The Aquarium

Our first big jump into New Zealand tourism was a trip to the local aquarium, Kelly Tarlton's. Mary-Ellen and I had visited it before, much earlier in the year and were excited to share the experience with the family. So, jet-lagged and full of excitement, we packed into the cars and headed to the Mission Bay area. The weather was far from ideal for sightseeing, but none-the-less we did manage to come across a traditional Maori sailing vessel, known as a Waka, hauled up on the beach. The beautiful vessel was adorned with paintings and carvings that echoed to a time when these vessels were used for long ocean journeys.

Once into the small aquarium, there was much to enjoy, and it is always fun seeing it through someone else's eyes. The resident penguins had the whole family captivated for quite a while as they swam past windows, waddled around their enclosure and fed small chicks hiding in the corners.

A personal favourite of mine, the rays, were large as life wandering around their enormous tank with their 1.5 metre wingspan.

One of the major highlights was of course the large tube and conveyor belt walkway. While standing on the moving floor, we were transported through two large aquaria, that ran around us creating a tube. Ancient looking sharks and majestic eagle rays swam around us as we journeyed through. Dad of course had a blast taking pictures of the numerous creatures that swam by.

One of Mom's favourites was the sea horse exhibit, which although hard to compare to the breeding facility she went to in Florida, was still an amazing viewing of some rather unusual and interesting variations on the sea horse body form.

Tired and ready for a nap, we concluded our first real adventure in New Zealand, returning home for some well deserved supper and to look through the pictures we took. It was clear at this point that the family would be in for a long presentation when Dad got home, showing off this and the many more adventures we would have on their visit!

A Family Reunites!

2:30 am - woken up with the same excitement one experiences on Christmas Eve as a 6 year old, the tossing and turning started

6:30 am - finally rolled out of bed to get ready to head to the airport

7:30 am - watching youtube videos in an attempt to distract ourselves as it was STILL too early to go to the airport

8:00 am - running to the car to head to the airport

8:02 am - in the car, seat belts buckled and car started

8:04 am - the plane from LA landed at the Auckland Airport

8:40 am - arrive at airport and park

9:15 am -  4 sleepy people walk through the gates to start what will be an awesome amount of New Zealand sight seeing.

9:30 am - in the cars  and now on the way to the house to drop off luggage, change and start the day!

10:30 am - one of the best kiwi breakfasts at Bolaven  - a little tucked away yummy restaurant that serves brioche french toast, free range eggs, happy bacon and sausages and perfect toast

11:30 am - off for a tour of Mount Eden which included a stop at the butchers, the produce market, the fish mongers. the chemist and a few little shops along the way to pick up some fresh food for the next few days

Overall  a super successful first morning with lots of sight seeing around Fiddlehead Flat. The weather was nice and overcast allowing the winterized Canadians a chance to acclimatize to the warmer weather without too much rain.

We spent the afternoon hanging out, chatting, catching up and eating lots of yummy fruit. It was glorious.

School's out for Summer!

Where-oh-where did the last 9 weeks go!?!?! This term FLEW by with sound barrier breaking speed. Things were chaotic, hilarious, full of warm heart fuzzies and I wouldn't change it in any way.

This term held final exams for the Year 9 students and one last NZQA standard for the Year 10 students. Outside of testing, we had a blast. The whole term focused on Algebra, which lets you get into some really fun real word applications - such as speed dating. I used this a few times in my classes with great success, it was so easy to do and it got so many kids talking to classmates that they would not normally have talked to as they were solving problems.

We also played "Algebra Survivor"  - a game from a website called coolmath.com. We had some great online and in class games played where teams could earn survivor points that were then tabulated for the grandest prize of classroom history - CHOCOLATE!

