Room 7 & Room 3 - Mass Wednesday 3rd April

It would be wonderful to have you join us at mass this Wednesday at 9am in the church. Many of us have responsibilities and those who are reading have their readings or prayers of the faithful in their reading bags.

Responsibilities for Wednesday:
Computer (with a senior student): Sofie
Welcomer: Dakotah
Responsorial Psalm: Liam L, Addison, Georgie
Prayers of the Faithful: Ivan, Marina, Anna
Offertory: Shiloh

We will work on the readings at school, but to help children feel more confident I would appreciate if you could help them read these too.

Scripture Eisteddfods

This term the eisteddfod assembly will be on Monday 8th April at 1:30 in the church.

Year 1 children can choose a favourite prayer to say, and Year 2 may choose either to say a prayer or read a simple Bible reading.

If your child does not have a prayer, I can help them choose one from school that can be used.

The marking schedule is below so that it is clear what we will be looking for in the presentation

Year 1 and 2 Eisteddfod Prayer/Bible Reading Assessment

Name: __________________  4^th April 2019                                  

Prayer:

Bible Reading:

WALTs:

·      Share a prayer or a bible reading

·      Explain why we chose the prayer or reading

·      Speak clearly so that the audience can hear all that is said

·      Use expression in our voice

Introduction:         /3

Speak clearly:        /4

Use expression:        /3

Total:                                 /10

Artwork For Christchurch

This week our Religious Education programme carried on from Father Vaughan's talk at our Monday morning prayer, where he talked about visible outer differences but the fact that we are all God's children, who need to care for each other.

With it being Lent, where we have talked about how we can be especially kind and make an extra special effort to "Think WWJD?" (What Would Jesus Do?), we learned a new song and based our dicussion on how we are God's hands and voice here on earth. We talked about how we can use our hands to care for the earth and help others when they are hurt, use our voices to say kind words or encourage each other to keep trying or find out why someone is sad. Finally we talked about how we can use our hearts where the Holy Spirit lives to help us to make good choices and "Think WWJD?"

Here are the words of the song and a photograph of our artwork. If you have set yourself up for Seesaw, you would have seen us singing the chorus of this. Discussion about the Christchurch events has not come up in the teaching.

These Hands

These hands, this heart,

This voice, my God.

These hands, this heart,

This voice, my God.

With these hands I pray to You,

With these hands I work for You,

With these hands I show my love for You.

With this voice I speak to You,

With this voice I sing to You,

With this voice I share my love for You.

With this heart I share Your love

With this heart I feel Your love,

With this heart I live my love for You.

Triathlon - Thursday

A reminder that children need to wear the school sports uniform tomorrow. Children will travel to the Molyneux Aquatic Centre by bus leaving at 12:10. They will eat lunch there. Please make sure that their bike is dropped at the pool by 12:30 ready for their race. Run, bike, swim.

Seesaw - have you registered?

At the moment I am using both this blog and seesaw to get messages out to everyone. Not everyone has set themselves up to receive the seesaw notifications. If this is you, and you need another parent information invitation sheet with the instructions as to how to set up your personal account, please let me know and I'll send you one. I am hearing that seesaw gives you information instantly whereas the blog may take up to 24 hours.

Friday 15th March - Colour Your Day

On Friday we will join lots of other schools throughout NZ and remember those who lost their lives tragically last Friday. Wear bright clothing

Please note that red is the least culturally appropriate colour from the perspective of the Muslim community.

Please bring a gold coin donation.

Week 7 Term 1

 Monday morning prayer was special this week with a prayer service led by Father Vaughan in the church.

Wednesday - School Mass 9 am lead by  Room 1


SCHOOL TRIATHLON 2019

The school triathlon is happening on Thursday 21st March from 12:30-2:30pm. We will be starting the first race at approx. 12.40pm. Please check your children’s bikes and that their helmets fit properly over the next few days.

VOLUNTEER HELP: If you are able to help with course marshalling please email Mr Yeoman (ollieyeoman@stgerards.school.nz) asap . It is important that we have plenty of parents around the course to ensure all children are safe at all times and of course to support the children. The more helpers we have the better and safer the race is for everyone.

CLOTHING: -Please be sure to come to school in the correct clothing:
-Years 5 – 8: School sports uniform and track suit
-Years 1 – 4. School sports uniform and green trackpants/warm clothes. -
School sunhats are compulsory, so be sure to have yours at school.

TIMETABLE: -Lunch will be at 11:30.
-We will all be leaving school at 12.10pm.
-Years 5 – 8 will ride their bikes to the pool with Mrs Lyon and Mrs Wright
-Years 1-4 will travel by bus, their bikes will need to be dropped directly to the pool at 12:15.
NOTE this is year groups not room numbers.

