The Rubbish That Was Left At Mt Manganui Beach

On Thursday 13th October 2011 , my family and I went to Mt Manganui and saw five containers. Three were floating on water and two were on land. One white container had meat patties in it and a red one had long logs.
There was a heap of oil mixed up with the water , you could even see the oil in the pattern of the waves on the sand.My mum got oil stuck on her shoe, the oil looked like grease.

The Life Cycle Of A Butterfly

The Monarch Butterfly is an amazing creature-Caterpillar or Butterfly. Here is it's life cycle:

Stage 1: The Egg

A butterfly lays an egg on a special plant called a Milkweed. It will lay up to 700 eggs in a range of 2-5 weeks.

Stage 2: The Caterpillar

After 2 weeks, what should hatch, but a Monarch Caterpillar! This is the baby Butterfly, or Larvae (pronounced lava). When it hatches it is very hungry, and will eat anything in sight, including the egg.As it eats, it will become 270,000 times it's original weight!
This will force it to shed it's skin. But don't worry. There's always another skin underneath! The average Caterpillar will do this about six times.

Stage 3: The Pupa (Chrysalis)

After shedding all of it's skins, the Caterpillar will curl up in the shape of a j. It will now shed it's skin one last time, except  instead of the skin falling off, it will turn inside-out. The skin will climb up the larvae until it has formed a sort of protective hard shell around the larvae. A butterfly will slowly form, and as it does so, the pupa, or chrysalis, will become thinner and more transparent, until it splits.


Stage 4: The Caterpillar Butterfly


It cannot fly yet as it's wings are wet from the skin, but once it has dried them in the sun it will fly away...






So that is the Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle! Butterflys are so amazing!




Joshua Cross
Takahe

The Monarch Butterfly Life-Cycle

Butterflies are small, pretty insects. They have thin , black bodies and antennae. The biggest part of them are their wings. Monarch butterflies have orange and black wings.

First, an adult butterfly lays an egg. Adults can lay 700 eggs in a few weeks. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants.Then the egg hatches. The small caterpillar is called a pupa.

The larva eats everything in sight. Sometimes he sheds his skin. This is called moulting.
The larva becomes 27,000 times the size the weight he was when he hatched.

Once the caterpillar is very big, it curls up in the shape of a J. It moults and the old skin turns inside out, covering the larva. He is now in his coccoon, at the pupa stage.

The coccoon begins to become transparent. After 9-14 days, the coccoon splits and a butterfly comes out. The butterflies' wings are soggy so it pumps liquid into them. Then it lets them dry. Then it can fly away, and lay more eggs.

After the butterfly has laid all it's eggs, it dies. That is
the amazing life-cycle of a butterfly.

By Elena.

our class art

On the 12th of September takahe did some art for sport. We had to draw people doing any sport but we had to do the people moving and we had to paint the people and the background from the photo. but we could only draw two people.

Chalk Art

On Monday 5th September 2011 Ramarama School walked happily to the Court. When we arrived Katie and Elena grabbed the Chalk and they started making a rough outline. Our book was "Where The Wild Things Are"!
About 10 minutes later the rest of Takahe got to go to the court. After that we got to colour the picture in. The sea was the hardest bit because we had to use a lot of blue.

All the classes did a book. It looked amazing!

by Abbie

Speeches

For the last few weeks we have been doing a speech competition. We had to put together a good speech on any topic of our choice, then say it in front of our class. The best went to a speech-off against 2 other classes. The best 5 went to a school final, the best speech went into city finals. Then comes the New Zealand finals of witch will conclude the competition. The lengths were: 2:30 =just long enough, 3:00=perfect, 3:30=Maximum length. It has been a lot of fun and I know we have all learnt a lot. Here are some of the speech topics we chose: I did mine on planets. Others included horses, Earth, Electricity, and being a 12-year-old girl.




By Joshua Cross

Our Learning Model

BY Sam and Larissa