Category Archives: Koru

Koru Team news, Term 2 Week 7

Posted on by

Kia ora, e te whānau,

Important dates:

Learning Conferences. Learning Conferences are this Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th of June, and school finishes at 2pm. Please complete THIS FORM to let us know what you want to happen for your child at 2pm. Every family needs to complete the form, thanks.

Junior Park Explorers: Friday 23 June. This is our new date as we had to postpone earlier in the term due to the weather. 

Matariki Evening and Kapa Haka Performance: Wednesday 21st June. We would like to celebrate with you and your whānau from 5pm onwards. 5pm welcome in the Hall, 5.20pm activities in Hubs, 6.20pm performance in the Hall by Year 3-6 children, and 6.45pm pre-ordered Hāngi available to collect. 

Fun Run:

On Friday, 2nd of June, we had 10 Koru children participate in a student council-organised Fun Run to raise money for Trees for Canterbury. 'We Love Challenge!' Awesome effort everyone!






Learning Through Play
During each school day, our tamariki are involved in Learning Through Play activities incorporating different social competencies, all while the children are engaged in play. Learning Through Play is all about our children choosing and directing their own play, and our job as teachers are to support, nurture and extend them through this journey. 
This can involve:
  • improving social skills, such as turn-taking, sharing, negotiating, and ensuring that things remain fair
  • being aware of; and the use of our school kete values in the classroom environment
  • learning how to work together with others and practise the skills needed to work collaboratively and to be a team player
  • noticing and commenting on how our tamariki are demonstrating the skills we focus on as our 'word of the week' eg. resilience, friendship, kindness, respect, co-operation, and inclusion.













Fun in our sandpit


Sorting shapes together

Working together to hold the hoop steady!

We Love Challenge

'We Get There Together'


Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
Elizabeth, Stacey, Georgia and Sonya


Koru Team News, Week 5

Posted on by

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

We are halfway through term 2, and oh what fun we are having!

We welcome Thomas and Ryland, who began school this week. You have settled really well into our routines, and have done a great job at making friends, following instructions and trying new things. Ka pai, tamariki!

Cross Country:
On Tuesday, May 16th, we had our Junior School Cross Country. It was an awesome event where we saw our tamariki trying their best, giving it a go, and smiling faces when they crossed the finish line! They were superstars at demonstrating our school kete value "We Love Challenge". Below are some photos of the day, and during our practises.








Friday Afternoons with Kauri Buddies:
On Friday afternoons, we do a wide range of activities including Digitech, Yoga, outside play, making creations at the table in the kitchen space, and sometimes completing puzzles.  We are also fortunate on a Friday afternoon to have some Year 7 and 8 students come in and be our big buddies. We do lot of different activities with them, such as: reading books together, playing inside games, doing art, completing puzzles, and playing games outside. It is such a fun time! Some photos below of what we get up to:

Yoga!

Digitech - practising our coding!

Outside play!

Listening to an awesome story!


A few reminders:

Library:
Our Library day this year is on a Friday. Please support your child in ensuring their Library folders and Poetry books are brought back to school either on Friday, or beforehand so they can receive a new poem and can issue out new Library books. 

Literacy Folders:
A reminder to practise reading the sounds, heart words, and books (if your child has been given one) at home, and to bring these in every day so we can use them in our Literacy sessions. 

Carpark: 
To keep everyone safe when arriving and leaving school, do not walk through the carpark. This area is for staff cars, taxis and accessibility parking only. Thanks to everyone who is using the pedestrian gates onto the park, near the flagpole, on Sandwich Road by the PTA uniform room, or onto Eastern Terrace.

Sickness at school: 
We still have a few cases of Covid-19 in the school, among staff, students and the wider whānau. Please do keep children away if they are feeling unwell and do test if Covid symptoms are present. At school, we remind tamariki to cough/sneeze into their elbow and wash their hands regularly, especially after blowing their nose, coughing, sneezing and using the toilet.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend, and we will see you back on Monday!

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
Elizabeth, Stacey, Georgia and Sonya

Koru Team news, Term 2 Week 3

Posted on by

Kia ora, e te whānau,

Koru Team: 

This year Elizabeth and Stacey are co-Team Leaders for the Koru team. We currently have two home groups, Elizabeth and Stacey share a home group and Georgia is the teacher of the other home group. You will see Elizabeth at school; Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. You will see Stacey at school; Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Sonya is the Teaching Assistant for our Koru team. You also might see Megan and Nicola teaching in Koru too.

Elizabeth              Stacey               Georgia

Sonya                Megan               Nicola

Postponement of events: 
Our tamariki have been putting so much effort into our Cross Country training and we know how much they were looking forward to showing us their dance moves at the Disco. Unfortunately, these events were postponed due to the weather and sickness at school. We will update you on new dates for our Junior Park Explorers trip and Disco as soon as we have them.  
We do know that the new Cross Country date is next Tuesday, 16th May, from 2 - 2:50pm.

Cross Country training

Nau mai te wero! We Love Challenge!

