We have a few important updates for you this week.

Kōwhai Team’s Wearable Arts Performance

Over the next couple of weeks, the children in Kōwhai team are exercising their creativity by creating a wearable art garment as part of our inquiry into innovation.

We would love to share this learning with you in a Wearable Arts Performance.
Date: Thursday 5th September
Where: School Hall
Time: 6:15pm-7pm

On the night, the children will need to meet in the Kōwhai Hub by 6:15pm to be ready to perform at 6.30pm.
Each home group will have time to share their garments on the stage. The evening will conclude with a Kōwhai choir performance.

We are sure this will be a fun and memorable evening for you all and hope to see you all there.

Trip to the School of Gymnastics

To conclude our gymnastic unit, we will be going on a trip to the Christchurch School of Gymnastics. This trip will provide the children with the opportunity to apply the gymnastics skills they have developed at school in a formal setting and under the supervision of professional gymnastics coaches. To cover the cost of the trip, a request for your contribution of $7.00 will be added to your term account. The P.T.A. have kindly funded the cost of the buses for this trip.


Nick and Kate's home groups will be going on Monday, 2nd September from 10:30am - 1:10pm.
Paulette and Rowe's home groups will be going on Tuesday, 3rd September from 10:30am - 1:10pm.

The children will be required to wear appropriate sports a clothing for this trip i.e., tracksuit or t-shirt and shorts or bike pants. They will also be required to have bare feet in the gym. The children are not able to to wear, jeans, dresses, buckles, belts, zippers, jewellery, wrist watches or anything that will scratch the gymnastic equipment or coaches.

Term 4 Mini Ball

During Term 1 and 4, we offer the children in Kōwhai the opportunity to play mini ball in Term 4. Mini ball is a modified game of basket ball. The games are held at Pioneer Stadium on a Wednesday and Thursday (first time players) afternoons. The game times vary each week. Games are 30 minutes in duration and are played between 3:30pm and 5:30pm.
As a school, we provide the children with tops and the cost of the term is approximately $35. The team size is 8-9 children with 5 players on the court at a time.
We will need parents to coach and support the teams each week as our teaching staff have meetings on these afternoons.
If you would like to have your child participate, please fill in this form. The number of teams we can enter will depend on the support we receive from parents to coach and support. Please note, by filling in this form, it does not guarantee a place for your child.

Paulette on Leave

During Weeks 8-10, Paulette will be on leave as she travels to Europe with her family. Susan Walsh will be teaching in her place. Susan is very familiar with both the children and the programme so this will make a seamless transition. Paulette will be in contact sharing the places she is visiting while she is away.

Kōwhai Teaching Team
Nick, Rowe, Kate and Paulette

Kia ora Team!

What a busy couple of weeks we have had.

Readathon
On Thursday,  your child should have brought home a readathon card. We have discussed a reading goal for your child to complete each week as art of their readathon. Thank you for supporting your child with this by reading with them each and every night over the next two weeks. This is a great fundraiser for the PTA and is also highly beneficial for the children. 
The cards need to be returned to school on Friday 30th August.
As part of this readathon, there will be a 'Dress Up Book Character Day 'on Friday 30th August. On this day, your child can come to school dressed as their favourite book character.
Each child who returns their card, proving they have read each night, will receive a book mark. All of the returned cards will be put in to a draw for each year level (Y0, Y1, Y2 etc) and the PTA will draw a card from each level and that child will receive a book voucher at the school assembly.

Wearable Arts- Inquiry
We are full steam ahead with our Innovation Topic exploring Wearable Arts. Over the past week, the children have had the opportunity to view a variety of wearable arts, identifying how they have been made and their purpose. We have had a go at making prototypes to see what it is like to make a wearable art on a smaller scale. This was VERY tricky for some!
The children have now created designs either individually or in groups for them to make over the next 2-3 weeks. We are trying to make this learning as sustainable as possible and do not want anyone buying any items. We have a variety of materials for the children to use at school, however, your child may ask for some items to be provided from home.
Here are some examples of the children's designs. We will be sharing these with you at a Wearable Arts Evening in Week 7.

An attempt to create a garment for a toy.

Some of our designs.

Pizza Makers
It has been great to see the children learning how to prepare food safely when making pizzas. Here are our first group of pizza makers. They did a great job of cleaning and preparing the kitchen for pizza making, creating the dough and cleaning up the dishes at the end of the session. Well done team!