All of the learning aside, I absolutely LOVED the last day of school - and not just because it was the last day of school. The kids I taught all year did some AMAZING things. There was a Christmas concert in the first part of the morning - man, can these kids SING! Their voices are clear, powerful and full of passion and love. All of the instruments were played by the kids and the choir was fantastic. It was a chill inducing morning with all of the talent in the room and all the LOVE the audience gave to their peers. There were kids rushing the stage after each performance to shower their classmates and friends love with hugs and kisses, high fives and general congratulations. It was a beautiful show of love, support and the recognition of the courage it took some of these kids to get up and share their talents.

After the concert, we had prize giving which was another ceremony that looks somewhat like it does at home, but again the love and recognition by the students for their friends was overwhelming. After each section of awards, when photos were being taken, friends and families would again rush the stage with big messages of congratulations, hugs, kisses and candy leis. I have not seen this before, and didn't take any photos of the leis (I should have!), but I did find something similar online.

The awards ceremony ended with one of the coolest things I have ever seen a school do for a student. There is a boy, Soape, (who I was lucky enough to teach this year - not only talented with music, but also academically and a very likable kid) who posted one of his music assignments to youtube (see it here). It was seen by Agnes Tupou (who the song was written about - by her husband) and the music department was able to arrange to have STKS (the guy who wrote the song) come in and perform with Soape to close out the awards ceremony. You can see the video of this performance here. How the music department kept this a secret from the students and almost all the staff was amazing.

I'm off for a few weeks now - until January 22nd -  and we have a BIG vacation planned with Mark's family (parents and brothers) arriving in the next few days. I'm already looking forward to the next Polyfest (music/dance/cultural competitions), but not wishing my summer away.

On their way

Well, it has been quite some time since we last blogged, and much has happened. A school year has ended, field experiments have been set up, and summer students have been trained. We have been busy bringing all of responsibilities to a close in order to be free to enjoy the upcoming adventures with the Wilcox family. At this moment they are twiddling their thumbs waiting to board the long plane from LA to Auckland. Mary-Ellen and I are doing some last minute cleaning and preparing to do some Christmas baking for our weary travelers who will be arriving bright and early tomorrow morning. We will be on the road for much of the visit but I will try to keep it updated as best as possible.

Spring has Sprung

This is a list detailing the arrival of spring!

* Mark and I sat outside, for a whole afternoon, on the deck. We were not rained on once! 

* The sunscreen has been moved in the stores from the lotion department to the seasonal department 

* The flowers are in bloom all over town 

* The sound of lawn mowers and the smell of fresh cut grass 

* The Batista asking you if you want your coffee iced or hot 

* Laundry on the line 

* The need for sunglasses all the time, without the clouds there is nothing stopping those warm rays!

* All the restaurants and cafes have patio sets out and they see more use than the internal seating  

* The sight and sound of the little fantail song birds 

I think both Mark and I agree that having the temperature in the house warming up, the windows open and the sound of birds floating in is a very welcome change to the dreary, rainy days of winter. 

School Holidays: Week Two

'This past week was my second, and last week of holidays. Here's a quick recap of what we got up to in the last week.

The start of the week was truly awful weather to go camping like we had planned. It was raining and pouring pretty much until Friday. We did make use of the weather to get caught up on some things around the house, and to cook some yummy meals that take much longer than we have during the normal work week. 

I spent some time with friends, having coffee at the cutest little cafe up the street, Bolaven. We got the inspection done on the car.  I also worked on getting the Christmas shopping done as we have to mail everything by November 1st for the holiday season. I also did some course work as I am taking two classes through the university of Auckland that just started up for some professional development. Mark worked on his papers/thesis and was at the university a few days for meetings and work. Although I am on holidays, Mark is not. Mark schedule is flexible, but he still has things he has to get done. 

We celebrated my birthday, on Wednesday, by going out to dinner to a Thai place up the street, and then driving out to the country to watch the full lunar eclipse that was happening. Mark and I enjoyed the event and we both commented on how quickly the eclipse itself was to happen, and how quickly it was to fade. The moon was such an amazing red-mist colour. 

