Kahikatea News Week 9 Term 1

Kia ora koutou!

What a wonderful nine weeks we have had in team Kahikatea! We have been so proud of the hard work from all of the tamariki in our hub. Thank you for continuing to support us at this time, especially by keeping up to date with information being shared via HERO and by keeping your children at home when they are unwell.


A Week in the Life of a Kahikatea Learner

Below is an example of a typical week in the life of a Kahikatea learner. You may wish to talk about this with your child/ren. Some questions to prompt discussion could include:
- What is your favourite time of the day at school?
- Who do you enjoy playing with during morning tea and lunchtime?
- Which time of the day do you feel you learn the best? Why do you think this is?
- What is your favourite learning area? Why?
- What have you learned so far about being sustainable?
- What have you been learning in Structured Literacy?
- What have you been learning about during Maths?



Learning At Home

Here is the Learning at Home link for those of you who may need to use it. We are adding and updating our content every so often. This includes activities for Learning Through Play, Maths, and Literacy. If you child completes learning when at home, they can share what they have done via Seesaw. We would love to see the wonderful work that they are doing at home! If completing activities isn't achievable for any reason, then that is absolutely fine too.


Kinetic Letters Handwriting Programme

We have loved getting our Kinetic Handwriting lessons up and running. Thank you for the care that tamariki have shown Bounce and Skip when they come to your place for a sleepover. The excitement of the children when they get to take the monkeys home is delightful.





Sustainability

It has been wonderful to address our concept-based curriculum theme of Sustainability in Kahikatea in the past week. By the end of this term, all children would have had a lesson about taking care of our outdoor equipment, indoor equipment, water conservation, and how to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Dolls

One of the most popular toys played with during Learning Through Play is our dolls. We are on the hunt for more dolls, furniture for the dolls house, etc. to build upon what we already have.


Reminders

Please name your child's lunchbox (including any small containers), drink bottle, sunhat, and school jersey. Please also remind your child/ren to please keep their shoes on at school. Children who do take their shoes off are encouraged to place them on one of the shoe racks in the hub and to put their socks inside their shoes.


Library

Amber and Krystals home groups go to the library on Tuesdays, and Katie and Emma's home groups go to the library on Thursdays. Please ensrue that you child has their library folder with them on their allocated day.








That's all for now! Thank you for your ongoing support. Please feel free to get in touch via your child's teacher via email anytime.

Team Kahikatea

amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz
katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz
emma.hayes-smith@beckenham.school.nz
krystal.hunt@beckenham.school.nz
lisa.collier@beckenham.school.nz



Kahikatea News Week 5 T1 2022

Kia ora Koutou!
What a fabulous and busy 5 weeks we have had in team Kahikatea. We have been very impressed with the hard work from all of our Tamariki. Thank you for continuing to support us at this time, especially by keeping up to date with information being shared via HERO. If you are having any trouble with this or you are not recieving notices or news from school please let us know. 

Kete Focus 

This week we have been focusing on using good manners, including waiting for our turn to talk, waiting patiently in a line to wash our hands, saying thank you and being polite to each other. When we do this consistently we are showing our school values: We Care & We Make a Difference. 

You can ask your child/children: how and when do you show your manners at school? 

Kinetic Letters Handwriting Program

We are very excited to be starting our Kinetic Handwriting lessons. Keep an eye out for the Bounce and Skip monkeys as they may come home with your child. If Bounce and Skip come for a visit they will be accompanied by a book with instructions for their visit home.

Jerseys and Hats 

A reminder that as the weather starts to cool down, please ensure that your child’s jersey is clearly named.

Every child is expected to be wearing their hat when they are outside. If your child has lost or misplaced their sunhat please encourage them to look for it here at school first and if it cannot be found please replace it.

Literacy Groups

Our team is in the process of carrying out our assessment schedule for literacy and once completed we will look at our groupings. 

We are continuing to with our oral language programs, shared reading with follow up activities, poetry, writing, spelling, phonemic awareness, handwriting and spelling activities. 

PLEASE NOTE: your child will not bring a decodable text home everyday. These are teaching books which are used many times by the teacher. Only when we know your child can read it fluently and with expression will we send it home. 

CONTINUE to read to your child/children at home, enjoy reading aloud and encourage them to explore books in all forms, such as picutre books, nursery rhymes, poems, non-fiction, chapter books and magazines. 

Contributions

We love having recycling (boxes, newspapers, empty egg cartons ect) for box/construction activities. If you have any spare please send it in with your child - we would greatly appreciate it!

