Newsletter Week 1 Term 1
Sawyers Bay School 10th February 2022
PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE
Kia ora Whanau,
We are just thrilled to have our kids back at school! We hope that you had a great summer break, and we very much look forward to the school year ahead.
I would like to welcome some new faces to the school for 2022. To Viliami, Mele, Silas, Aarlo, Nahoa and Tyson, welcome. We are so pleased to have you and your families with us.
One of our challenges over the first few weeks was of course implementing new guidelines for operating under Red. I would like to express my gratitude to our families, teachers and especially our tamariki for helping us to be able to successfully adjust to life under Red. We do very much hope to have a more straight forward year, but we are also realistic in the sense that we do have a multitude of contingency plans ready to go. All of our implementation plans, disruption plans, contingency plans all have the same focus, keeping our kids safe, happy and healthy in an exciting place for learning.
You would have received a notice home this week regarding upcoming Parent/Child/Teacher Discussions. Please do let us know asap if you did not receive a booking form. These are to give you and the teacher a chance to catch up, perhaps plan out some goals, and get to understand your child even better. We really do value to time that we have with you so please do book in if you can.
Thank you once again for your support and we look forward to another year of excitement and learning.
Ka mihi nui,
Gareth Swete
Upcoming Events
- Parent/Child/Teacher Discussions - Thursday 17th and Tuesday 22nd February
- Term 1 Swimming - Monday 7th March - Friday 18th March
- Otago Anniversary Day - Monday 21st March
- Good Friday - Friday 15th April
Lunch Online
Papatūānuku
We’ve had a wonderful first week back in Papatūānuku. We welcome Viliami and Tyson to our class, and to Sawyers Bay School.
We also extend a warm welcome to our University of Otago, College of Education student teacher, Tayla Richardson. Miss Richardson is with us for a couple of weeks, then will come out most Tuesdays and then later in the year will have two block postings with us as she completes her third and final year training to be a teacher.
We have had fun getting to know each other in our class over the last week. We have created amazing painted self portraits of ourselves as you’ll see in the photograph. Can you work out who is who? We’ve also talked about “The Best Part About Me” and written a caption for a photograph. We drew life sized outlines of ourselves, and have measured our height.
Our Fun Friday activities last week were all about words that start with the sound “mmmm”.
Our poem was the lyrics to a song about Milo the Monkey, we made hats for Milo’s birthday and we also made (and ate!) Milo’s favourite food…MUFFINS!
This week we had our first Kelly Sports session with Terryn. We were learning about teamwork. The teachers were really impressed how the kids in our class thought of ways they could get their whole team from one end of the court to the other, using just hoops, communication and teamwork. What an awesome class we have!
Report by Mrs Campbell
Hine-Rau-Whārangi
What an awesome start to the School Term Hine-Rau-Wharangi children have had. We are enjoying getting to know each other again this term and have been working on a class bunting showing all the things that we like, have a look at our photo. It has been great fun getting to know the routines and types of equipment that we have in our classroom. Stan, Liam and Kye taught Mrs Brewer a new game yesterday on some of our equipment. We have been practicing our counting and adding numbers in Math and have started learning our new Reading routines.
I like the new way we do stuff (Ayla)
The marble run is cool (Stan)
I like the new bean bags in the Library corner (Herepo)
I like doing more writing (Willow)
Report by Mrs Brewer
Tāwhirimātea
What a fantastic first week back!
Firstly I would love to welcome Aarlo, Silas and their families to our Tawhiri team and to SBS. I am so proud of how everyone has made them feel welcome and helped show them the ropes. And a big thank you to everyone who has completed their 'parent homework'. It has been very valuable for me to read through these.
Over the past week we have been busy getting to know each other, our classroom and new routines. We have discussed and read about the Treaty of Waitangi and this has led to us creating our own classroom treaty. We have created a Waka mural to show how working together helps us to achieve our goals - He waka eke noa. Below is a picture of our finished artwork - you may have seen this already on our classroom blog. We have almost completed our amazing 3D self portraits. We are hoping to have these up on the wall in time for our upcoming parent teacher conferences. On Tuesday we were pleased to see the sun shining so that we could get outside for our first Kelly Sport session of the year. We worked on collaborative skills - working as a team to make it from one end of the court to the other using 4 hoops, ensuring no one stepped outside the hoops.
Report by Mrs Swete
Ranginui
Kia Ora from Ranginui
We have had a great start to the new year and are settling into our new classroom routines. The students are a delight and are very happy to be back with their friends. I am looking forward to meeting you and finding out more about your children at our scheduled parent conferences over the next two weeks. Please contact me through email joslynr@sawyersbay.school.nz or write a note with any questions you may have.
This terms inquiry plans are based on ‘My Family and I’ Although at present we can not bring things in to school, I was hoping you may have time to share 5 special moment photos of your child (from birth to now) so we can talk about the milestones they have reached over the past 7-8 years. We also are looking at family trees. These will include, child, whanau, grandparents. Please email photos and names as some of us are unsure of name spelling. Very appreciated if you could do this over the weekend. Thank you.
Report by Mrs Ruzsa
Hinemoana
Welcome back to school for 2022! Although things at school look a little bit different right now Hinemoana is settling in nicely to routines and our new learning. It has been wonderful to get to know everyone and learn about our classmates. We have completed some Roy Lichtenstein inspired self portraits and hard work really does pay off! They look AMAZING! We are excited to show these off in our virtual assembly on Friday. We are also beginning to learn our Pepeha and it has been cool to discover where we are from and who is in our family.
Report by Miss Laing
Tāne Mahuta
It has been awesome to get to know each other a little better in Tane Mahuta over the first couple of weeks of Term 1. To share some cool and interesting things about ourselves we have made “All About Me Hoodie”. These hoodies have been designed with different things that we love and that represent us. Each of these hoodies is personal and includes things such as our dream travel location, our favourite sports and our future careers. We have proudly displayed them in our classroom and they are looking colourful and unique! Take a look at the pictures attached to see some of our hoodie designs.
Report by Miss Tenci
Sports News
We are in the process of organising sport registrations. We are awaiting further notice from Futsall South and will keep you updated.
Thank you for returning you sport registration forms.
Community Notices
Port Chalmers Library Book Club
Kia ora,
The first Port Chalmers Library book club for 2022 will be held on Tuesday the 8th of February from 3.15pm
As usual, we’ll be starting off with some nibbles and drink before launching into some fun and games. This month we have some of the library’s new robots to play with and some other fun activities.
Join us on Tuesday and then the first Monday of the month thereafter for some fun and books!
Ngā mihi,
Port Chalmers Library team.
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