Wednesday was also a really important day as my sister had her second son, which means Mark and I now have TWO lovely nephews. 

On Friday we took the day to hike up Mount Eden, and this time we brought the camera- and remembered to charge the battery. We are going to post about Mount Eden on its own. 

Saturday afternoon we spent on the deck since it was so nice. Mark made the cutest wind chime out of shells he's collected from some of the beaches we've been too in the past year. We went to some friends for supper and cards and it was fantastic. We had a lovely finger food spread and played Wizard. We were all laughing so hard we had a hard time catching our breath, and we plan to do it all again next weekend. 

Today, Sunday, Mark is out on the boats for work and I am going to put together the final touches on my lesson for tomorrow. I need to get the homework page finished. I also wanted to catch up on these blogs, and spend some time sitting in the sun working on my latest knit project - a cute geometric baby blanket for a friend who is due in the near future. 

It is so very hard to believe that in 9.5 weeks I will be on summer holidays and we will be welcoming Mark's family to the North Island for a Christmas visit and tour around the island. 

Auckland War Museum

After bragging on facebook no less than two days in a row that I was sitting on the deck enjoying the new found warmer spring temperatures, it turned grey, dark, rainy and cold once more. After a few days of this, Mark and I decided to head off to the museum located here in Auckland. the museum itself is beautiful, and has stunning white marbles steps that lead up to it, a gorgeous bandstand and it is situated in the middle of a large intercity park.

The marble stairs lead up to the front of the building - this is the side set of stairs from the parking lot.

We spent hours there and still did not really take it all in as there was so much to look at, so much information to read and so many interactive displays. The whole first floor was dedicated to the Maori and Pacifica peoples (Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Niue, Cook Islands).  This included artwork from each culture, fishing and hunting gear, jewelry, dress, statues and carvings used in ceremonial events, cooking and daily
household living.

 This photo is the inside of a traditional Maori meeting house being restored by the museum. 

 This is a carving that was to be situated over the door frame of a family home. 

Maori Carvings 

  A second set of Maori carvings 

 Maori jewelry carved from Jade 

A basket woven to protect the Hangi (food) which is cooking over the rocks. This is a traditional way of cooking, and very tasty. The Kapa Haka group at school cooks using this traditional method and the food is sold as a fundraiser on campus. It is always delicious - stuffing, sausage, meat(lamb or chicken), sweet potato and vegetables.

Cook Island jewelry made completely from shells - even the white and blue necklace 

The second floor was the Natural History floor - this included stuffed animals. It was interesting as there were A LOT of stuffed mammals, quite ordinary things until you realize that the only mammals on the islands are things people brought with them, and the people themselves. This makes mammals quite a rare thing to see - if you don't count the sheep and cats - so people go to the  museum and zoo to see them. It also had a walk of the dinosaurs, some sections on coastal areas, underwater areas, volcanoes and a room called "weird and wacky".

We learned that the majority of the Albatross Species breed and nest here in New Zealand. This is the largest of them. Perhaps we will be lucky enough to see one in during our time here. 

This was by far the highlight for Mark - a whole display dedicated to the different crabs in and near New Zealand. I have to admit, some of them were quite impressive! 

A stuffed Kiwi bird - we still have yet to see a live one here in New Zealand. We are always on the lookout, but I fear that they may be something that is very difficult to cross off our list of things to see and do while we are here. 

There was, as in any museum worth its salt, a dinosaur walk. Mark and I looked at each other before we went in and were conversing about how many of the displays would be from Canada - mostly Alberta is what we thought. The final count was ONE! One display form Canada, one from Chili, two from the US and four from England. Every thing else was from New Zealand itself, or Australia, and they have some remarkable skeletons. 

The natural history section also included some tanks with live animals. This is a common NZ gecko. There were also tanks with cockroaches, fish,  bugs and other lizards.

