Waka Rehearsals

For Wakakirri, our rehearsals have already been dance-packed! We practice on a Monday and Tuesday in lunch-time. At first we only started of with 1 or 2 groups but now we are up to the whole cast. Practices have been filled with new moves and so much FUN!! All the children have come out with a grin on there face having learn't something new. It is a great time to have fun and dance to your best ability.

The Mary MacKillop theme has just made everything a whole new experience.We have all adapted to another style of dance! It is great for all of the kids to have a different styles of dancing under there belt.

Adrian Z

Painting the Backdrop for Waka- by Ronda Oliveri

After the working bee Cheryl and I meet one morning to check out our paint collection and start a bit of our own investigation into the site of Mary Mackillop's first school “St Josephs School in Penola South Australia” to get some ideas of what the school house looked like the colours of the landscape and the type of native plants, trees, bushes and grasses.

So we started to paint our vast calico backdrop. We started with the sky, hills, the base grass and dirt.
We were then joined by Mandy, who bought a new perspective to the project. The three of us started trying out 3D techniques on scrape paper until we were happy with the result then we applied this to the canvas. We started on our rocks then sheep, trees, detail of bark leaves and branches. Then on the home stretch we added all our grasses, bushes and plants.
When the last brush stroke was painted we stood back to look at what we had achieved we were quite pleased with ourselves. We hope you enjoy the fruits of our labour. It was a pleasure to have been involved in a small part of the production it truly is a school community effort.

Holy Spirit Working Bee!

On Sunday 8th of March, Holy Spirit School had a Wakkakiri Working Bee. Our theme for this year is Mary Mackillop: Australia’s First Saint.

We had some parents volunteer to help out as well as our two dance teachers Miss De Vries and Mrs. Hansel. Some mums used the overhead projector to trace the stain glass window on to a large piece of calico. Then they started to trace the letters on reading ‘Mary Mackillop: Australia’s first saint’. After the tracing was done some mum’s volunteered to paint the letters. The stain glass window still in progress.

When this was done the other mum started to trace the outback back drop on a very large piece of calico. This is going to be used in the mining scene.

Later on, other parents hammed down some coke tins, from last years Wakkakiri, to make the drip. They also tracked down a pole and then they spray painted the whole drip in a silver spray paint.

We also managed to find an old cane rocking chair that is going to be used as the wheelchair.

Overall it was a great success and we say thank you to all the parents that helped out. A big Thank You to Mrs. Hansel and Miss De Vries for organizing the whole of Wakkakiri.

We will keep you updated shortly about the rest of the Wakkakiri props still in progress.

By Alessandra