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Upcoming Events

Posted on 10 December, 201910 December, 2019 by Anna Reid

We are nearing the end of term and it is a busy time for us all! Here are the upcoming events for the rest of the term:

Tuesday 10th December - Helpers' Thank-you Coffee and Croissants 8:30am
Wednesday 11th December - Sherrilee's Farewell Assembly 9.30-10:30am
Friday 13th December - Final Assembly 9:15-10:30am
Friday 13th December - Kahikatea end of year Performance 2:15-2:45pm
Monday 16th December - Kahikatea Waltham Park and Pool Day 11am-3pm
Tuesday 17th December - House Games and School Picnic 12pm (Beckenham Park)
Thursday 19th December - School finishes for the year 12:30pm

Over the next week and a half, the children will be bringing home their books and any artwork or writing which has been displayed.

We are all looking forward to our day at Waltham Park and Pool. It is going to be an amazing day. Here is a link to the social story for Waltham Park and Pool. Please take the time to look through it with your child and go over the expectations. We look forward to a successful and fun day! If you are able to help out on this trip, we are looking for more parent helpers. Please, can you let your homegroup teacher know as soon as possible. Thank you!

Kahikatea Newsletter T3 Week 4

Posted on 16 August, 201916 August, 2019 by Anna Reid

Discovery
Discovery is still proving to be very popular with the children as they get to explore various activities and use their wonderful imaginations. The children love to dress up and act out scenes and they also love to develop their artistic skills creating ferocious monsters or sketching their favourite cartoon. Here are some pictures of some of the children working collaboratively to create a Duplo, wooden block, train track extravaganza. They spent a long time working on this and what an amazing creation they ended up with!

Reading
Next week, teachers will be completing Running Records with your children so we can gather up-to-date information on their progress in reading. This means that there will be no guided reading lessons and your children will be taking home books from their browsing boxes. Please do make sure you are reading with your child every night as it is really making a difference! Thank you so much for your ongoing support with this.

Readathon
The readathon starts today! Your child will have brought home a Readathon form to fill. Please feel free to discuss a goal with your child which will be manageable for them but also set a bit of a challenge. Then you can collect some sponsors who can support your reading quest and help to raise money for the PTA. Go on, you can do it!

Talent Show
Rehearsals for the Talent Show will be up and running next week. The children are extremely excited about it and have lots of fantastic ideas about what to do. We will give them a chance to rehearse during lunchtimes and it would be great if you could support your children at home too. The act or performance is to last no longer than 3 minutes. The Talent Show finals will be in Week 10 and we will update you on this nearer to the time.

Image result for cartoon images of talent show for children

Heavy Work
We have recently introduced a new programme which involves doing 'heavy work' with those children who are proprioceptive. This means they have more difficulty in sensing the position, location, orientation and movement of their body and its parts. A way to help these children is to get them to do heavy work like pushing up against a wall, moving the logs around on the grass and also using a weighted blanket which we have just acquired. It is a way for these children to regulate themselves and we are finding that it really works!

DMIC

The children are continuing to work really well on their Maths problem solving and they are solving some very tricky problems! We thought we would share a few of the problems we have been working on and you can try them out with your child at home. How many different ways can you solve these problems? Now there's a challenge!

Maddox, Luca, Thisev, Lily and Hayzel are Milk Monitors in this story. They had 100 cartons of milk. They gave lots of cartons out. There were 24 left. How many cartons did they give out?

The children were creating Kandinsky circle art.
Each child had 73 circles to colour in. On the first day, each child coloured in 27 circles. How many circles were there left to colour in?

Kōwhai News Week 4 Term 1

Posted on 2 March, 20182 March, 2018 by Anna Reid

Discovery Time
The children have really been enjoying starting the day with Discovery time. They have been given the chance to explore and play both outside and inside. Outside, they have been using skipping ropes, hula hoops, balls and balance boards and inside, they have been doing lots of different art activities including collage and ferocious animals. They have also been dressing up and doing plays, building complex constructions with lego and learning the skills needed to play board games. Sometimes the children have come up with their own activities which we actively encourage. All of this has contributed to setting the children up for a successful day!

Kowhai Kid of the Week
Each week, we will have five children who have consistently displayed our school values to be a Kowhai Kid of the Week. These children will be able to make pizzas for their lunch on Friday. They will need to bring their pizza toppings to school and we will make the dough here. We need the wonderful assistance of a parent to help the children create their pizzas and clean up the kitchen. If you are keen to help, please see your home group teacher and let them know.

Home Learning
Next week we will begin our home learning for the term. To begin with, this will involve the children reading each night to develop their fluency. Therefore, books they read should not be hard but promote a love of reading. We will also send home some spelling words for the children to learn. In our hub, we will follow the process of look, say, sound, cover, write to learn the words. These words will be taken from their writing.

Problem Solving in Maths

Our problem solving groups in mathematics are up and running and we are all learning together. We are developing the strategies we need to work together and ensure that everyone in the group understands what is happening. This means that we need to check in with each other and we also need to be able to ask for help if we do not understand something.

Here is an example of a problem we have been working on:

Four friends are earning money for a school trip by doing jobs.

James earns $4.00 an hour delivering pamphlets.

Ella earns $3.50 an hour weeding gardens.

Billy earns $5.00 an hour cleaning windows.

Maisie earns $2.50 an hour walking dogs.

All of them work for 20 hours. How much have they earnt altogether?

Literacy

We have started our literacy programme where the children are in five learning groups across the team. Starting next week it will be expected that children will complete their reading log each night and record nightly reading in their home learning reading log.