This is a model of a penguin that one was found here in New Zealand - it's pretty much the same size as me. 

The third floor was dedicated to the wars. It housed  two planes, a roll of honour for each of the wars where New Zealand fought and had casualties, a section on Samoan Independence, a section on the Holocaust and current peace keeping efforts of the Kiwis abroad. We didn't take too many photos here as some of it seemed to sad to photograph, and other bits seemed rude to photograph given the content. 

This is a map of England and it's allies shown in the crests. This was so old, that Newfoundland (the one on the most left) was it's own crest as it was not yet part of Canada. There were crests all along the bottom of the maps too.

One of the two planes, with its engine opened up so you can see what was really driving the plane.

Overall it was a fantastic way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon. We both agreed that we need to go back and spend some more time reading and viewing the pieces as there was so much.

TOTEM (Cirque de Soleil)

The first Saturday of the holidays was one that will go down in the book of awesome things we've done. The day started off pretty lazy with some grocery shopping, errands, and chores. That afternoon, I did some marking while Mark worked some on his latest paper both of us trying to distract ourselves until it was time to get ready for our first Cirque de Soleil performance.

This is something that I've really wanted to see for a long time and although they have come to Saint John, we never took advantage of the opportunity. A few weeks ago, we decided that since the performance was within walking distance from our house, we should just do it. We went online and booked our tickets sitting in the second section back from the stage.

Once we arrived to the Big Top, the first thing we both noticed was the Canadian and Quebec flags flying high and proud. Such a little piece of home, but it made us both smile.

After being ushered into the area with all the merchandise, and buying our magnet we entered the big top. From the moment we sat down, the show had already started as many of the comic relief performers were out and about greeting and interacting with the audience. One of our favorite characters was a clown that really took being a clown to heart. He was goofy, silly and adorable. He was eating popcorn (from patrons buckets), ushering people to the wrong seats, and running around trying to get the kids involved in pranks.

Once the show started we were both mesmerized. The talent, strength and entertainment value were all immensely high. The basic story line of Totem was the evolution of man. It went from little jumping and acrobatic frogs that were in such amazing glitter suits to moneys and apes, neanderthals, cave men, first nations, men of the 80's with music and boomboxes, life guards of the 90's and eventually the business man of today complete with ringing cell phone. There was also a scientist (Darwin) in many of the scenes taking notes and observations and conducting experiments with glowing lights and many slight of hand tricks.

The acrobatics was amazing. There were several done on rings, some on beams, there were acrobats flying through the air as well as using many stage props to fly around the set. One of my favorites was a love story that was done on a bar hanging from the air. The strength of the acrobats was amazing and their love story choreography and music was enchanting. It also helped that their suits were a beautiful soft yellow and covered in glitter. There were china women on unicycles throwing bowls onto each others heads, There were also strong men, another duet done on roller blades and so many other acts. In addition to all of these scenes there was also comic relief done by a duet - a clown and a francophone of  Italian decent. They were both silly, exaggerated and so very funny.

If the show heads to north america after it is finished here in New Zealand and Australia, we highly recommend that you see it.

Another Ten Week Term almost Finished

I can't believe that next week will be the END of TERM THREE!?!?! Where has the time gone and how did it manage to slip away so very fast?

As we look back at what we have done the last term weeks, I can honestly say that we pretty much just focused on the day to day grind but do have some exciting stuff planned for the holidays just around the corner.

At school, it is always busy, but we've had a very fun term working on statistics and probability. I think the kids really enjoyed creating and interpreting the graphs and they are really mini statisticians in their own right now. We've done lots of cutting and pasting too into our notebooks with pretty coloured papers for notes and the kids have totally fallen in love with being able to find their notes quickly since the coloured papers are easy to find in the sea of looseleaf.

This is  sample of some notes we did. I printed this one on white paper so we could use colour with a purpose.

