It has been another busy fortnight in the Kōwhai hub. Enjoy reading about our learning and adventures. 

Keeping Well 

Thank you so much to all whānau for making sure we keep our hubs as healthy as possible by keeping tamariki with coughs, colds and other symptoms of illness at home. 

Please do send your child to school with a named jumper every day, as the cooler air during playtimes can get suddenly chilly! Jackets on wet days are also a priority, and gumboots are always welcome (with shoes for wearing in class). Thanks, everyone!

Learning Conferences 

We are excited about meeting with you next week! Please remember that school closes at 2pm on both Wed 14th and Thurs 15th June. 

• If you haven't yet booked a learning conference, you can still book here (code: 8f6xx). 
• Please also fill out this form regarding care of your child from 2-3pm on these days. This form needs to be filled out by EVERY family.
• We also encourage you to spend time looking at your child's report with them on HERO.

Maths 

Currently, our maths learning is focused on multiplication and division. We have been enjoying a mix of: 

• Small group explicit learning with a teacher 
• Problem solving, solving problems like: In the cross country, 9 minions ran two laps each. How many laps did the minions run altogether? 
• Targeted maths worksheets, such as multiplying by skip counting, e.g., 3 x 2 = 2+2+2
• Maths games with a group 
• Finding arrays outside and in the classroom and drawing our own 
• Maths games online

Wellbeing 

Support your child's emotional awareness by listening to this story.

As well as our weekly PB4L focus (e.g., on kindness, friendship, upstanding etc.), we have wellbeing sessions each Friday, focusing on different topics that the teachers see the children might need support with. Recently, we have looked at emotions. We have...

• identified and named emotions 
• talked about how these feel in our body (e.g., when I am nervous, I get butterflies in my tummy)
• shared what causes us to feel these emotions
• played fun emotions games
• and also learnt some strategies for dealing with anger, sadness and frustration, such as talking to an adult or having some quiet time.

Waka & Migration Learning

We're really enjoying learning more about early migration to Aotearoa. We have especially loved learning about the different waka that different groups of people created to make the long voyage over from their homelands. You can explore some of these waka in 3D here and also learn about the traditional Ngāi Tahu way of building Mōkihi to travel local rivers.

Writing

Many children have been writing explanations over the last few weeks, and working on publishing and illustrating their work. Here are just some of their masterpieces:

Discovery

Tamariki are loving lego challenges (thanks, Anna R, for creating these each week), programming challenges (thanks, Nick) and Rowe's wonderful art inspirations. This week, Rowe has shown us how to make 3D paper sculptures! The teachers have noticed how great we are at working together and teaching each other new skills.

Have a great weekend!

Ngā mihi, 

The Kōwhai Team

Kia ora whānau,

We have had a busy couple of weeks and it is so good to see the sun again. Unfortunately, school photos were postponed due to sickness. The children looked so gorgeous and smart!

Strike Schools for Percussion

We were lucky to have a group of performers from Strike School in Wellington last week. This was a stunning performance ending with a percussive fire experience! The performers had trained for weeks with Weta Workshops for obvious safety reasons. 

Industrious Learners

Donations of Art Shirts

Cross Country

Migration

Reading Folders

What a fantastic fortnight it has been! We now have literacy and maths groups up and running, and the tamariki have been amazing at flexibly and quickly joining their groups. Enjoy reading about our recent adventures and learning.

Things for Discovery 

Construction is a hit during Discovery time. Please send in old boxes, egg cartons and anything else that might be useful for us :-)

Wellbeing 

Friendships have been our Wellbeing topic over the last two weeks, along with a continued focus on interoception and our school-wide PB4L focus, respect. 

