Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Living Next To An Open Cast Gold Mine - Waihi Central School


I have been reading Digging for Gold this week by Jan Maguiness. The story is about an open cast mine called the Martha mine. They started mining there in 1878. It is 250metres deep, which is the size of 10 swimming pools. It is 860metres long which is 34 swimming pools and 600metres wide which is 24 swimming pools. In the future when they have finished mining they plan to turn it into a lake. A car is the size of half of one of the wheels on the dump truck. Every week about 1 million dollars worth of gold and silver is taken out of the rock. There were 175 kilometres of tunnels.
After I had finished reading we went and had a look at the Martha Mine website.  We seen pictures of the open cast mine and pictures of what they thought the mine would look like when they had finished mining. We also seen a video that some kids had made that lived in Waihi where the mine is. The video was about the mine, they  asked questions and shared thier information about the water treatment, about what they did with the waste rock and tailings and what the plans where fore the future of the mine. Martha mine has spent 11 million dollars on the water treatment setup. The waste rock and tailings are made back into new pasture. The plan to make the mine into a lake and park when they are finished mining. The gold and silver gets melted down into nuggets and bars to be sold.

By ALAN

Friday, April 8, 2011

Natasha's Suprise Leaving Party

Unfortunately at the end of the term Natasha is leaving us to go to Nelson!
On the same day we made our pizzas we had a SUPRISE going away party for Natasha!! We had a yummy cake that Rachel bought and chips and popcorn and all sorts!!

GOODBYE NATASHA WE WILL MISS YOU!!!


Rachel's YUMMY Cake

Pizza Making

Mmmmmmmmmm PIZZA!!! On Thursday the 31st of March our class made pizza as part of our measurement unit! We got put into groups of 3, in our groups we had to decide on our topping and we had to bring them to school. We started by making the dough bases once we had finished them we put our toppings on and put them in the oven. Waiting for them was torture we couldn't wait to eat them they looked delicious. They looked so good that we ate them in the cooking room because we couldn't wait to get back to the classroom. We were having so much fun that we didn't even realise we worked through morning tea! WHAT AN AWESOME DAY!!!

Duffy's Books

On Wedndesday the 30th the Christine Fernyhough came to our school to present us with our Duffy Books. We got 2 each to take home!

A big thank you to Duffy Books we really appreciate it!

Room 1a

Room 1a
This is us on the mufti day to support the Christchurch Earthquake victims!!