The not-so-sweet facts about sugary drinks

Over the last few weeks Room 6 have been learning about healthy food and drink. Some of the class wanted to know why some adults don't want children to have sugary drinks, so we did some research.

The children learnt how to look at a drink label and see how much sugar there is per serving. We found out that we should only have 24 grams of sugar per day, at the most. That's just 6 level teaspoons. The children took turns weighing sugar on the scales to find out how much sugar is in some popular drinks.

Even drinks we thought were healthy, like fruit juice, are actually full of sugar since all the fibre has been removed.

Here is a video we made to show what we discovered.

The bottle of Fanta in the video has 81 grams of sugar in one serving. That's the same amount of sugar as FOUR normal sized Mars Bars!

Saving water? But there's a flood!

We watched a news video about all the rain and flooding Auckland have had over the last week. It was amazing to see the huge amount of water that flooded houses, shops and cars.

The heavy rain washed a lot of dirt from the soil into the water and the muddy water ended up in the dams where the water that comes out of our taps comes from. The dirt in the water is called silt.


The silt in the water is a problem, because the water treatment plants, which clean our water and make it safe to drink are struggling to clean all of the dirt out of the water. All the people in Auckland have been asked to save 20 litres each a day. If we don't, we might have to boil our water before we can drink it. This would mean we can't use the water from our school drinking fountains.

We wrote about what we could do to save water. Here are some of our ideas.

 Our dams are filled with silt and it is yuck. We need to save water. We can save water by having a shorter shower.

 Elisha

There is mud in the water. We need to save water. I will check the taps are off.

 Sophie

How to save water

It is good to save water so we don’t have to boil it. Water is important because we need to drink water. We can have shorter showers to save water.  If there is a flood we could have to drink yucky water unless we save water.

 Mustafa

We can save water by having short showers and not leaving the tap running, because when there is a flood the dams are dirty.

 Ivan

The water in the dams is muddy so we need to save water.

 Seth

We have a lot of silt in our water, so we need to save water.  Have a small bath or short shower.

 Stephanie

We made signs to put by the sinks in the school toilets to remind people to turn off the taps.

Water Safety

Today was water safety day at swimming. The Room 6 children put on life jackets and practised being in the deep end of the pool. The hardest activity for some was falling backwards into the pool and trusting the life jacket to keep us afloat.

We had a lot of fun, as well as learning to be safe in the water.

Room 6 is a sun-smart class

In Room 6 we have been learning about being sun-smart and protecting ourselves from the sun. 

Yesterday we were all given our own tubes of sunblock. Thanks Cancer Society! 

Here are some of our ideas about being sun-smart...

We use sunscreen so we don't burn our skin. 
 - Ivan

We wear hats so we don't get sunburn on our face and neck. 
 - Seth

Sunglasses protect our eyes from the sun.  
 - Bronx

It's important to drink lots of water when it's hot because it helps us to cool down.
 - Stephanie

Sunblock stops us getting burnt, but only if we use enough of it and if we keep putting it on during the day. 
 - Seth & Ivan 

When it's hot you can go to the shade to cool down. The shade also protects us from the sun. 
 - Iunisi

We can use an umbrella for shade from the sun.
 - Ivan

You could cover yourself with a shirt to stop getting sunburn. 
- Seth & Luisa.

It's 2017!

We are all back at school and are keen to learn. We have an exciting year planned. This term we will be learning about each other and the things we like and dislike. We are also making a class treaty to remind us how to behave so that we all feel safe and happy.

Look at the fantastic, new, colourful furniture in Room 6. We think it looks great. 

Tongan Language Week

Mālō e lelei

It's Tongan Language Week!

Today Room 6 had a visit from Iunisi's parents, Mr and Mrs Takitaki. 

We learnt how to say hello and goodbye in Tongan. We also sang the Tongan National Anthem and learnt about the meaning of the colours and symbols on the Tongan flag.

We also learnt the sounds of the Tongan alphabet. It was a bit different to our English alphabet but we did really well.














Finally we looked at some of the beautiful mats and ngatu. They looked amazing and we could see how much work had gone into making them.

Mālō Mr and Mrs Takitaki. We loved learning more about your lovely culture and language.

Earlier in the week we had a go at making our own ngatu.  We looked at pictures of ngatu (also known as tapa, siapo and masi in some countries). They look fabulous on our classroom wall.

Daffodil Day

Friday was Daffodil Day, a day to raise money for the Cancer Society. The Riverhills children had a mufti day where they dressed in yellow. 

In Room 6 we stuck all of the money from the gold coin donations and sausage sizzle to our Daffodil Day chart. We used our skip counting skills to count up the coins and found that we had raised $45!