-There will be an event briefing at 12:30 with the first race starting at 12.40pm.
-Every child will be competing in the triathlon in the following age groups and in this order:
Yr 5-8 Competitive (Yr 5&6 first, then Yr 7&8)
Yr 1&2 Yr 3&4 Yr 5-8 Non-Competitive

TRANSITIONS: There will be marshals at each of the Transitions, Mrs Beilby & Mrs Lyon at the run/bike and Mrs Flannery inside the pool.

We ask that parents please stay out of the transition areas, there will be help available to your children if they need it. It would be helpful though to have parents remove bikes as soon as possible from the area.

POOL ENTRY: Children may only access the pool through the rear doors. This is the understanding that we have within our pool hire agreement. All parents must use the normal pool entrance and stay clear of the rear doors. 
PICK UP: Children and bikes are to be picked up from the pool after the event at approx. 2.30-2.45pm please. rom the pool. Any bus children will be brought back to school by staff.

Assembly 2:10 on Friday will be lead by Room 4.


Keep up with those alphabet books - we are all getting pretty competent at making 'clean' sounds for each letter and now we are learning to make each letter correctly by using the Casey Caterpillar instructions. We have been making BIG letters in the air. Please make sure that when practising, tall letters all start from the top - quite a few sneaky bottom to top writers in Room 3. Let's get this sorted so that we can write quickly. It's easier to learn to do this correctly to begin with as relearning a bad habit is trickier.

Have a great week.

Chris

Class Representatives for 2019

We are looking for new class reps for:

Room 6

Room 7

Room 3

What is a Class Rep?

A Class Rep is a parent from your child’s class who has contact details for all other parents in that room, for the purpose of sharing information that is generally related to that class only.  This comes in handy when there are last-minute notifications (such as a cancelled sports event) or when the teacher has a special request for supplies or materials for one reason or another and needs this communicated quickly.

Parents on the receiving end of the texts have found this extremely helpful over the course of the past couple of years, and the job is not too onerous as it is less than once a week that your help would be required, generally speaking.

If you are a parent in one of these rooms and think you could manage this task throughout the year, please let Jen McLean know at 021 2700 760.  We will then set you up with the contact details for each parent and get you up and running. 

This is a PTA initiative. 

Are there any toasters we could borrow?

Is there anyone who has a toaster that they could bring to camp please? We will need a few on the go to make toast for all the hungry campers

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Week 5 Term 1

Thank you so much to those people who helped with the swimming sports on Thursday.

Well done Liam L for reading at school prayer, Shiloh and Liam A for being prayer leaders and Annabelle who operated the slideshow with help from Bella D. Very proud of how you all stepped up to do these jobs in front of the whole school in the church.

Mrs Flannery will be teaching the class about internet safety on Tuesday afternoon. She will be teaching in our room from 11:15, while I am on classroom release time.

PTA AGM - Tuesday 5th 7pm in the staffroom - see you there.

We celebrate the beginning of Lent on Wednesday with the Ash Wednesday Mass at 9am. Please join us for this special celebration.

This week is Walk and Wheel Week. Please encourage your child to walk or scooter to school especially on Wednesday which is the day we will be recording data for our school.

Wednesday - Group 3 in the school garden with Mrs Baxter.

Anna, Liam L, Paige, Florence, Addison. Thank you so much Mrs Baxter - such wonderful learning happening outside.

Camp:
Thank you to everyone who has offered to assist with this adventure. We now have enough tents and parents for the overnight stay. A note will come home on Tuesday with the groupings for both overnight and the Friday activities. Attached to this is a fish and chips order form. Please complete this and return it to me as soon as possible. We need the adult orders on this too - (the parents who are staying overnight.) You already have the "what to bring list" and the timetable for the activities.
Room 7 and 3  – can you supply a loaf of sliced bread or breakfast spread or tomato sauce or margarine.
Transport arrangements for the Friday will be that staff will travel on the bus with all children and parents please in vehicles - we will leave this for you to arrange amongst yourselves.
Boat building: after tea we will build boats. These can be done individually or with a group - probably the tent group. Please bring your ideas and items that you think will help the boat to float.

Looking forward to an exciting end to the week.

Keep reading and practising your sounds. Enjoy listening to those books that are being read together at home.

Fingers crossed for the weather.

PTA AGM

Please support our wonderful PTA by attending this meeting - you do not have to become a committee member.

The AGM will be held Tuesday 5th March at 7pm in the staffroom.

"Alone we can do so little; Together we can do so much." - Helen Keller