Kia ora e te whanau,

What a wonderful start the children have made back to school for this last term of the school year. All children have settled beautifully and are thoroughly engaged in their learning.

Here are just a few of the areas that we have been focusing on over the past three weeks in our Learning Through Play:

• the circus (juggling and stilt walking)...just look at these examples of We Love Challenge!

A budding juggler...

Wow! She's up - well done!

... and on her way down!

What great persisitence is being shown here. Both up!

Keep trying.

You can do it!

Good job!

We Get There Together.

Team work.

Another wonderful example of persistence winning the day!

• the archaeological dig and museum artefacts

The tooth of which dinosaur, we wonder?

Could this be the tooth of an ichthyosaurus? We think so.

The archaeological dig, in progress.

Artefacts for the museum.

The digging continues...

Budding archaeologists at work.

• the helicopter game

• playing schools

Teamwork!

Creating a little pony game.

Small World play.

What a cosy hut!

Water play.

Could this be a chocolate cake?

Kia ora e te whanau,

Wow! We are at the end of Term 3. What a busy term it has been, full of fun and learning.

If you are intending to have a wee clean out or declutter over the holidays please keep us in mind. We are on the look out for many treasures that will support our Learning Through Play.

For example:

• Mud kitchen supplies - old saucepans, utensils, cake tins, chopping boards
• Sandpit toys - buckets, spades, watering cans, pipes of any dimension and length, planks of wood 
• Plastic backed picnic blankets
• Toy cars, baby clothes, driftwood, shells, craft items, wrapping paper, wool, small pop up tent etc

Calendar Art

Our tamariki showed great creativity in their calendar art pieces. They deserve to be very proud of their efforts. 

A reminder from the PTA that orders close Monday 28th September.

Last Day Of Term

Today we spent time Learning Through Play in Treemendous, which we followed up with lunch together. A lovely way to end the term.

Holidays

We wish all the tamariki and their families a safe and restful time over the holiday break. A reminder that school starts back on Tuesday 13 October. 

Ngā mihi nui,

Elizabeth, Stacey, Sophie, Sari and Jo

 Kia ora e te whanau,

Using these images, the children were asked to relate the relevant ideas below to the school values which were being displayed.

The children brainstormed these ideas about their Learning Through Play.

Learning Through Play:

For our topic this week, we have been looking at restaurants, eating out and cooking. During Learning Through Play, we have been amazed by how creative the children have been, building restaurants, 'creating' food, designing menus and taking our orders in their cafes and eateries. We will continue with this theme during this coming week, and our focus will be working as teams to create shops and restaurants, and to problem solve the variety of challenges that can arise as the children play together.

We Care

We Get There Together

We Love Learning

We Love Challenge and We Get There Together

We Get There Together

Wacky Hair Day:

We had so much fun admiring the wacky hairdos that arrived at school on Friday. What impressive effort and creativity families put in that Friday morning - we suspect that many of you were up well before the crack of dawn, judging by the impressive results that walked through the gate, between 8:30 and 8:55! Thank you to all of those who supported the child cancer society and donated a gold coin for this wonderful cause.

Wellbeing and Friendship:

We have been having a big focus on continuing to build and develop friendships in Koru. This week we introduced an activity, whereby the children needed to work together to solve a problem. Using their index fingers only, they had to solve how they could pick up and carry an object. It was great to see the children working together in pairs, communicating, problem-solving, and taking on a challenge, while at the same time having fun.

Some of the objects the children tried picking up were:

• A pen
• A glue-stick
• An eraser
• A thick book
• A block
• A soft toy

All children displayed our kete values of We Get There Together and We Love a Challenge, as they participated with their buddies to successfully pick up each item.

Tricky! How did they manage that?

Talent Quest Auditions:

The teachers in Koru had the pleasure of auditioning the children for our Talent Show, which is going to be held on the last day of school for this term (25th of September). We were delighted to see how confident and talented our Year 0 and 1 children are. As always, it is so difficult to make a choice as we would obviously love to send all children who entered through to the finals, however we are delighted to let you know that Moana, Vienna and Joseph will be going on to the finals at the end of this term. 

Kete Awards:

As we are unable to hold our assemblies at level 2, the Koru team held a hui in Pūkaki on Friday, August 28th. Congratulations to the children below who received kete awards. We are incredibly proud of how you uphold the Beckenham te Kura o Pūroto values.

Peter Rabbit:

It was with enormous sadness that we have had to farewell Peter Rabbit, who has been a faithful and loyal friend to hundreds of children at Beckenham te Kura over the past 9 years. Peter has been cuddled and loved by children, read to, played with, taken out to the park for time on the grass, and has helped children who have been feeling sad or upset by simply allowing them to hold him, and most children at Beckenham will know him really well. Something that Peter did incredibly well was to help children who were having trouble saying goodbye to their families at the start of the school day - Peter was worth way more than his weight in gold.

Peter Rabbit died of old age last week. In human years, he would have been about 85. He will be greatly missed, and remembered by all with enormous fondness.

Peter, aged nearly 9 years.

Have a lovely week, everyone. We look forward to another wonderful week of learning with the wee ones!

Ngā mihi mahana,

Jo, Sari, Stacey, Sophie and Elizabeth

 Kia ora e te whanau,

What fun we have had learning about Vehicles over the past couple of weeks. We learnt that there are all sorts of vehicles that have various jobs and help us in so many ways.

Flight - make a paper plane and run test flights. What makes it go the greatest distance? Up high? Faster? What is the best way of throwing it?

What are the names of these vehicles? What can we learn about each one from a transport book?

Vehicles that operate near or in water. This play then led on to what happens if you mix chalk and water - chalk paint was the unanimous decision. 

Writing - for our writing we designed our own vehicles and explained how they work. 

During Learning Through Play, a group experimented with flooding a river in the sandpit. They also looked at the best angles and the way gravity works to make water flow down a pipe into the river.

Building a campfire to heat water to make delicious Hot Chocolates. 

Learning how to play Barbed Wire (tag game).

Some maths groups have been working on showing what they know about doubles this week.

This week we start looking at the concept of Winter. We wonder what great ideas will be had.

At home, you might like to have a go at making ice. You could even put some animals or cars in the water before freezing. Once it is frozen, you could chip away at the ice outside or take the ice into the bath and watch what happens in warm water. 

On a frosty morning, you might like to go out and 'crunch' the grass, or feel how cold the frost is. You might like to think of describing words for frost or the cold.