Kia ora e te whānau,

What a fantastic term we have had in the Kahikatea team! Ngā ākonga have settled in beautifully with their 2024 home groups, and it has been wonderful to see friendships grow and rich learning taking place. Thank you for your ongoing support as we 'fill our kete for the journey.'

Katie and Amber have enjoyed co-leading the Kahikatea team during Term 1. Amber will be the Acting Team Leader from the beginning of Term 2. She is very excited to be stepping back into this role for 2024 while Katie continues working in her Acting Deputy Principal role for the remainder of the year.

Identity

Teddy Bears Picnic

Kia ora e te whānau,

Welcome to Term 4! We have a busy term ahead, with lots of engaging learning experiences planned. 

Weeks 1 - 3: Athletics practice (hurdles, shotput, relays, and long jump).

Weeks 3 - 6: Navigators/Waka Hourua - Tamariki will learn about the journey of the first people to live in Aotearoa/New Zealand. 

Weeks 4 - 9: Cashmere Technical Football Club - Football in Schools programme (two sessions per week)

Weeks 7-10: Fairy tales - Children will learn that a fairy tale is a fictional story, often passed down through generations. We are very keen to incorporate fairy tales from all cultural backgrounds within our team. Please, if you have a fairy tale you wish to share, please let your child's home group teacher know. This unit will conclude with a trip to the Isaac Theatre Royal, where we will watch a performance of Cinderella by the Southern Ballet Company.

Teaching Assistants

Karen

Sunhats

Little Learners Texts

Word of The Week

Library

Kia ora e te whānau,

It was so lovely to see the smiles on the faces of the Kahikatea tamariki as they arrived at school on Monday morning! We hope that you all had a wonderful holiday break.

We have an exciting term ahead, with gymnastics, calendar art, House of Science learning, and the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme to look forward to.

Gymnastics

Sharing Our Learning - What is a Scientist?

"The scientist is sharing his potions with the little kid." - Louis

"The scientist is doing tests on a hedgehog." - Poppy

"My scientist is holding a potion and is going to bed." - Rossouw

"She's making potions. She is called Rosie." - Violet

The scientists are inspecting the dogs and the cats." - Zac

"The scientist is studying the animals." - Sailor

Nuts at School

This is another reminder that the Kahikatea team has students with nut allergies, one of these is life-threatening. Therefore, we are asking that nuts and nut-based products are NOT brought to school by your child. Nut-based products include items like Nutella, peanut butter, muesli bars containing nuts, etc.

The team is also aware that some children may have other dietary requirements. Please talk with your child’s Homegroup teacher if this is the case so that they are aware and we can create a specific plan to support your child if need be.

Our policy at school is that children only eat their own food and not share. Teachers are reminding children about this, handwashing, and putting food wrappings in their lunch boxes to take home.

If you have any questions please contact your child's Homegroup teacher.

Thank you for your support as 'We Get There Together'.

Literacy Information

Some children have changed into a new literacy group with a different teacher. It has been lovely getting to know our new literacy groups this week! 

Please ensure your child brings their literacy folder to school each day and places it in their literacy teacher's tub. This way, we can make sure that texts are regularly going home for you to enjoy with your child. 

Teachers will be sending home updated materials to support children with home learning by the end of Week 2.

Request for Materials

We love being creative in the Kahikatea team! Please continue to send along recyclable materials to school. 

That's all for now,

Team Kahikatea

katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz

krystal.hunt@beckenham.school.nz

quynh.nguyen@beckenham.school.nz

lisa.collier@beckenham.school.nz

Kia ora e te whānau,

We have had a great week of learning in the Kahikatea hub. Unfortunately, we have had a lot of illness in our team, and many staff and students have been away sick. We wish you all a speedy recovery! We are so thankful to our amazing relievers for stepping in to ensure that our programmes have continued to run, our children have remained engaged, and we have kept smiles on our faces! 'We Get There Together'! 

Strike for Schools

What a show! It was wonderful seeing the professionals show their talent at last Monday's Strike for Schools performance. It was a great motivator to complete our own musical instruments!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Team Kahikatea

katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz

lisa.collier@beckenham.school.nz

quynh.nguyen@beckenham.school.nz

amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz

krystal.hunt@beckenham.school.nz

Kia ora e te whānau,

It has been wonderful to see the children embrace being back at school this week after a slightly longer school holiday break. Over the past three days we have noticed children embracing 'We Love Learning' and 'We Love Challenging' as we settle back into our learning programmes.

Music & Technology Learning

Thank you to the many people who have collected their recycling and sent it our way! We will begin our Music and Technology unit next week. This unit will see us exploring how music is made, as children respond to elements of beat, rhythm, and tone. We will explore how different music makes us feel, as well as learn about some of the different families of musical instruments - wind, string, and percussion.

In Week 3, we have a group called 'Strike to Schools' coming to perform percussion instruments for us. We are very much looking forward to this! 

During Week 4 we will design and construct instruments using our recycled materials. It would be really helpful if you could have a conversation with your child/ren about what they would like to make leading up to this to ensure that they have the materials for their instrument ready to go.

This is the slideshow that will be shared with children when we begin the Technology component of the unit.

Mathematics in Kahikatea

This week for maths, our students have been focusing on using the statistical inquiry cycle. They have learnt about posing investigative questions, deciding on how to collect data to answer questions, sorting objects into categories for displays, making displays of data they have collected (pictographs) and making statements about data displays.

How amazing is this photo of the giant graph that Krystal’s Homegroup made? They read the book Greedy Cat and then created a pictograph of their favourite coloured cats. They even recorded the data using tally marks!

We are all extremely proud of the hard mahi that our students are displaying.