I've also introduced "colour with purpose" this term with my kiddlets. I found that when we started to do handout notes a lot of the kids wanted to highlight EVERYTHING. Part of this is the whole "I'm new to highlighters" and the fact that "the highlighters are so pretty" and part of it was their inability to determine what is the most important parts in a set of notes.

They are getting better at colour with purpose and I know now that my kids are actually READING and THINKING about the notes. I usually give them a sheet and will tell them there are 4 important points (or however many points I need them to find), so they need to read the notes, think about them and decide which are the most important points and highlight them. We then go over them with the class. It's a bit more money on my part - providing coloured paper and highlighters - but I think that the cost is totally worth it as the kids are conversing about math in a much better way, with proper vocabulary AND they are referencing their notes first instead of asking me every time they get stuck on something which frees me up more to work with kids one-on-one.

We also had parent-teacher interviews this term and it was lovely to  meet so many parents. I was one of the lucky teachers as I was booked up full on both nights and had a handful of parents who just stopped by to see if I could squeeze them in between other parents. I redid the Hall of Fame for parent-teacher interviews and dusted off my decorating skills to put up a few posters that I've had laminated for a while but just have not put up.

This is the front of my room with a few posters moved around to make room for the algebra strategy posters in the middle of the wall. Here's hoping by the end of the term the kiddies can use all 8 of these strategies!

Just one of my favorite posters :-) It has owls, acronyms and MATH! 

The updated hall of fame - all in stars - these are my top students. To get your name on the hall of fame you need to get a Merit or Excellence on your test (sort of like a B+ - A+ range we are used to back home). The center posters are a "chance your words, change your mind" idea I borrowed from a blog I love (@math=love). 

This is my micro desk - the area that has the lesson plans, the photocopies and the day to day things. I bought this chair this term on a steal of a deal to replace my old, falling apart one. 

The day to day lesson notes, reminders and to-do lists 

This is my BEAUTIFUL table that was delivered just this week. It is going to be awesome and the kids already love it. It makes working with small groups so much easier as I can pull kids from all areas of the classroom without having to group desks in awkward ways....and each student still has their own desk for their own use once we are finished and I invite another group over for small group math. 

I decorated my filing cabinet and got rave reviews from the kiddies - even the boys- who thought it looked much better than the graffiti that was there. I inherited this from another teacher. I am so grateful to have it as it houses all my worksheets, tests, answer keys and other important papers on students (think IEPs, and such stuff). Yes, it locks. The buckets on the filing cabinet are assigned to each class for assignment collection. 

This term is also starting to heat up again (oh no!) and I've already had to pull the fan out of storage. You can just see it behind the chair on the desk. 

This is my little family of owls. There are three of them on the branch and my students have named them. Each class has different names for the family.

In the last week, the Year 10's wrote their Year 10 Term Exams, and the Year 9's finished up their statistics unit with a poster project and topic test. I've also graded all the Year 10 papers for those Year 10 students who wrote the Year 11 assessment. I was pleased with the results!  At the school I work at, each term Year 10 students are offered a chance to write some credits at Year 11. Each test in Year 11, 12 and 13 is worth between 2 and 4 credits and they need to get a variety of numeracy and literacy credits to graduate. If you pass the test, you get the credits. I've already got a handful of students who are just about finished their numeracy credits for Year 11, and they haven't even technically finished Year 10. Such an exciting opportunity for the ones taking full advantage of the program.

This term I've also attended a best practice math conference, my second math conference in NZ. The conference was great and it was a pleasure to network with so many teachers in the secondary schools. It was a blast to meet and talk about math, math curriculum development and interpretation. I left with so many ideas and so many things I want to implement next term, and some great ideas for next year as I've already covered the topics.

I've also spent some time getting ready for Term 4: ALGEBRA! I am so excited for this next term, as it is my favorite section to teach. We are going to play Algebra Survivor (adapted from coolmath) and the kiddies in my class are going to compete in algebra challenges.