Making pizzas and following the steps.

Music Lessons- Recorder
Starting this week, the children in our team will be given recorder lessons on a Tuesday afternoon. Josie, one of our itinerant music teachers will be providing this instruction. Two home groups (Nick and Kate's) will have lessons with her this term, and Rowe and Paulette's home groups will have lessons with her in Term 4. We are really excited to be able to provide this opportunity for the children.

Up and Coming Events
28th August- 2.15pm Parent Meeting Keeping Ourselves Safe Programme
30th August - Book Character Day
2nd and 3rd September - Kowhai Trip to School of Gymnastics
6th September- Readathon Cards and Money Due in


That's all for now.
Have a great weekend
Kowhai Teaching Team

Welcome back!
We would like to welcome three new children to or team Jaiden, Jenna and Audrey who have joined the Kōwhai Team this term. It has been great to see our new children making friends and it is hard to believe they have just started.

Kōwhai Kid of the Week
Each Friday as part of our team hui, we will be identifying children who have been leaders in the hub, living our school values consistently during the week. These children will be able to make pizza on a Friday for their lunch. If your child is a 'Kōwhai Kid of the Week' they will bring home a certificate  (see below) and we will send an email to the parents to let you know. All you need to do is to provide pizza toppings for your child's pizzas. We will make the dough at school and provide the sauce base. The children were really excited to learn about this today!


DMIC- Maths
Our focus at the moment is on learning about fractions. The children have been working in their DMIC groups solving fractions of numbers. Each Friday we are providing the children with the opportunity to participate in Fraction Workshops. These lessons extend the skills and knowledge that the children currently have enabling them to have a stronger skill-based when working on group problems. It has been impressive to see the children's' understanding grow each week. This week we provided workshops on:
1. Basic Fraction Knowledge- How to read, write and represent 1/2,1/4, 1/3, 1/5 etc.
2. Ordering Fractions
3. Finding the fraction of a number, e.g., What is a 1/4 of 24?)
4. What is a proper and improper fraction?

Here is a cool website with fraction games.

Discovery- Learning through Inquiry
We are lifting the level of thinking and learning this term during our Discovery sessions and it has been exciting to see the children really challenging their thinking when learning during this time. The children have been learning about electrical circuits, how to create stop motion animations, using the sewing machine to make clothing, playing and creating new sports to name a few. This component of our programme not only gives the children agency to explore and learn about personal topics of interest but provides opportunities to problem solve, work and cooperate with others, take risks by trying new things and how to self-manage, to name a few skills. Here are some of the children this week.








Inquiry- WEARABLE ART
Next week we will be beginning to introduce our Wearable Art Inquiry. The children will be learning about the wearable arts, what makes them innovative, how people can communicate their creativity through wearable arts and how wearable art could be an ethical option in the future. If you have any items that might be of use for our inquiry (he children will be designing and making their own wearable art), please feel free to send items to school. We will be sharing our learning with you in Week 7 this term, with a performance in the hall.

Calendar Art
This week we have all been exercising our creativity by producing incredible artworks for our calendar art. We will have these on display in our hubs and will send out a blog post showcasing what we have created next week.

PE- Gymnastics
As Term 3 is often wet, our focus for the first half of the term is on gymnastics. Each Thursday afternoon, the children are participating in a variety of gymnastics activities aimed to develop coordination, balance, confidence and control of movements. At the end of this scheme of learning, we will go to the Christchurch School of Gymnastics. A notice about this trip will be sent home closer to the time,

PTA Cheese Rolls
On Monday, the children will be bringing home order forms for cheese rolls. This is another one of our amazing fundraising activities organised by our incredible PTA. It would be great to have as many people supporting this as possible. The cheese rolls are DELICIOUS!

Kapa Haka
This term, we have started our own Kōwhai Team Kapa Haka as Sherrilee is working predominately with Pōhutukawa and Kauri due to her availability. This has provided us with the opportunity to provide all of our tamariki with the opportunity to perform in a Kapa Haka group. Over the past two weeks, we have been learning the role of Kapa Haka and what skills you learn through performing as a group. Over the past two weeks, the children have been learning two waiata;
ehara e te mea and Tōia Mai
We hope to share our learning with you all later on in the term.

That's all for now
Have a great weekend ahead
Kōwhai Teaching Team