Kōwhai News T1 W1

 Kia ora whānau,

Welcome back to school! We have had a great first couple of days back getting to know each other and enjoying discovery and water play among lots of other activities. We hope you have a wonderful long weekend. 

Here are some photos from our first 2 days:

















Ngā mihi

The Kōwhai Team

Anna, Nick, Laura, Quynh, Rowe and Laura


Kōwhai News T1 W1

 Kia ora whānau,

Welcome back to school! We have had a great first couple of days back getting to know each other and enjoying discovery and water play among lots of other activities. We hope you have a wonderful long weekend. 

Here are some photos from our first 2 days:

















Ngā mihi

The Kōwhai Team

Anna, Nick, Laura, Quynh, Rowe and Laura


Upcoming Events

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

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?

Image result for kandinsky circles

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

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
Image result for loraxI 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