No Queen Today

This week we read Jill Eggleton's book, No Queen Today. The Queen in this story is tired of having everything done for her. She wants to wear regular clothes, cook her own food, and weed the palace gardens.

Leilani and Alfred wrote a letter to the Queen to try and persuade her to keep being the Queen.

Do you think their letter will convince her?


Dear Queen

We think you should stay being Queen. You should stay the same because we love you being our Queen and you are a very special woman.

We think you should let your gardeners do their jobs. You should stay inside warm and dry and not with mud in between your stubby toes or in your fingernails. Otherwise people will be fed up when you say, "Oh! I broke a nail... FIXXX IT!!!!"

We think you should not cook your own meals in the kitchen. Let your chefs cook your meals instead. You can have breakfast in bed whenever you want to.

We think you should wear your lovely Queen clothes because you look beautiful in them. You should relax while your maid digs out your clothes for you.

That is why we want you to enjoy being Queen. Even when you die you will still be our wonderful and caring Queen!

From Leilani and Alfred

Our Rainbowland Art!

We're going to tell you about the final piece of art. First we drew our cityscape with pencil onto A3 paper. Next we outlined it with Vivid for the tiny details. After that we used Indian ink for the larger parts of the picture. The Indian ink would make them stand out on the wall. We had to be really careful not to let our sleeves touch the ink. We had to have the bottle hovering above the paper and do it slowly because we couldn't get it off if we made a mistake. We layed our work down to dry for a day. At last we dyed it. All the dyes were very colourful. The colours were blue, green, leaf gree, red, yellow, orange, and purple. They all looked awesome.

It was hard to get the dye in the right spot. -Emma

I thought the hardest part was the pencil drawing because our draft was small and we had to enlarge it for the final picture. -Millie

I thought the easiest part was the Vivid part because we just had to trace over to make it look like Indian ink. -Alfred

Water Posters

We used these posters to teach our junior buddies something about water.

Our Pacifica Experience

At the Pacifica Centre we were asked to share at least one thing we had learned before we closed our eyes that night.

This is what we wanted to share:


With weaving we went in and out. At first I didn't get it, but then I did. It was a lot of fun. -Caleb

I learnt how to weave a necklace out of flax. I only did the middle piece. A Pacific Mama did the top and bottom. It was hard at first but in the end I figured it out. -Georgia

We did a dance and learned how to play the drums. When I did a Pacifica dance we did crazy legs and then we turned around while we were doing the crazy legs. -Keanu

Seeing a real umu is amazing! It looked like bricks made into an enormous pot, stuck into the ground. The food was wrapped in tinfoil so dirt wouldn't get in. When we ate it, it wasn't burnt, so YUM! -Sophie

The umu looked very interesting because I've never eaten one before. The food was wrapped in tinfoil. There was chicken, potato, bread with butter, carrots, and coleslaw. My best food was chicken. -Sian

With weaving we had to go in and out. I only did the start, middle, and end. -Alfred