Newsletter Week 8 Term 2
Sawyers Bay School 23rd June 2022
Principal's Message
Kia ora Whanau,
This week we get to welcome Hazel to our school whanau. We are so delighted to have you with us Hazel and I know your big sister is too!
I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the PTA, and especially Kelly Laing, for their mammoth cheese rolling effort over the weekend. The PTA were able to make a record breaking number of cheese rolls and make several thousand dollars that will once again be pumped straight back into our kids. The PTA are always involved in the 'nice to have's' like the climbing tower, ipads, classroom games, sunhats and swimming support and so much more. A big thank you too for all of the helpers who came along on Sunday. This included parents, grandparents, great grandparents, ex community members, ALL of our teaching and support staff, and even teaching staff family members, thank you all. A last special thank you to the Cheese Roll orphans Stevie and Pip who worked so hard all day, you guys are amazing.
Ironically, in last weeks newsletter, I outlined the process for snow days and school closures. This week, just to emphasis the point, we turned on an incredibly icy day. Thank you to all of the families who were able to receive this message and keep your children at home until the safer time of 10am. As I mentioned last week, we do not usually receive advanced warning of such delayed starts or closures but will always endeavour to get the information to you asap!
Mā te wā,
Gareth Swete
Upcoming Events
- Thursday 23rd June - Art Gallery Visit Papatūānuku and Tāne Mahuta
- Friday 24th June - Matariki
- Thursday 30th June - Art Gallery Visit Hine-Rau-Whārangi and Hinemoana
- Friday 8th July - Art Gallery Visit Tāwhirimātea and Ranginui
- Friday 8th July - last day of Term 2
- Monday 25th July - first day of Term 3
Certificates Week 7 Term 2
Te Ākonga o te Wiki
This week the trophy went home with Liam!
Papatūānuku
This week we welcome Hazel to Papatūānuku and Sawyers Bay School! We are thrilled you are here.
We really enjoyed our Kelly Sports session again this week. We are learning about running and jumping. We learned fast feet running, running then turning on a spot, and jumping over hurdles.
We read a book called The Seven Kites of Matariki. After that we designed our own kites. We had to think about the shape we wanted for our kite. Then we put our design onto a huge piece of paper. We are learning about symmetry. Kites have symmetry, they are the same size and design on both sides of the line of symmetry. Today we put pastel and dye onto our kites. On Thursday afternoon we will decorate them. On Tuesday we made stars using the soft shapes in our class. There were so many different designs! We learned to draw a star using a pentagon shape, and ruling lines from one side to the other with a pencil and a ruler. We also had a maths problem involving 4 apples. How many halves would that be, if Manu cut all 4 apples in half? We drew a picture on whiteboards to help us work it out.
We hope everyone has a wonderful Matariki weekend.
Report written by Papatūānuku
Hine-Rau-Whārangi
Mālō e lelei, kia ora, bula, hello
This week in Hine-Rau-Wharangi it has been all about the patterns, a couple of weeks ago a puzzle arrived in our class with quite a few different shapes in it and it has been a hot commodity since it arrived. The puzzle can be used for a variety of things and the children have been making different shapes and patterns with this. A wee mention also for Isaac who has made a pattern by counting in 2s using the rule plus two to make this (see photo below)
As a class we have begun thinking about our new holiday this year Matariki, reading lots of stories, learning the names of the stars making art works and thinking how we will be sharing this wonderful holiday with our family. We are especially excited to be having a reflection day about Matariki and breakfast on the following Monday.
From Hine-Rau-Wharangi to you all Ngā mihi o Matariki, te tau hou Māori'. Happy Matariki!
