Hiwi the Kiwi

Week 4 started with a surprise when Mrs Croll told Room 19ers that we were off to the hall to the 'Hiwi the Kiwi' show.  We were entertained by the humourous lyrics and stories from Minstrel - with the help from his wife - Mrs Minstrel!

We learned about special places called 'marine reserves' where we are not allowed to fish.   Minstrel told us that we could lose our boat and car as a consequence of fishing in a marine reserve.

He showed us a special ruler sticker that can be stuck on the side of the boat.  We can use this ruler to measure the fish that we catch to make sure that we are not taking any baby fish out of the sea.   Fish are measured from the tip of their mouth to the 'V' in the tail.  Minstrel suggested that we pick up the fish with a wet towel so that we don't disturb any of its scales.   We also learned that the big fish should be put back too.  Libby (from Room 16) won a prize because she told us that this big fish might be a 'mother'.  Minstrel added that both the mother and father fish are needed back in the water becuase they are the fish that are going to make babies.  So, all the big fish should be put gently put back in the water.

Sharysse won a poster because she was able to translate 'kai moana'.  

We sung a song with Minstrel which included hand actions too.
Kai Moana
Kai moana food from the sea 
Kai moana to feed the family
Fish for the future and there will always be
Kai moana for you and me

A joke from Minstral:
Q:  How do you keep a fish cool?
A:  Put sunglasses on it!   (ha ha ha...)

Minstrel gave us a challenge of making up our own hand movements to the words of a song about eating a slater from a refridgerator and having it for lunch, with tomato sauce so that you can't hear the crunch (eeewww!)     Lachie, from Room 6, was selected by Mrs Minstrel for having the best hand jive.  He won a huge prize bag that included a poster (that he had to go and ask Mrs Nankivell to laminate), a magazine and a Kilwell cap.

We also learned the following:

• Always use salt ice, not fresh water ice for keeping the fish cool and clean the fish in salt water.  Your fish will taste a lot better.
• How a locater beacon and flare works if we have an accident while we are on the water.  We need to ring the Coastguard, or Police if we see a flare.   
• If we are on the water, we might see orange smoke.  This is likely to be coming from another type of flare, while a person (or people) could be waiting to be rescued.

Now, we are going to put this learning into practise to write some fabulous stories that include any of the things that we have learned about keeping safe on the water and making sure that our kai moana is preserved for future generations to enjoy, just like we do now.   We hope that one of our stories will be published in the magazine.