Kia ora Whanau,

We really feel that we are right back into routine once again with classrooms humming, playground buzzing and happy kids. It is always a privilege to be able to walk around the classrooms and see just how hard our kids are working during the day and to see how great they are in the playground with each other.

Extra-curricular sports start this week with the first round of Touch Rugby tonight. Best of luck to both of our teams. Futsal will also be starting very soon. Again, I would like to thank everyone for their patience here as we were often left waiting for further clarification from the different organisations before we could continue.

Thank you to all of the families who returned the interview slip. We look forward to catching up, mostly in person, with our families. Goal setting and getting to know your child even better is incredibly valuable to us and lets our kids know that we are in this together. If you did not get a slip for any reason, your teacher should have been in touch but do not hesitate to get in touch and we can help you out.

You may have noticed a significant disruption in the office as we finish off a small building project to create office spaces that teachers can use when working with children individually. Again, thanks for your patience, we are almost done!

We can't really write any newsletter at the moment without some mention of COVID sorry. Just a gentle reminder, if your child is unwell, please keep them at home and give us a call. We know we will get cases of Omicron any time and are prepared for this, but it really does rely on communication with home. If you, your child, or any member of your family do become positive with COVID, please let us know asap so we can enact our health response as rapidly as possible. We aim to minimise disruption to families and learning programmes as much as possible, and early notifications will certainly help.

Ka mihi nui,

Gareth Swete

This week in Tāwhirimātea we have been reading the Badly drawn dog. We have created our own Badly Drawn Dogs using paint and pastel and have completed a piece of writing about them on the ipads. We have been making the most of the nice weather and working outside as much as possible.

In Maths, we have been learning about time. We looked at how long 1 minute is. We had to complete a range of activities such as bouncing and catching a ball, running around the bike track, star jumps, counting to the highest number and singing the alphabet. We took our math books outside, recorded our estimates and then completed the challenges with the timer on to see how close our estimates were.

We took the ukuleles out onto the grass on Tuesday afternoon and began learning a new song. We also had a chance to create our own song and perform it to the class.

The children have settled back into reading routines now and are enjoying learning some new literacy activities. We are working extra hard to keep our cloak bay tidy this week as we are having a competition with Ranginui to see who can be the tidiest cloakroom keepers - there is even a trophy up for grabs each week.

Did you see our poem books came home on Friday? We were so excited to be given the green light to send these home again. There are some ideas in the front of their books on ways that you could use these at home. We would love it if you could please ensure your children return these to school each week ready for their new poem. In the coming weeks your children may begin to bring some reading books home again as well. If you have a book bag hiding away at home somewhere we would very much like to have it at school as we can not send books home without book bags.

Report by Mrs Swete

Kia Ora from Ranginui

We have had a very settled week and your child has been amazing at learning our class routines and being so kind to one another. Our daily five literacy programme is really successful because everyone is following the instructions and doing their best on each activity. We have nearly finished our visual pepeha. (Awesome effort Ranginui) I do hope I haven't missed anyone out for interviews- please let me know if you want to meet and I will schedule a time. I sent home our class codes for a few online programmes this week, please keep them in a safe place if we need them at any stage.

Ka Kite ano.

Report by Mrs Ruzsa

This week in Hinemoana we have completed our pepeha and published these on Seesaw. The children have done a wonderful job with their presentation and pronunciation. Ka rawe te mahi Hinemoana! We are now turning our pepeha into a visual artwork inspired by New Zealand glitter artist Reuben Paterson. We are currently creating many different compositions that represent our mountain, river and whānau. It has been so interesting to hear the children’s thinking behind their artworks, what motifs represent who in their families and why their compositions are created the way they are. They have put a lot of thought and effort into their works and we can’t wait to have them completed and filled with colour and… glitter!

Report by Miss Laing

SBS Awesome v NEVN Taniwhas 4:15 PM Oval: F3

SBS Incredible v SFX Rockets 3:45 PM Oval: F6a

School sports tops will be issued to those who do not have one. Please keep these until the end of the touch season and we will gather them at the end of the term (same for Futsal next week).