Please enjoy a letter to the Lorax.

Dear Lorax

I am Bobbi. I have heard your story and it is pretty cool. I am very disappointed in the Once-ler. I am writing to you because, thanks to your story, we have started thinking about sustainability. Me and my class thought about some ways we could help the environment:

Saving the rivers and oceans
Stop cutting down the trees
Trying not to pollute the air

To do this I will need to write to the council. In my letter to the council, I will say that we can't let factories pollute the air. Here are some reasons why we need to look after our planet:

To save the marine life
To save the trees for oxygen
To keep animals from dying

I'll try my best.

From Bobbi

Kowhai News Term 4 Week 2

Posted on 27 October, 201727 October, 2017 by Anna Reid

Stationery

Some children are still short on school stationery for this term. Can you please ask your child if they require any more pens, pencils, rubbers, rulers or highlighters and make sure they bring anything they need to school as soon as possible. If they are not sure, they can check in their home group stationery drawer to see what is left in their named stationery bag or feel free to e-mail your point of contact teacher. Thank you!

Drink Bottles
There are still a number of children without drink bottles and as the days are getting warmer, the children are needing them even more. We are encouraging the children to keep hydrated on these warm days and they especially need their water bottles for our run up to Athletics Day when they will be doing lots of practice. Could you please ensure that your child has a drink bottle for school and that they bring it to school every day. We really appreciate your support in this.

We Care Day

We had a wonderful day on Wednesday celebrating We Care Day. We started the day by picking the name of a buddy in the hub from a box and then we secretly gave them compliments throughout the day and left notes on their tote trays or by their bags saying what we appreciated about them. It was great fun and everyone enjoyed giving and receiving positive affirmations of who they are. We spoke to the children about that for some this might even be just a smile or a greeting. Some of us were great at keeping it a secret and it kept us guessing until the very end of the day!

Athletics

Next week we are starting our athletics sessions in our lead up to Athletics Day on Wednesday 22nd November. There will be more details to follow on this. The children will be out on the field learning how to sprint, run relays, do long jump, high jump and shot put and they will also be throwing the discus. Our practices will be on every Thursday so could you please make sure that your child has sensible footwear on these days so they can take part successfully. Thank you so much.

KOS

Over the past 2 weeks the children have been learning about how to Keep Ourselves Safe at school, at home and when we are out and about. Next week we have Constable Ross visiting and he will be talking to the Year 3 children about Physical Me and Touch and also Secrets and Tricks. With the Year 4 children he will be talking about the Real World and Abuse. If you want to know more about this then please feel free to come and talk to your home group teacher.

Kowhai Team Week 3 Newsletter

Posted on 11 August, 201711 August, 2017 by Anna Reid

Here is the latest update from Kowhai Team...

Learning About Change

This term we have been learning about how to look after our bodies and what to do to ensure our body stays fit and healthy so it can grow and learn. We have investigated the importance of food, sleep, exercise and water along with how to care for our body and teeth. Our next step is to examine cause and effect. This will look like us asking and answering questions like: What happens if we don't brush our teeth or eat healthy food? We will extend this to looking at what actions we need to do to keep our hub tidy and appropriate for learning. We will also look at how our behaviour choices can affect other people's learning. You might like to talk with your child about cause and effect in different settings too to extend their understanding.

Toys
We have started to notice the children starting to creep some non essential items like toys to school. It is important that the children keep these items at home as if they come to school, we are unable to guarantee their safety and would hate to see any precious items get damaged or lost. We would love your support with this to ensure that the children only have the necessary items for school at teach day. These are:
Lunch
Drink bottle
Home learning folder
Jacket

Reminder Shoes and Change of Clothes

Due to the very wet state of our grounds, we are actively encouraging the children to bring along a change of clothes and footwear if they intend on playing in the park. If your child likes to play football or games on the grassed areas, please make sure they have a spare pair of old shoes and clothes to change into at school as the park is still extremely boggy at present.

Library Visits

This term we are lucky enough to be able to go to South Library to read and to issue books. This is a great opportunity to encourage lots of reading while our school library is out of action. The children will be going once every 2 weeks so if your child has a library card, do make sure they take it with them along with their reading folder. We do also encourage you to pack a raincoat on that day as the weather can change very quickly at the moment. If you would like to come along with your child, parent help is always welcome. Just add your name to the following document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xohSV9hfkG48Y5hLUvNfkDipbZJrzBLjZHy5zsK5za4/edit#gid=0

We are also in the need for parent help for Anna and Susan’s home groups. The dates and times are all included in the document link above

We have had extremely successful visits this week, orientating ourselves around the library and finding interesting books to read. Just look how engaged they all are!
This coming week:
This Monday Hub 6 will be going to the library and on Tuesday Hub 9 will be going. If your child has a library card, please send it to school so they are able to issue out books.

Jewellery MAD Group
We are requiring some extra materials for next Friday's jewellery MAD time group. If you have any of the following you would like to donate please bring it into Rebekah in the East Hub. You you have any donations of fine wire, toothpicks, wool, ribbon, fine elastic, loom

Kowhai Teaching Team
x

bands, sequins or anything crafty that might contribute to us making awesome jewellery would love your help.

Short Film Festival
Many thanks to all the parents who have emailed to offer their help on Thursday when we go to the Isaac Theatre Royal to see some of the the NZ Short Films. We know this will be highly entertaining for the children and we hope it will spark some enthusiasm for movie making too!
That's all for now