The Lantern Festival

This weekend brought together all the people living in Auckland to celebrate the Chinese New Year.Did you go? Post a comment about your experience.

The Auckland War Memorial Museum lit up at night for the 2016 Lantern Festival

A fantastic blend of cultures with this Maori warrior Chinese lantern

Rows of colourful lanterns decorated the tree branches at The Domain

Welcome back to school!

Welcome back to a new year at Sunnynook Primary School. I hope you have all had a great break this summer. Here's a snapshot from my holiday camping in the Bay of Islands. Post a comment on the blog to say what you did.

Camping at Elliot Bay, Bay of Islands December 2015

This month our Chinese students will celebrate the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Monkey. Below are the dates and venue so that you can join in the celebrations with your family and friends.  (新年快樂)

Learn how to say "Happy New Year" in simple Chinese

The Chinese Lantern Festival will be at the Auckland Domain for the first time this year. Below are a few of the entertainment acts advertised for the event: 

Second Hand Rose (Chinese: 二手玫瑰; pinyin: èrshǒu méiguī) rock band

Shanghai Puppet Theatre

Guangdong Traditional Music Philharmonic

Guanzhou Acrobatic Arts Theatre.

Our Auckland: Auckland Council website for The Chinese Lantern Festival

Auckland War Memorial Museum lights up to welcome in the Chinese Lunar New Year 20 February to 21 February 2016

Chinese New Year celebrations around the world

Happy Holidays

Pasifika Christmas Tree

Sunnynook Urban Angels

 Sheng Dan Kuai Le, Meri krismas, Feliz Navidad, Merii Kurisumasu, Maligayang Pasko miilaad majiid, vesela koleda,  joyeux Noël, selamat Natal, rik reay bon Noel, selamat hari natal, meri Kirihimete, S rozhdestvom Khristovym, ia manuia le Kerisimasi, sretan Božić, and Merry Christmas!

Celebrating Diwali at Sunnynook

Our Indian cultural group showed us how to design, draw and decorate Rangoli patterns during the lunch hour. The entrance to the Junior Playground was transformed into a sea of colour. Thank you Megha, Krish, Mahi, Tanisha, Yashica, Ryan and Krisha for sharing the Hindu festival with us. We also had Ethan, Phoenix, Andrew and Faye kindly help out for the reader's theatre of the story of Diwali: Rama Rescues Sita.

Rangoli patterns are intricate geometric designs drawn for special occasions - Takapuna Grammar School students Sofia and Maia prepared these designs for us ready to use

A lotus flower leaf was used as the motif and drawn with finely-ground white powder on the ground

Bright colours were added for more effect

Dots, circles and lines were put on top of the colours and around the edges for extra detail

Mrs Pinto helped decorate the designs using a stamp and we had lots of helpers join in the fun

Diwali 2015 - The Hindu Festival of Lights

Diwali also known as Deepavali, Dipavali, Dewali, or Deepawali, or the Festival of Lights, marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year. It is celebrated on the 15th of Kartika (October/November) in the Hindu calendar. Diwali celebrations can last for about five days. This year it will start on 11th November. 

On Monday 9th November some of our students who celebrate Diwali will share with us some of the activities that Hindu love to do during this festival week such as tasting Indian sweets, designing Rangoli patterns and listening to The Story of Rama and Sita.

Diwali celebrations in Auckland on Sunday night! Did you go?

Ni hao! Celebrate NZ Chinese Language Week

This is a younger Cathy Wang wearing a traditional Chinese dress.

Green tea, native to China, is one of the world's healthiest teas.

This is the Dongfang dance group that performed at Sunnynook.

Have a go at learning Chinese language. Click on this link!

Mālō e lelei - Celebrate Tongan Language Week

At the time of the last census there were 50 000 New Zealanders who identified as Tongan. Currently, there are more Tongan people born in New Zealand than there are in Tonga, giving lea faka-Tonga (the Tonga language) and anga faka-Tonga (Tonga culture) a special place here. Tonga Language Week / Uike Kātoanga’i ‘o e lea faka-Tonga gives students of all ethnicities the chance to learn some basic lea faka-Tonga, and gives students who speak lea faka-Tonga the chance to be experts in the classroom.

So you want to count in Tongan! The basic level of counting in Tongan is easier then you think. All you have to do is learn the numbers 0-10 then you can count from 1-99. Follow these simple rules.

Counting 1-99 in Tongan

• numbers 0-9 noa, taha, ua, tolu, fā, nima, ono, fitu, valu, hiva
• the number for 10 is hongofulu (hoh-ngoh-foo-loo)
• the number for 100 is teau (teh-ah-oo)
• every other number is literally the words 0-9 combined: twenty becomes two zero – ua noa
• three exceptions to the rule 22, 55 and 99 words shortened to uo ua, nime nima, hive hiva

Online games for learning Tongan