Sunday 7 February 2016

Term 1 Week 2

What a beautiful weekend for the Waitangi holiday.  I have just popped to Pioneer Park with some sports gear and families are setting up under the trees to enjoy being together - an initiative from the Maori/Pasifika families in our school community to recognise Waitangi Day.

Study Ladder: On Friday everyone brought home their new passwords and a letter with the information on how to roll over past points to this year's logins. Whew - looks so easy.  The email about how to do this did not reach me until well after I did the last post. There is one maths activity set on this - counting in 10's.  Mrs Waldron who is responsible for the maths and writing programmes will set activities once we have this site working for us jointly.

Kapahaka: As everyone is year 3, all are welcome to become part of the school Kapahaka group. We had a great number of year 2 students from Room 3 sample this in term 4 last year. This group will practise every second Monday from 11:40 - 12:10 and will have Ms Tamati teaching. with Mr Yeoman and myself supporting. There will also be a time set aside one afternoon each other week for the group to practise. We hope that at times Mr Kevin O'Neill is able to lead this group and share his skills. We were very appreciative last year - especially the boys who loved his work with haka. Kapahaka group will have lunch in Room 3 on Thursday to listen to the senior's speeches and to elect their leaders for this year. The leaders will be acknowledged as part of the opening school mass on Sunday.

School Mass: Sunday 14th February.  As I will be away Mrs Waldron and Mrs Fonseca will sit with the class.  Please be there by 8:55am in summer school uniform.

Ash Wednesday will be celebrated on Wednesday 10th with a mass in the church at 11am. Please come and join your children as we embark on the Lenten journey to Easter, which is very early this year. Each child will receive the ashes on their foreheads.

Swimming: Rooms 3 and 4 will leave school at 1:45 Tuesday to Thursday to prepare for the swimming sports which are from 9 - 12 on Thursday 18th February. Be sure that your child has their togs, towel and goggles for these sessions. At the end of these sessions children will be entered in appropriate events for the school swimming sports. Many of Room 3 may swim in the main pool rather than in the therapeutic pool. Non-competitive events in this pool allow swimmers to stop, or have support. We will have assessed each child's ability and the safety for them to do this before we enter their events.  If anyone needs to talk to us about what you wish your child to enter, please do so before Friday 14th.

Nut-free: a reminder that we are a nut free school. It is particularly important for us as Amelia is now in our room.  That means no nut bars, peanut butter or nutella sandwiches, nuts for brain food etc.  Thank you for your support with this.

Tissues: I like to have a box of tissues as part of our stationary, however I am aware that with supermarket specials it is much cheaper if each child brings 1 box of tissues.  Thank you Casey for starting the ball rolling so that we have tissues in our room.

Reading: Beginning next week each child will have a reading book to bring home from school. This week they will have a poem and also a library book to read, with some bringing home a book from a browse box. Homework books will come home so that what is read at home can be recorded in the reading log glued at the back of the homework book.  As many are exceptionally good readers I'm sure there are books on the go at home - please record what you have read.

I am at Reading Recovery training all day Tuesday and on Wednesday morning so Mrs Waldron will be teaching.  After this Mrs Waldron will teach the class each day from 9:15 until 11:15 while I teach reading recovery.  She will also teach every second Wednesday afternoon while I am at training.  We have made a great start to our teaching partnership - as for the children it has been a time of getting to know each other.

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