Kia ora Whanau,

Firstly I would like to welcome Lily to Papatuanuku. We are thrilled to have you and your family with us, Lily.

I would also like to thank our wonderful staff for their extra efforts over the last two weeks. Unfortunately I have been working from home for the last two weeks (minus two days where I was in the clear!) as COVID made its way very slowly through our family. During this time, the staff have been covering their own classes, home learning and my workload. A big ask and a great effort thank you team.

While we have had challenges through finally having COVID in our community and high levels of disruption as we navigate different requirements, the one consistent has been the attitude of our kids. We are very privileged to be able to work with such enthusiastic and positive learners. Spending time in the playground or classroom is certainly tonic for the woes of the world.

Thank you to all families for your patience with staffing this term. We are very proud to have been able to continue to run the school all term despite significant staff absences due to COVID requirements. A special thank you to Annette Smith who has been able to cover much of this absence and take great care of our tamariki.

The PTA have recognised the challenges, cancellations, disruptions and general COVID fatigue that our kids have seen this term. They have decided the best way to finish the term is with a little treat for the kids. Thanks again to the PTA for always thinking about our tamariki.

Have a great and safe Easter Break. We very much look forward to Term 2.

Ka mihi nui,

Gareth Swete

This week we welcome Lily McLachlan to our class. Welcome to Papatūānuku and Sawyers Bay School Lily!

Last week we went to the Orokonui Ecosanctuary. Our highlights were:

-seeing the Takahe (Tegan)

-feeding meat to Waimarie the eel (Alexie)

-seeing a fantail that kept following us (Zoё)

- making the seed bombs that will grow in the forest (Olivia)

-seeing a fantail in a tree (Benji)

- seeing the black and white skink (Riley)

- we called the fantail by rubbing our knuckles into our lips to make a fantail noise (Hank)

We are very thankful to the parents that came with us to enjoy the day.

Back at school, we have been learning to weave with wool. We have made little baskets out of yogurt containers and wool. Today we did finger knitting to make a handle. They are looking great.

We have also been learning which way is left and which way is right. Beebot and the Hokey Tokey dance have been great tools to help us learn this! We hope you all have a great Easter and Autumn holiday break.

Report by Papatūānuku

It has been so wonderful to hear all of the wonderful and fun things the children have been doing while I have been absent for the past couple of weeks. I am really missing being at school and look forward to being back in Term 2! Over the past couple of weeks, we have welcomed our student teacher Baylea Carston. She has been enjoying getting to know all the children and routines and will be with for a further 5 weeks at the beginning of term 2. Our bug topic has continued with some AMAZING artworks being created. I felt very lucky to be able to see these (and the children!) on Friday when they shared them for our Zoom assembly - see pic below. There have also been some further arts and crafts made around the Easter theme as I am sure most of you will have seen some of these come home yesterday. I hear they were all very proud of their creations. Next term we will be hitting the ground running with our new topic “Telling Tales”. This will see us exploring well known fairy tales, looking into folklore and even creating our own stories.

I wish everyone a very happy, safe and fun filled break and look forward to seeing everyone again next term.

Report by Mrs Swete

In Tane Mahuta we have been working on our Tūrangawaewae Inquiry unit. For part of this unit we have been making some more connections to our place and learning more about ourselves. We have done this through creating visual pēpeha in circular templates. For these visual pēpeha we not only had to identify and create our pēpeha sentences - but, we had to add imagery to represent these places and things also. We focused on our maunga (mountain), awa or moana (river/body of water), kura (school), whanau (family) and ingoa (ourselves). We have been practising our pronunciation when presenting and reading our pēpeha aloud. We enjoyed sharing these with the rest of the school in Assembly last week and we have now proudly got these displayed in our classroom. We can’t wait for people to come take a look at them, along with all of our other cool work when they next can!

Report by Miss Tenci

This Week's results:

Futsal

SBS Villa POD Callan

SBS Gunners win by default

Through hands-on encounters, learn about animals in our local marine environment. Find out how these animals protect themselves and find food in coastal waters through fun activities, crafts, and the mobile touch tank.

There will be two sessions on Thursday 28th April 2022 at 10.30am – 12pm and 1pm – 2.30pm

Sessions are FREE to attend but bookings are essential

To book visit: https://bit.ly/aquavan-portchalmers

Saturday 16–Saturday 30 April

For families looking for super fun (and Covid-safe) activities these holidays, the Secret Path is an interactive art scavenger hunt in the centre city. Pick up a scavenger hunt booklet from the Dunedin City Library and participating shops to start the journey. The booklet contains a map of each artwork clue word - discover all the clues to complete a passphrase sentence and unlock a prize!