in Hagley Park.

The autumn colours were stunning.

There were interesting leaves and branches.

 Aimee-Lee carried one of the collecting  bags and Alex found lots of things to put in it.

The leaves went crunch under our feet.

Rawiri found an interesting branch with little cones on it.

 
Joshua was looking out for dogs.

There was a man using a big mower. Alex was excited and Matthew was not. Go away noisy mower!

We spotted so many ducks in the river.

Matthew found some feathers.

We decided William suits autumn with his amazing red hair and big brown eyes.

Aimee-Lee knows these are acorns. She picked up some for our collection.

We were all interested in the punts cruising along the Avon river taking people for rides. Fiona and Fay said they would fall in if they had to try to steer a punt.

We crossed the river at the bridge and checked in on the Peace Bell. Kyle examined the writing on the bell carefully.

While someone went to the toilet Matthew and William made themselves at home on the beanbags by the information centre,

What a beautiful day for an adventure.

After lunch we looked through our collection of autumn things and made some collages using lots of PVA glue and big sheets of paper.

We had a lovely start to the new term.