Week 3 Term 1

Congratulations Room 3 on an awesome assembly on Friday. So proud of how you worked together to lead the first assembly of the year. Not easy to stand up in front of the whole school.
This week:
Monday: Mrs Laidlaw will be teaching art from 11:40 while I am on release. Enjoy! 1:30 Mr Milford - Police Education Officer will be checking that we know the safe practices when travelling on a bus. Thank you to GO-Bus for providing a bus free of charge for this safety lesson.
Tuesday: We have Bruce Potter visiting us at 1:30. Someone asked about what an illustrator was when were were reading "The Tree House Treaty",  Bruce who lives in Alexandra was the illustrator. We will have questions to ask him. One big one is, "Are you Harry Potter's father?" Check out the underpass on the Rail Trail at Clyde - this is Bruce's latest work - quite spectacular. We are so lucky to have people like this in our community who are willing to come and share about their jobs and talents.
Wednesday: 9am Ash Wednesday Mass - please join us as we celebrate this important occasion in the church's calendar.
Thursday: 10:30 swimming. We leave by bus at 10:15. I would appreciate a couple of parents to supervise a group each in the therapeutic pool. Thank you to those who arrived to assist last week.
Friday: Library visit.

Once swimming has finished we will begin Discovery on Wednesday afternoons.  Hopefully this will include groups working in the school garden. Rachael Baxter is willing to help with the garden, but with Regina and Lily moving to Invercargill next week, she would love some others to help here too. Please let me know if you would enjoy sharing some gardening skills with us from time to time.  This is a perfect time for us to spend some time in the garden in small groups.

Year 3 & 4 Camp dates are confirmed. Wednesday 12th - Friday 14th September. 13/9 is our night at the Otakau marae on the Otago Peninsula. We have begun work on our mihimihi, which is in our homework books. These will come home once we have learned the first basic parts, so that they can be memorised. We will be absolutely confident with these by September. This year we are slowly unpacking each part with a story behind each statement. We should all be able to retell some parts of the Kopuwai story that was retold by Pauline Cartwright, a local childrens' author.


                                      
                                                                            The obelisk - the rock on top of the Old Man's Range

Homework

1. Diaries: we have all recorded this week's important information on Pg 35. Please encourage your child to use this to assist them to know what is happening each day. We are working on giving each child the skills to self manage what is happening day to day - this is a new skill area this year.
2. Fridge Words: these are written at the top of the page in the diary and relate to the statistics unit of the last 2 weeks. Please write these words onto your fridge words card and work through the suggestions. This activity is designed to develop each child's vocabulary - an oral language goal for us this year. If you were not at the Meet the Teacher evening please get your child to collect one of these magnetic cards. This activity is instead of Spelling for the first part of the year.
3. Reading: a book will come home from Tuesday. Please write the title into the diary on the blue line and sign this. This is the reading log part this year.