Finally, here are some photos of our hub and our gorgeous tamariki: 
































Arohanui, Team Kahikatea 


Kahikatea Week 2 Term 1 2022

Kia Ora! 
We are so impressed with how well our tamariki are settling into team Kahikatea. Tamariki are becoming familiar with daily routines and expectations, making new friends and getting to know new teachers. These are important days and weeks as we work together to build positive relationships and to develop knowledge and understanding of each others strengths and skills. 

Morning Drop Off 

We are seeing lots of happy kids arriving at the Sandwich Road entrance each morning. Thank you so much for supporting your child to do this with ease. A quick hug and kiss goodbye is working so well for many of our tamariki. If you think your child needs any extra support at this time please let your child's teacher know. 

Literacy 

From Tuesday we will be starting group literacy lessons. We will run literacy (reading and wrting lessons) 4x a week from 9.15am to 10.15am. 

Our literacy program includes: 

  • shared reading
  • poetry
  • oral language and phonemic awareness
  • handwriting
  • alphabet knowledge and phonics
  • writing
  • spelling

Reminders

Please name your childs lunchbox (including any small containers), drink bottle, sunhat and school jersey

Sunhats must be worn during PE and breaktimes

Please remind your child/children to please keep their shoes on at school. Children who do take their shoes off are encouraged to place them on one of the shoe racks in the hub and to put their socks into their shoes. 

Kinetic Letters Handwriting 

We will be starting this program again soon (once our new staff have completed the online training). 

The Bounce and Skip monkeys are all in need of some new jackets. If you have some sewing skills and would like to make some new ones that would be amazing!

Please email amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz if you are able to help. 



Enjoy these gorgeous photos of our tamariki engaged in Learning Through Play...














































Team Kahikatea: 
Amber
Krystal
Lisa
Katie
Emma
Kerilea
Kate
💛










Kahikatea Newsletter Term 4 Week 7

Kia ora e te whānau,

It has been a busy few weeks in Kahikatea! Reports went online at the end of Week 5, and we loved connecting with whānau at Learning Conferences in Week 6. There were a few questions during these conferences about accessing reports. Please let your home group teacher know if you need any support with this.

Transitions

Over the last couple of weeks we have started transition visits for our learners. We enjoyed participating in Learning Through Play with Kōwhai learners, in their hub, and we also connected with Koru learners, who visited us. Lots of laughs were had and connections made.

A Teddy Bear Picnic!


Next Thursday 9th December we invite all our tamariki to bring one favourite Teddy Bear from home. At lunchtime we will head out to Beckenham Park to sit under the trees and enjoy a picnie with our Kahikatea friends and their teddies. 
Your child can bring: 
A Teddy
A picnic blanket 
Some extra food in their lunchbox for a busy day! 
A drink bottle 


Eels

We were lucky to have some learners from Pōhutukawa, Rose and Ashlyn, visit us to teach us about eels. They spoke passionately about why eels are special, the different types and what we can do to help them. They also provided this video link if you want to hear more about eels. The learners all had a fun activity sheet to do afterwards.




Notices/ Reminders

We are now doing a stocktake of all of our books. This includes our structured literacy texts ('Pip and Tim' books) and school library books. Please return these as soon as possible with your learner. No more books will be coming home before the end of the year. Many thanks!

We are noticing learners taking their shoes off at school and are strongly encouraging them not to do so. We have had some incidences of bee stings, and minor cuts and scrapes with bare feet. Please remind your child about the importance of wearing their shoes at school.

Book Character and Rainbow Diversity Day


Wow, what an amazing response to our dress up day. We loved the variety of characters and colours of clothing in the hub! Thank you for your donation to the Child Cancer Foundation and Qtopia.

We read books, and spoke about what we liked about different characters. Here are some comments:

"I love how Elsa has frozen powers."

"Army characters have tanks and save other people."

"Wonder Woman can shoot lasers out of her eyes!"

"Velociraptors are so smart they can open doors."

"Horses have buckles on their saddle"

"Spiderman can shoot out webs"

"The Highway Rat has a sword."

"Melvin can make cool inventions."

"I like being a Gruffalo because I am scary!"

"Tinkerbell has wings!"

















Have a lovely weekend!

Ngā mihi nui,

The Kahikatea Team











Kahikatea Newsletter Week 5 Term 4

Kia ora koutou, It has been a busy couple of weeks for the Kahikatea team! A big highlight was our Year 0 to 4 athletics last week, which included adapted long jump, shotput, hurdles and relays. 
All our tamariki participated in each event with their house group, and it was wonderful to see our kete values in action!










As always, our hub has been a hive of activity. Here are some pictures to show you some of the things we have been up to during Learning Through Play.
























That's all for now!

Team Kahikatea

amber.donovan@beckenham.school.nz
lisa.collier@beckenham.school.nz
charlotte.verity@beckenham.school.nz
katie.mcfarlane@beckenham.school.nz