With friendships, we have talked about and role-played what makes a good friend and how to deal with problems with friends. Some tips include: 

• Talk about it 
• Use ‘ I ‘ statements (model this) and share your feelings
• Listen actively 
• Ask for the other person to share their thoughts or feelings
• Think of some ways to solve the problem 
• Get an adult to help if you can’t agree, or if your friend isn’t listening to you

Interoception 

Interoception means sensing internal signals from your body, like when you are hungry, when your heart is beating fast, or when you need the toilet. These are all necessary precursors to positive development and self-regulation and self-management. We use short, fun interoception activities to help everyone find a sense of calm in their bodies, and therefore be better managers of ourselves, our behaviours and our learning.

Maths 

After a fun two weeks of learning about 2D and 3D shapes and their attributes, we're now moving into place value and basic facts. You can help your child at home by:

• having them read and order numbers, low to high 
• playing games such as 'guess my number' where children ask if a mystery number is higher than or lower than
• quick thinking addition and subtraction games like rolling and adding dice, 24, or other games
• identifying how many tens and ones, or hundreds, tens and ones in a number
• forward and backwards counting in 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s, from various start points

Also, log into the school intranet at home to play Nick's maths games...lots of fun and learning to be had!

Top Team 

A huge thanks to Anna Reid for organising this, and to parents who helped out on the day. You were amazing at encouraging and supporting the tamariki - tino pai tō mahi!

Discovery Photos 

Kia ora whānau

It has been a super busy start to the term...which is flying quickly past! Enjoy reading about our latest learning and activities. 

Quynh's News 

Quynh has leave, as of late next week, to go and visit her family in Vietnam. We wish Quynh a wonderful time with her family and thank her for all her hard work this year. We will miss her! Kathryn Moore will be covering for Quynh's class until the end of the year.

Cricket 

House of Science Learning

 

We have access to an amazing set of science kits from The House of Science, an educational organisation established to help teachers, students and schools teach and learn about key science ideas. This fortnight, we are learning about Plants, Pests and Produce. Our activities include learning about some key beneficial insects and pests in New Zealand, the six parts of a fruit/vegetable plant and their functions, transpiration, pollination and pest control such as pheromone traps. Many aspects of the living world, the nature of science and the material world are covered through the lessons.

Raised Garden Beds

The PTA has kindly given us funding to have two raised garden beds, like the ones by the hall, built in the garden behind our hub. Thank you, PTA! Tony will be constructing these over the coming weeks. We will then need to fill them with usable garden waste (tree clippings etc.) and soil. If you happen to be undertaking landscaping or maintenance at your house at present and have any usable garden waste or soil to donate, please email charlotte.verity@beckenham.school.nz.  

Swimming 

The children loved our water safety sessions at Pioneer. They learnt a range of key skills at their point of need. This included: 

• Floatation and water familiarisation
• Swimming strokes
• Kicking techniques
• Key water safety skills, including how to put on a life jacket, what to do if a boat capsizes, how to keep warm in cold water, how to stay in a group and how to signal for help

Assembly 

Congratulations to our Week 3 Celebration Assembly award recipients. A big thank you to Isaiah for creating and sharing his cultural presentation about Malaysia. 

Kia ora e te whānau,

We have had an amazing and busy couple of weeks. I think you would all agree that your tamariki demonstrated great skills, persistence and patience at our recent Athletics Day. It was lovely to see all the parents and grandparents who were able to make it. Thank you for your support. We have been so lucky with the weather lately!

SwimSafe Programme

We are delighted to have started the SwimSafe programme provided by Pioneer. Our tamariki are loving the challenge and have already grown in confidence. The very experienced tutors were able to group them according to their swimming ability and lessons got underway swiftly! It looks so much fun that the teachers would like to jump in too (particularly in this weather).

Laura 

As you may have noticed, our lovely Laura is expecting a baby and her final day of teaching will be on Thursday, November 10th. Laura will then be on maternity leave. We are all going to miss her 

so much but we know that she is embarking on a great life-changing adventure. We wish Laura and Steven all the best (including the perfect baby that always sleeps) and know that they are going to be wonderful parents.

We wish you a lovely weekend.

Ngā mihi nui.

The Kōwhai team