Kia ora, e te whānau,

We trust that this finds you having had a very safe, happy and relaxing Easter break, and now part way into an equally safe and happy school holiday break.

Our heartfelt thanks to you all for the amazing support you have given your children and the staff throughout the first term this year. We appreciate every offer of help and support, both small and large!

 Congratulations to the tamariki, who have had an amazing term, making impressive progress in their learning, including social and emotional as well as academic. This includes our little newbies, many of whom may have only had a few days at school, and who have all stepped into their new role as primary school learners, willingly embracing the challenges with positivity and enthusiasm. 

For those of you who would like to view (or view again!) the Literacy videos we've shared over the past term, here are those valuable links once again, including those at the Stage 2 level:

• The Speech Sounds of New Zealand English
• Stage 1
• How you can help at home Stage 1
• Stage 2
• How you can help at home Stage 2

Impressive focus being shown here!

"That will be $1:50, thank you."

Art and craft in the art space.

Beautiful, careful colouring!

Oh, my goodness - what's going to happen next?

At the vets.

At school, playing schools :)

Skip and Bounce will love this handwriting.

Great balancing in the next three photos.

Such wonderful focus and care being shown here.

The result of one of our Science experiments using dye and flowers... we followed the sequence: question, hypothesis, test, observe, discuss and conclude.

Playing one of Sonya's beautiful board games!

A favourite puppet.

My hand shape: traced around, coloured and trimmed.

What an amazing set up this team has created.

Animal dress up day - what a gorgeous little lion cub!

A cute little mouse showing great focus here.

A cheetah teams up with a unicorn.

Great physical skills on display!

Fun and games in the sandpit.

What a beautiful smile :)

Wonderful focus on display here.

An enthusiastic member of the jigsaw puzzle team.

We love books...

... and numbers!

All dressed up, having made a selection from the dress up box.

Scone-making photos from our final day of Term 1...

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

We hope you have all had a lovely week. In the Koru hub, we have had a very busy week, as we continue with our small group Maths and Literacy learning. The children are doing a great job adjusting to the routines, following expectations, and trying really hard with their learning. They have been absolute superstars!

This week, we welcome Annabelle and Ariana, who started in the Koru Team in Week 4, and Archie, Alex and Violet who started in the Koru team this week. You have all settled really well into the routines and have done a great job at following instructions, making friends, and trying new things. Ka pai, tamariki!

We also welcome back Georgia and Nicola into our Koru teaching team! Nicola will be in for Stacey, generally on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, for the remainder of Term 1. Georgia has started back full-time, as more children join the Koru team and will be here Monday to Friday. 

Friendship List:

We have decided to extend our Friendship List date until Wednesday, 8th March. If you have not already, please email Georgia (georgia.mckenna@beckenham.school.nz) with your details if you wish to be on this list. This is a great way to get in contact with other whānau to arrange play dates. 

Word of the week:

The word of the week this week has been 'Respect'. In the Koru team, we have discussed what respect means, how we can show respect to others, how we can respect our classroom equipment, and why respect is really important in order to develop trust in the relationships you have with others. If you wanted to discuss our word of the week further, you could chat with your child about what showing respect might look like at home, during your weekend activities, and in different environments. 

House games:

This week, we had our first House Games. House Games involve the whole school and are when the children play different games with other children in the same house. House Games are run by the house captains and deputy house captains. There were lots of different activities that the tamariki tried, and the senior leaders did a great job at running these activities. Our tamariki showed "We Love Challenge", "We Love Learning", and "We Get There Together", through being engaged with the activities, listening to the leaders, persevering and giving the activities a great go, trying their best, and most importantly, having FUN!

Structured Literacy:

We have continued in our small groups, during Structured Literacy time, to learn new letter sounds at Stage 1. Each time a new sound is learnt, your child will be bringing home a few letter sounds to practise at home and these letter sets will be added to, as the children progress. These can be used to practise the pure sounds the letters make and then once children have learnt segmenting and blending skills, they can then use these skills to segment and blend the sounds together to form words. 

You may also notice some Heart Words in your child's sound pack. Our Heart Words are words that cannot be sounded out, simply need to be learned 'by heart' and when the children are at home, can be used to practise reading and writing. Once children are proficient in segmenting and blending the first 8 sounds together, and know the first five heart words, they will start bringing home decodable books to read with you at home. 

Here at school, we have recorded some videos to support our whānau with understanding what our literacy stages look like and what you can do to support your learner at home.

Click on the links below to access videos at Stage 1. 

Stage 1

How to Help At Home

Looking for treasure in the sandpit!

How exciting - our new puzzles have arrived!!

Testing out one of the new puzzles! Great work, team!

Beautiful colouring!

Lots of fun with playdough

Great fun with the vehicles!

Creating our sound of the week "M" mouse craft 

What a great session we had on Friday with Whaea Cath!

Our very first House Games!

So fast!

Wow - great work!

Moving so fast!

We love parachutes!

Beautiful colouring, team!

Awesome teamwork!

I love how carefully you are colouring in your butterfly!

Great work coding the Beebot!

Wow - awesome colouring!

Look at the beautiful collage work!

Smiling faces ready to start creating!

