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.


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?
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?

Calendar Art - Kandinsky
We are taking inspiration from Kandinsky for our Calendar Art.  This is an important fundraiser run by our PTA so look out for order forms coming home soon.
 
Warm Clothing - Thank You
Throughout the day we go in and out of the hub to get fresh air, to do our fitness and to take our breaks for morning tea and lunch.
Very often, we  experience very changeable weather so we appreciate you sending your child to school with an extra layer of warm clothing, such as thermals or a water/windproof jacket.

Lunches - Thank You
For providing full and filling lunches each day. Lunch eating is actively supervised and we are genuinely impressed by the delicious lunches our tamariki are eating. Sandwiches, wraps, buns  (carbohydrates) and protein (nuts, meats, dairy) and of course vegetables and fruit are essential lunchbox items.

Hygiene
Teachers are actively monitoring daily handwashing routines, especially before lunch eating. We also remind our tamariki to always wash their hands after using the toilet. It is particularly important during these winter months that we are all mindful of maintaining basic hygiene.

Reading at Home
Thank you for supporting your child by maintaining regular reading at home. Each day your child needs to self-select a book and put it into their reading folder. If you are concerned about your child's reading or you would like any ideas about supporting your child to read at home do not hesitate to speak with your child's teacher.

Slippers/Warm Socks/Winter Clothing/Glasses
The days are getting much cooler and it's really good to see students dressed appropriately for the weather. Please do remember to name your child's jackets as these inevitably come off when they enter our lovely warm hub. If your child would like to wear slippers or thick socks, do name these too.
We have an increasing number of students who wear glasses and we know it's so important that they develop the routine and discipline of managing this by themselves. If your child is suppose to wear glasses for specific learning tasks - reading, for example, please let us know.

Learning Conferences
Kind thanks to you all for taking the time to meet with us last week for learning conferences. These are such valuable meetings to celebrate with your child all their progress and to identify next steps.

Disco and Swimming Photos....enjoy!

We are so happy to have finally started swimming lessons. Thanks to all our lovely whanau who are supporting us during this time and to the many, many hours of work Charlotte has put into planning and organising such a valuable learning experience for our tamariki. Arohanui Charlotte!
Lessons continue this week (except for Wednesday 29th May) and then on into next week too.

Here are some photos of today's fun: