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
This term, we welcome two new teaching assistants to the Kahikatea team. Laura and Karen, we are looking forward to working with you!
Laura
Karen
Sunhats
Sunhats are compulsory in Term 4. No hat, no play. We find it best to leave sunhats at school each day to ensure that children always have a hat at school. Each home group has a bucket in which these are stored. Please make sure that your child's hat is clearly named.
Little Learners Texts
We encourage children to bring their literacy folder to school at the start of each week with their previous week's text inside. This way, we have enough texts to use in our teaching for the following week. If you have any Little Learners texts lying around at home, please send them our way!
Word of The Week
This week's word of the week is 'upstander'. An upstander will use their words and/or actions to help someone who is being mistreated. The following video has been shared with your child/ren this week.
Library
Please note that Krystal and Katie's home groups have changed library days this term.
Library days are:
Tuesday: Lisa/Quynh & Katie's home groups
Thursday: Amber & Krystal's home groups
Please support your child to have their folder at school on their library day.
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
Our first gymnastics session will be next Tuesday, the 25th of July. The following social story has been shared with children. Please take a moment to have a look through it.
Sharing Our Learning - What is a Scientist?
On Tuesday, Katie asked her home group the following questions:
- What is a scientist?
- What does a scientist do?
Children then drew a picture of how they view science in action. Here are some examples. We think they are fantastic!
"My scientist is studying eggs from a bird." - Jess
"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.
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!
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.
It has been lovely to see our children continuing to settle into the new school year! 'We Love Learning' has been a value that the teachers have noticed in action, with children enthusiastically approaching their learning. Nau mai te wero, bring on the challenge!
Hats
Students are required to wear hats outside in Terms 1 and 4. Please make sure that your child has a clearly named wide-brimmed or bucket hat. We recommend leaving hats at school in your child's home group hat tub. This helps minimise the possibility of losing or forgetting hats and it supports us in ensuring smooth transitions to breaks during the day.
Toys at School
We have noticed that some children are bringing toys (including soft toys) from home to school. We have reminded tamariki that their toys need to stay at home. We find that if children bring a toy from home it can become a distraction during learning, and sometimes these special items become lost or broken during the day. If your child needs extra support with settling into school, please speak to your child's home group teacher, and together, we will come up with a plan.
Celebration Assembly and Team Hui
We had the first Celebration Assembly and Team Hui of the year last Friday with many parents/caregivers joining us. Congratulations to Kahikatea children who received a Kete award or a certificate for showing our school values.
Sharing our Learning
We had some special visitors in the Kahikatea hub this week! It is butterfly season, so we were thrilled to get the chance to learn about the life cycle of butterflies this week when a learner brought their chrysalises in to share. Even more exciting were the obvious changes in the chrysalises throughout the day and then the appearance of butterflies.
Literacy at home
Your child's literacy teacher will send home resources to support your child's structured literacy learning at home by the end of this week. These resources align with your child's current structured literacy stage. As your child moves through the stages, these resources will be updated. Please keep an eye out for them in your child's reading folder and let your child's teacher know if you have any questions.
Maths
In Kahikatea so far this term, we have been working on an NZ Maths unit called ‘All about us’. We have explored:
Different ways to count groups of objects
Creating and interpreting picture graphs
Features of 2D shapes
The language of position
Ordering objects by mass (weight)
Creating sequential patterns
Here are some photos of some of the fabulous mathematical thinking that our tamariki have displayed...
