TE PĀNUI O TE KURA O PUKETAPU

From Matua Ngatai

Kia ora koutou,

Our hearts and thoughts go to all the people and communities that have been affected by Cyclone Gabrielle this week. For all of our whānau that have loved ones in Te Tai Rawhiti, our love is with you all.

A huge thank you to Ray Quince (our caretaker), Ross Wilkinson (Stumped Tree Services) and Paora Rauputu (Board Chair) for coming down to our school on Tuesday evening to clear away the damaged trees in our kura. As you can see from the picture below we had a large tree come down in our Junior Playground.

Thank you to the Board for making the decision to close the school to ensure the safety of all our tamariki and school personnel. We feel grateful that while we had some damage to our school, it was minor and we were able to get up and running the day after.

Mauri Ora

Ngatai

WHAT TO ASK KIDS AFTER SCHOOL?

We often hear parents say they love our Newsletter and our Facebook because they provide a "window into the school day", because when they ask their children "How was your day?" or "What did you do today?" the responses are sometimes "It was ok/good" or "I forgot".

Here are some different ideas that may work.... (although, bear in mind that a full school day is often pretty tiring for most children)

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR KIDS INSTEAD OF ASKING "HOW WAS YOUR DAY?"

1. Who did you help today?

2. Tell me about the best part of your day.

3. What was the hardest thing you had to do today?

4. Who did you play with at lunchtime? What did you play?

5. What's the biggest difference between this year and last year?

6. Can you show me something you learned (or did) today?

7. What did you eat for lunch?

8. What was the funniest thing that happened today?

9. Did anyone do anything super nice for you?

10. What was the nicest thing you did for someone else?

11. Who/what made you smile today?

12. What challenged you today?

13. What would you rate your day on a scale of 1 to 10? Why?

14. If one of your classmates could be the teacher for the day who would you want it to be? Why?

15. If you had the chance to be the teacher tomorrow, what would you teach the class?

16. Tell me something you learned about a friend today.

17. When did you feel most proud of yourself today?

18. What do you think you should do/learn more of at school?

19. Did anyone do anything silly to make you laugh?

20. What did you do today that was creative?

21. What is the most popular game at break times?

22. Did you tell anyone “thank you?”

23. Tell me something you know today that you didn’t know yesterday.

24. How were you brave today?

25. What are you looking forward to tomorrow?

26. If you could change one thing about your day, what would it be?

27. What is your favourite part of school?

28. When did you work with others today, and what were you doing?

29. What have you become more confident doing this year?

30. In what ways were you kind to others today?

Community picnic

Save the new date for our Community Picnic / Farewell for Kim Sowman!

Friday 3 March

5pm-7pm

Come and enjoy a swim in our school pool, bring your whānau and a picnic.

There will be sausages for sale to support Kauri and Kōwhai fundraising for camps.

Most importantly, it will be our official farewell to Miss Sowman / Whaea Kim!

Duffy Book Awards

Duffy Awards are given out for tamariki "Caught Being Good" at any number of things. Recipients get to choose a book to keep.

We are lucky to be a Duffy School and this week our tamariki have all selected two Duffy Books each that they will get to keep and take home. We have put our school order in to Duffy Books and these free books should arrive in the next couple of weeks.

thank you

Thanks again to Ross Wilkinson (Summer & Zane's Dad) from Stumped Tree Solutions for helping us clean up from the cyclone.

Thank you to Andrew Georgeson from A C G Property Services for the new seats by the big Rimu sandpit, they are looking much better!

Puketapu tshirt & Hoodie orders

Orders are now open for Puketapu t-shirts and hoodies. These will be available to order directly through Game Changer (they even have Afterpay & Laybuy available).

There are also some new Puketapu Hats available in stock.

ORDER HERE- https://www.gamechanger.org.nz/puketapuschool

Select 'pick up' as the shipping option and we will arrange for these to be at the school office for pick up.

this week at school

Mr Lewis' class have been working on creating self portraits. They started by looking at pieces of work by American artist Roy Lichtenstein, who uses dots to create comic style art. Then they had their photos taken which were turned into a cartoon version of themselves. They had to outline the most important features on their photos using vivid so it could be traced onto a dotted piece of paper. After that coloured in each individual dot to recreate their picture. For the backgrounds they split it into five sections - sports, culture, food, fears, likes - and used words and pictures to represent these.