Report by Mrs Brewer
Tāwhirimātea
This week has been filled with arts, crafts and learning about Matariki. We have been working to create a hanging Matariki ball. The children loved colouring these in and worked hard to piece them together like a puzzle and hang them in the class. We also made our own woven Matariki star. We had to trace and cut a circle out of card, then we had to cut 12 slots around the outside of our circle. This took a bit of thinking to work out how to evenly distribute the 12 slots. Following from that we wove wool through the slots to make a star shape. We had to think really hard about which direction to move the wool in to ensure we ended up with a star pattern. Jake had a wonderful idea to arrange these on the wall like some of the well known constellations we can see in the sky. We have been learning about Matariki through lots of shared reading of different myths and legends. One story we read was called The Little Kiwi’s Matariki and we are now using paints and pastels to create an artwork inspired by the story. One of our Maths challenges this week was to make our way through a number maze…but we had to find a path that totalled 100. Some children solved this pretty quickly and are now working on seeing which is the smallest possible total and the largest possible total to get through. A picture of the maze is below for you to have a go at if you are up for the challenge! I hope everyone has a wonderful Matariki weekend. I look forward to hearing how all of the juniors spent their weekend while enjoying our shared Matariki reflection breakfast on Monday morning.
Report by Mrs Swete
Ranginui
Kia Ora from Ranginui
Brrrrr- We are so thankful for having such warm classrooms on these super chilly days. We have finished publishing our own myths or retells of How Kiwi Saved the Forest, and supporting our writing creations we have produced our own NZ bird art. (see our proud display in the photo section) Our Telling Tales inquiry continues as we learn more about Matariki. Matariki is a special time for reflecting on our past, present and our future. On Monday we will begin our day with breakfast at 9am. The children have written invitations to each other and one child’s copy has been class selected to be sent home to let you know what we are up to. Over the week we will be talking about our families, whanau, and what we are grateful for. We will also be reflecting and setting our own goals or wishes for the up and coming year. If your child would like to bring a special item for their news day please let me know in plenty of time. (Thank you so far) Our class art gallery trip is on the 8th July. I will be in touch early next week to check you are still ok to come and catch up on a few consent forms not returned as yet. Take care and thank you for showing kindness.
Report by Miss Ruzsa
Hinemoana
We have managed to answer another one of our questions about Matariki learning all the names of the stars and even going a step further and learning what each star means and represents. Where the stars sit in the cluster helps us to understand what they mean.
Matariki (the brightest star) - health and wellbeing
Tupuārangi - food of the sky (trees, birds)
Tupuānuku - food harvested from the earth
Waitī - fresh water / connects us to the rivers and lakes
Waitā - salt water / connects us to the ocean
Pōhutukawa - represents our loved ones who have passed
Hiwa-i-te-rangi - the wishing star
Waipunarangi - connects us with the rain
Ururangi (the youngest star) - connects us to the wind
We are making our own Matarki woven stars using a circular piece of card and wool. The weaving pattern is a lot trickier than we thought and requires a bit of concentration to get the points on our stars. But, I have been very impressed with the children’s perseverance during this activity and their willingness to help others. Ka pai Hinemoana! We even threw some maths in there, having to construct our own circles using a compass and learning about the circumference, diameter and radius of a circle.
We have read another story, The Seven Kites of Matariki and are retelling this in our own words. We learnt to use another graphic organiser to plan our retelling and are now turning our plan into successful sentences, adding lots of interesting adjectives, verbs and adverbs.
We have begun exploring shape and the children have some wonderful knowledge already. We have made 3D shapes from nets and are learning what different 3D shapes are called and about how many faces, edges and vertices they have.
We hope everyone enjoys a happy and safe long weekend!
Report by Miss Laing
Tāne Mahuta
Lately in Tāne Mahuta we have been learning about Matariki. We began by researching the different stars and their meanings and then we moved on to look at the concept of ‘renewal’ and how this an important part of Matariki. We thought about our whakapapa and the way we could depict this in the form of ‘koru art’ - each koru was to represent a different important person/group of people in our lives. We drafted these and then thought about the meanings behind the colours we chose for our korus as well - some of us chose colours like red for some of our korus or our backgrounds to represent love. Others chose colours like orange to represent someone that was energetic and bubbly. All of our koru art is unique and looks bright and eye catching! We are really pleased with the way it has turned out.
Report by Miss Tenci
Community Notices
Noel Leeming Friends and Family deals
The best part about it this year is that Noel Leeming are using this event to raise money for Kids Can. 2.5% of all sales goes towards providing for those children in NZ who need it most.
Contact Us
Email: office@sawyersbay.school.nz
Website: https://sawyersbay.school.nz/
Location: Sawyers Bay School 99 Stevenson Ave, Sawyers Bay, Dunedin 9023, New Zealand
Phone: 03 472 8981