Carpark: 
To keep everyone safe when arriving and leaving school, do not walk through the carpark. This area is for staff cars, taxis and accessibility parking only. Thanks to everyone who is using the pedestrian gates onto the park, near the flagpole, on Sandwich Road by the PTA uniform room, or onto Eastern Terrace.

Sickness at school: 
We do have a few cases of Covid-19 in the school again, among staff, students and the wider whānau. We also seem to have had a number of children with tummy bugs. Please do keep children away if they are feeling unwell and do test if Covid symptoms are present. At school, we remind tamariki to cough/sneeze into their elbow and wash their hands regularly, especially after blowing their nose, coughing, sneezing and using the toilet.

Coronation tree planting: 
We have been invited by the Christchurch City Council to plant a commemorative Coronation Tree to mark the Coronation of King Charles III. We have received a kōwhai tree, which was planted by the junior playground with the help from the oldest and youngest child at Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto. You did a fabulous job planting the tree Sylvia!





House Groups: 
Our Koru children have all been allocated a 'House' to belong to: Fisher, Heathcote, Tennyson and Waimea. Children from the same family/whānau are put into the same house. Each house has its own 'chant' and tamariki learn this so they can participate in the house chant at sports and special events, and in Celebration Assemblies, it is their house that has won the House Points for that fortnight. You can find the House Chants here, and there are also videos that you can share with your child to help them learn their house chant. Mā tātou katoa te waka e hoe! We Get There Together!


Heathcote, Fisher, Waimea and Tennyson

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
Elizabeth, Stacey, Georgia and Sonya








Koru team news, start of Term 2

Posted on by

 Kia ora, e te whānau,

We hope you are all happy and healthy and had a lovely holiday break! It was such a treat to see all of those wide and happy smiles back at school this week. We would like to give an especially warm welcome to William, Eddie, Reinhold, Sylvia and Henri, who have all started school this week. What a wonderful job they are all doing settling in!

All of our tamariki have happily returned to the routines of school, and are enthusiastically embracing their learning. They have been doing a wonderful job in their Literacy and Maths lessons, and are putting lots of energy and enthusiasm into their Learning Through Play.

A reminder about routines:

  • It's great if your child is able to independently carry their own bag into school, unpack it and put their lunch and drink bottle on the shelves
  • Your child's Literacy folder needs to be returned to school every day, and put into their group Literacy box first thing each morning (children who were at school in Term 1 will already know which container is their group's container; new children will be helped with this by one of the teachers)
  • On Fridays, your child will bring home both their poetry book and their library folder. Both these items need to be returned to school by the following Friday
  • We ask that caregivers avoid bringing children in to school through the staff carpark, rather, if entering off Sandwich Road, please come in up near the flagpole or in through the gate down near the corner.
Friendship List
  • If you would like your name and contact details to be added to our Koru Team Friendship List, please email Georgia your information by Wednesday, May 10th, and Georgia will update the list and share it on the Friday of that week
  • Here is Georgia's email address: georgia.mckenna@beckenham.school.nz
  • If your name is already on the list, please don't worry about contacting Georgia again.
Exciting Koru Team outing:
We trust that you have all received our Hero message pertaining to the outing which we have coming up on Thursday, May 11th.
Just in case any of you haven't been able to access this information, here is a copy of the content of the message:

We have a very exciting outing planned for our tamariki! 

The Christchurch City Council Education Outreach team is booked in to run their Junior Park Explorers programme with our Koru students, at our local Beckenham ponds. The session will address outcomes within the New Zealand Curriculum Science domain. We will be exploring biodiversity & ecosystems in our local area, and will be looking closely at birds, bugs and trees/plant life. 

Children will need to bring the following items: 
  • Gumboots (especially if wet)
  • Rain coat
  • Named water bottle
  • Shoes, spare socks and change of clothes (in school bag)
The programme will take place on Thursday, May 11th and will run from 9:30 - 11:45 a.m.

We will need 10 parent helpers on the day. If you are interested in helping, please email your child’s homegroup teacher, as soon as possible.  

Many thanks for your support.

Thank you very much to those caregivers who have already emailed us letting us know that they would like to help. We will be making contact with all those who offer to help, with more information, closer to the time.

In the meantime, we do trust that you all have a very restful and happy weekend.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
The Koru Teachers: Elizabeth, Georgia, Stacey and Sonya


Koru Team news, to the end of Term 1

Posted on by

 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:

These videos will help you with understanding what our literacy stages involve and what you can be doing at home to support your child.

We also thought we'd include some links to fun Maths at Home activities and ideas. These links come from the Families and Whānau section of the NZMaths website:
...and now for our photo gallery, which includes images from our scone-making, building towers, showing persistence, outdoor fun, balance and physical challenges, art and craft activities and so much more!

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...















What a wonderful line up of photos of our wee ones! As we've said, their learning across all areas (including social and emotional) has been nothing short of incredible throughout Term 1. Very well done, tamariki :)

For now, we hope you continue to enjoy the school holidays, and we look forward to seeing all of those beautiful, wide smiles at the start of Term 2, on Wednesday, April 26th.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
Elizabeth, Stacey, Georgia, Nicola and Sonya