We start our first challenges tomorrow with the designing of the team flag and a CSI/Clue inspired review of Order of Operations that will have teams competing to figure out "whodunnit" the fastest.

Milestones

Well, it has been a very busy last couple of weeks, with lots of writing, frantic processing of samples, and several wonderful excursions. Just last week though, there have been some very important milestones. Rob and Joanne celebrated a wedding anniversary, I managed to get out for the 6 month surveys of the mussel beds, and I passed 100 dives and over 72 hours (3 whole days) underwater. A very special birthday was also passed, to my Grandmother (Mary Wilcox). I coincidentally found a particular snack which Mary-Ellen and I enjoyed on your behalf.

As mentioned there were some exciting adventures last week and I will be posting about them soon. Mary-Ellen also has a vacation coming up so we will also be venturing out then as well, so stay tuned!

Through the looking glasses

Hello again everyone. It has been a busy few weeks, gearing up for a presentation in Nelson, another spat rope swapping, and finally processing the first set of spat ropes. It was a bit more of an undertaking than one would expect for me to get a space and all the equipment I needed, but I got there, and had a blast going through the samples I had sieved.

To recap/explain, I set out these collectors with a piece of hairy rope in the cove where I dumped the 7 tonnes of mussels. I wanted to see if there were baby mussels settling out of the water column in the area, and hope to observe any patterns in this settlement over the next year. So every month, I venture out with my volunteers and divers collect the ropes, replace them, and then bring the dirty ropes back to me for analysis. I clean the ropes, sieve the contents down to 0.2 millimeters and then go through them with a fine toothed comb and count the number of baby mussels. Well this has been a smashing good start, and I am happy to say that there are indeed mussels. With their brown zig-zag patterns just starting to develop, something that will disappear as they grow old and take on a brown colour with a green band around the lip of the shell.

One wonderful feature of the dissecting scope I have is that I can either view them with light from above or below, as in the respective positions of the two photos. But what else is interesting are the various other organisms within the samples. I get a glimpse into a microscopic world that few get to see. A whole world of miniature organisms, and some who will never attain sizes much greater than that which I see through the looking glass of my microscope. There are many other bivalves within my samples, taking on many different shapes, some more close to my mussels, much to my dismay, and others are different yet very familiar, like the numerous baby scallops.

Brittle stars like the one just above and to the left of the leftmost scallop, are a rare but interesting find among the fibres of my hairy ropes. Much of the samples however are seemingly polluted with numerous crustaceans. From shrimp to amphipods, and the oh so misleading ostracods that look like bivalves except for the feet and antennae sticking out of the two halves of carapace (on the left hand side of the top most picture below). All kinds of different orientations of the same jointed body forms, it is truly amazing the diversity that exists, especially when one looks closely.

But sometime luckily, most of these crustaceans float, where as the mussels sink, making processing not so bad despite the high abundance of these critters. The problem comes when you look very closely, at the samples that are less than 0.5 mm but greater than 0.2 mm. These samples are heavily polluted with polychaete worm tubes, other small bivalves, and diatom plankton. But this is where the most obnoxious thing in all my samples can be found; Sand! Grains of sand bury the mussels, creating a scavenger hunt for me, picking at them with tweezers to find the buried treasures. As if lifting boulders that threaten to squash these pint-sized mussels, I sift through to find my little mussel babies.

It may not be all fun and games, but it certainly is an interesting world, our world, just smaller. I also am lucky to get to see some very interesting crabs, my other interest. There are numerous crab species, including some that would have just settled and still have their larval tails before the metamorphose to their adult form. Spindly legs and unusual shaped bodies that eventually become the robust and hardy creatures that have so successfully survived in almost every habitat, including land (Not that I found any of those species specifically).

I will continue to take pictures of unusual things I find in the miniature world and periodically post them. Until then, I will be off to a conference in Nelson to give a presentation on my work with mussel beds thus far.