Kia ora e te whānau,

As I write this I am looking out at the tree in front of my office. Over the past fortnight many of its leaves have fluttered off and settled on the grass underneath it. The true colours of Autumn are beginning to be very visible and with so many specimen trees in our Village it is lovely to watch the season unfold before our eyes. With the change of season comes cooler weather and the predictability of set routines. Each year our senior room heads off for camp, a great experience for students and parents alike. This year our Senior students will be having a winter camp in Christchurch! More about that elsewhere in our newsletter.

What a busy fortnight we have had at Waiau School. Paula from St John came and took each class for an energetic lesson on how to respond in an emergency. We got to practice putting people in the recovery position, even our smallest pupils can move a bigger person into a safe position to keep their airway open. We also know the mantra, ‘pack it, wrap it and raise it’ when dealing with bleeding. I was very impressed with the way the students could quickly and skillfully put on a bandage. Ask your child about dead snails and bandages!

It has been lovely to see our senior room children help their junior room buddies revise their high frequency words and letters each morning before school. It demonstrates the great Tuakana Teina relationship that I know both our Waiau students and teachers value.

Ukraine- as we watch this terrible world event unfold from afar, it is humbling to see that our students and families are aware of the plight of other people and in our case, have done something in order to help. The Year 6 Leaders at school on Tuesday went out to The Gates and picked sunflowers. The girls then put the sunflowers in bunches with a label they had designed. These sunflowers were advertised on social media and sold outside our school gate as well as outside Waiau Hardware. This was a fantastic initiative with the total money raised to be donated to the Red Cross Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Fund. As the Sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine, it was very significant that this was the fundraiser the Year 6 Leaders decided to put in place. With the power of social media we even managed to sell virtual bunches to some very generous supporters. Thank you to all of you who kindly donated to this student-led appeal. Most of all, a big thank you to the Henry and Liv for helping and our Leaders- Beth, Issy and Victoria. The final donation tally was $435.00!

It is important that we as adults take time to view the world through the eyes of our tamariki. Currently the world seems very topsy turvy, there is so much uncertainty and sad news. We can reassure our tamariki by answering their questions/wonderings and by celebrating the little things happening in our daily lives.

Presently we have families in our school community that are feeling the full effects of covid and we wish them all a speedy recovery.

Thanks to Te Tai O Marokura and their generosity we were able to send home RAT kits for families with our tamariki on Wednesday. How to use a RAT test link.

Yesterday’s announcement from the Government was very exciting, at long last we will be able to have our school whānau back on site. The 5th of April will be here before we know it!

Thanks to Hayley for initiating our applications to the Amuri Irrigation Community Fund. Our Year 6 Leaders and the gardening group, known as ‘The Working Bees’ were both recipients of funds. The Year 6 Leaders will look at purchasing sports equipment to use in their Wednesday lunchtime programme and the Working Bees are planning to purchase equipment/seeds that they will use in our school garden. A big thank you to Amuri Irrigation for supporting Waiau School.

Ngā manaakitanga

With best wishes,

Megan.

The Year 5 and 6s put into practise their lifesaving and style techniques last Wednesday at our annual event. They needed to demonstrate how to put on a life jacket, rescue someone correctly using a rope and show their best swimming style in freestyle, backstroke and breaststroke. Special thanks to Caroline for helping to teach this. Also as part of this cup the students need to demonstrate their CPR knowledge and we thank Pam for giving up her afternoons to come and teach this important skill to us in Room 2.

Congratulations to Benji Clemens for winning the O’Malley Cup this year. 2nd place went to Issy Pinckney and 3rd place went to Miah Thomas.

The Eastmond Trophy will be presented next assembly. Watch this space.

Our tamariki presented Caroline with a gift bag to show our appreciation for all she has done for our swimmers this term and a big thank you to the pool committee and pool caretakers for keeping the pool in pristine condition.

Uniform - A lot of consultation and effort went into coming up with our Waiau School uniform and we would like to see all of our students wear the correct uniform with pride. The Waiau school uniform consists of Waiau School Polo top, plain dark green jersey or polar fleece and plain black shorts/pants/culottes or leggings.

Black shorts/pants (logo free) can be purchased at any store of your choice. Polar fleeces can be purchased from the Warehouse or we can order them for you in the school office.

Please see Liv or myself if you require any assistance in providing the correct school uniform for your tamariki.

Lost Property

We have a growing pile of lost property. Amanda has kindly taken this home to be washed. Any named items will be given back to the rightful owners and any remaining items will be stored in a bag in the lost property bin so please feel free to come and have a look through if you are missing any items. They will also be out on display on the last day of term.

Position available: on a fortnightly basis we require a responsible adult that can supervise our bus pupils from 3 - 3:45pm. This is a paid position and will require police vetting in order to ensure we have the best person looking after our tamariki.

Please contact either myself or Liv to find out more details or to express an interest.

Next term we are going to have weekly sessions on Fridays with Serina Lintott, our Hurunui Council Waste Education facilitator. The staff have met with her over Zoom and we are very excited about the ideas and plans that Serina would like our students to experience next term.

As part of our continued improvement at Waiau School we encourage you to read and comment on our school policies.

There is two school policies up for review this term;

Health, Safety, and Welfare section

Emergency, Disaster, and Crisis Management section

Visit the school website https://waiau.school.nz/policies/

User name: waiau / password: together

Click the Current Review tab

To start reviewing, click on topic name below, then click the red UNDER REVIEW flag (top right hand corner of the page). If a link is inactive, your school doesn't have the topic.

Select the reviewer type "Parent"

Enter your name (optional).

Submit your ratings and comments.

If you don't have internet access, Liv can provide you with printed copies of the policy and a review form.