 Kia ora e te whānau,

Your children have made an absolutely amazing start to school! We have been so proud of the way they are independently unpacking their bags so beautifully and organising their lunches and drink bottles, and then saying their goodbyes (sometimes with a wee bit of support, which is absolutely to be expected). 

On our first day, after calling the register, singing the National Anthem and saying our karakia, we played a 'getting to know you' circle game, in which we introduced ourselves and told everyone what our favourite colours are and then, the second time around, what our favourite foods are.

Later on, we went on a boundaries walk and talked about the places where the New Entrant children can play at break times, and then the children all practised washing their hands properly before having their morning kai. Perhaps they might give you a little demonstration of how they are able to wash their hands - they're absolute experts!!

After little play, the children then joined up into little groups with each other and explored some of the spaces, equipment and toys that we have, including the jigsaw puzzles, the vehicles, the family corner, the Sylvanians and other small world characters, the train set, and the castle and castle characters.

We also managed to fit in some art work, with some of the children decorating their names using beautiful collage materials. This art work will form part of our 'Welcome' wall display eventually. This week, the children are going to draw self portraits, which will also be added to this display, along with some of the photos that we're taking during the day.

We also visited the library, after the Welcome Assembly on Friday. We hope you enjoy reading together, the two library books which your children have brought home. Please ensure that the library books remain in the library folder at home during the week while not being used, in order to keep them safe, and then make sure that they are returned to school on Friday this week. Two library books will come home each week, as long as your child has returned the previously borrowed books.

What follows is a selection of the photos that were taken last week:

Visiting the wharepaku and learning how to wash our hands thoroughly.

Walking around the areas we're able to play in.

Learning what the yellow line means.

Walking from Hangere to the library, office area and junior playground.

Having a chat with Sandy, who we bumped into as we were walking through the courtyard.

After exploring the library, posing for a group photo in the library nook.

Learning about what the yellow spot on the picture books means.

Showing teamwork as we complete the Rapunzel jigsaw puzzle!

Nearly there...

Practising our drawing and writing skills.

Sharing and working together while playing with the cars and trucks.

Exploring numbers and shape using the Numicon.

Showing persistence to fill the 10 by 10 grid.

Taking time to have a quiet read.

Working on the alphabet puzzle.

Observing and listening carefully to instructions, prior to beginning our name collage activity.

Playing with the small world characters.

Working closely together, while playing with the small world characters.

Talking together about the ongoing story which underpins the play.

Working together, while sharing and playing with the vehicles.

That car carrier certainly is completely loaded up!

Playing with some of the aeroplanes.

Team work required here, to complete this challenging jigsaw puzzle.

Discussing strategy.

The jigsaw team, very pleased with the finished product (what a shame to find that one piece was missing though, although all credit to the team for feeling neither frustrated nor too disappointed!). We trust that this finds you at the end of a wonderful long weekend, and Waitangi Day in particular. We're looking forward to seeing all those gorgeous smiling faces back at school in the morning, all ready for the week ahead! Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou, Elizabeth, Stacey, Georgia and Sonya

Kia ora e te whānau,

It feels very hard to believe that here we all are, at the very end of the 2022 school year. Your children have all settled so beautifully into life at school this year, and their learning has been impressive, to say the least. 

It's been very exciting for us as teachers, and you too, we're sure, on the home front, to witness the social, emotional and physical progress, as well as the academic learning that the children have all made since starting at school. What a wonderful group of tamariki they are! We're going to miss them terribly over the long summer holiday, and will be looking forward to seeing them back again (mostly as members of the Kahikatea team), with their beautiful smiles at the start of next year.

Several of you have requested support with your children's continued learning over the summer holiday, and although the Learning At Home site is no longer accessible through the Beckenham te Kura website, we have found a way of providing you with the link to the site which you were able to access throughout the Red and Orange Traffic Light settings. We do hope that you find this helpful with its range of links, from Phonological Awareness activities to Structured Literacy activities, from Maths to waiata, and there's also an area on the dropdown menu called 'Stories' where your child is able to choose a picture book read by one of the Koru teachers!

Here is the link which takes you directly to the Koru Learning At Home site. We really hope that you find this valuable, as well as lots of fun too!

Final few days:

Many thanks to those parents who have offered to help with some of the cleaning, sorting and tidying tasks that we have listed on the whiteboard outside Hangere this week. We really appreciate your support at this very busy time of the year! There are still a few jobs we'd love some help with:

• cleaning and packaging our Skip and Bouce whiteboard sets
• sorting, tidying and cleaning the games and equipment shelves in both Hangere and Kōmanawa
• sorting, tidying and cleaning in the kitchen area (tote trays, cupboards and drawers, etc.)
• sorting the Lego table and the Duplo container
• cleaning and sorting the sandpit toys
• sweeping, cleaning, sorting and tidying in the shed

Please do ensure that you check that you have all of your child's belongings, before leaving on Thursday:

• all clothing, including sunhat, polar fleece and socks (we have several pairs and single socks, as well as T-shirts and polar fleeces)
• their lunchbox and drink bottle (there are often drink bottles left behind on the last day)
• your child's folders, which will include their books and art works from throughout the year.