Kia ora, e te whanau,

What a lovely first week back at school following the holidays, this despite some very inclement weather! The children have loved reconnecting with teachers and friends. We warmly welcome our new children and their whānau: Kura, Theo, Ciaran, Arlo, Jessica and Mia Rose. It's wonderful to have you all at school with us, and well done to all for settling so beautifully into school life. 

A very warm welcome also to our new children, and their whanau, who joined us towards the end of last term - Julia, Amani, Beau, Sailor, and Harriet. It is so lovely to have these children in the hub with us as well. They too have all settled in beautifully and our 'golden oldies' have been wonderful in making everyone feel very welcome.

It became apparent, and you will have read this in a recent Hero message from Sandy, that we have experienced a glitch in Hero which has meant that some of our communications have failed to reach you. We are therefore resending this Blog post, as it contains many gorgeous photos and lots of news about what the children were up to towards the end of last term.

Elizabeth and Nicola's home groups were lucky to be able to rebook their Junior Park Explorers outing to the ponds, after their initial trip was postponed. This visit took place in the second half of Term 2. Our educator, Pete, did a fabulous job of being both captivating and informative with our group. We learnt lots about our native birds, the role trees play in our ecosystem, and where bugs like to live.

We had to be really quiet on our bird search. When we spotted a bird we used this signal to point it out.
In this activity, we lay down, breathed in and scrunched our toes, then breathed out and relaxed our toes.

We are aware that in the Koru team we have a student with an all-nut allergy. Therefore we are asking that if nuts/nut-based products aren't necessary for your child's lunchbox, please consider not including them.

The team is also aware that some children have other dietary requirements and that their diet may need to be nut-based, so will need nut products to be included in their lunch box.

The teachers will continue to remind the children that at school we eat our own food rather than share with others, along with reminders about handwashing and putting food wrappings in lunch boxes to take home. These reminders will also include asking children to wash their hands after eating nuts, in order to remove any potential residue. 

 Kia ora, e te whanau,

Wow, can you believe we have just finished our second to last week of Term 2, and now only one more week until the holidays? I'm sure you are all looking forward to spending some relaxing days with your little ones at home.

A very warm welcome to our new children, and their whanau, who have joined us in the last few weeks - Julia, Amani, Beau, Sailor, and Harriet. It is so lovely to have them in the hub with us. They have all settled in beautifully and our 'golden oldies' have been wonderful in making them feel very welcome.

Elizabeth and Nicola's home groups were lucky to be able to rebook their Junior Park Explorers outing to the ponds, after their initial trip was postponed. Our educator, Pete, did a fabulous job of being both captivating and informative with our group. We learnt lots about our native birds, the role trees play in our ecosystem, and where bugs like to live.

We had to be really quiet on our bird search. When we spotted a bird we used this signal to point it out.
In this activity, we lay down, breathed in and scrunched our toes, then breathed out and relaxed our toes.

• During the week ahead, school will close at 2:00 p.m., both tomorrow, Monday, 4th and again on Wednesday, 6th July, for Learning Conferences. If you haven't yet booked your child's learning conference, it's not too late! Please click on this link to find a time that suits
• Please note that if your child started school this term, you will have had, or will be having (about 6 weeks after your child started school), a transition to school meeting with your child's Home Group teacher, in place of a Learning Conference.

We hope you have had a lovely relaxing weekend together. Keep warm, and we'll see all your little ones back tomorrow, for our final week of Term 2. 

Ngā mihi mahana, and take care,

Georgia, Elizabeth, Nicola, Stacey, and Jeanette

 Kia ora e te whanau,

We hope you are all happy and healthy, and settling into this approaching winter weather. It is so lovely to see all the wonderful smiling faces as our tamariki are dropped off each morning. We really appreciate the support you all give in the mornings with positive goodbyes, and with encouraging your child to independently carry and unpack their bags when they arrive at school each morning. 

Reminders:

Literacy Folders: Please remind your children to pack their small literacy folders back in their bags once they have finished practising their learning at home each afternoon/evening. We use the items (books and letter cards) sent home, in our small group sessions, so it is really important that these come back to school the following day to help assist with the children's learning. 

Sandwich Road Crossing: If you are crossing Sandwich Road to come into the school entrance, can you please make sure you and your tamariki cross at the pedestrian crossing. We have noticed that families are crossing near to the pedestrian crossing but not at the pedestrain crossing, which can be dangerous with cars pulling in and out due to drop offs and pick ups. We want everyone to stay safe and for children to develop safe habits on and near to roads.

School Car park: Just another friendly reminder for parents to bring their child into school via safe entry points, rather than through the staff carpark. As well as being a carpark, this is also a drop off and pick up zone for our Ferndale students, so vehicles are constantly coming in and out throughout the day. There are three safe ways you can enter the school grounds: the first is through the school gates by the flag pole; the second entrance is down by the Sandwich Road and Eastern Terrace corner, where there is a gate which will need to be opened by an adult; and the third is off Eastern Terrace at the bottom of the pathway leading up to the courtyard outside Hangere, where the gate will also need to be opened by an adult. We really do appreciate support with this, in order to keep everyone safe. 

Junior Park Explorers Outing:

Throughout this term, we have been planning for an outing that fitted in with our schoolwide focus for this year: Sustainability. Unfortunately, Elizabeth's and Nicola's home groups' outing last Monday had to be postponed due to inclement weather, but a new date has been organised. A new Hero post has been sent out with the new date of Thursday, June 9th and seeking more praent help. Fortunately, the weather was perfect for Georgia's home group to attend the outing and tamariki and kaiako all had an absolute blast!  

We had the privilege of having an educator from the Christchurch City Council, Celia, come in and talk to us about being park explorers, and adventuring and exploring the area around the Beckenham Ponds. We learnt and experienced many new things: different birds and the calls they make; going on a bird walk to listen and hear for different birdlife that surrounds the ponds; how birds help the process of pollination and its connection with seed dispersal; the different insects that could be living around the ponds and investigating and exploring to try to find these; and playing a game known as Tumble Tree Forest where our tamariki had to find a solution for what our birdlife and insects would do if we ran out of trees. 

We saw many different birds and insects, and had the most amazing time. We are so thankful for our parent helpers, Roberta, Richard, Julia and Harpreet, who dedicated their morning to come and help and be involved with the outing. We wouldn't have been able to do this without you! We also want to thank Celia, our educator, for teaching us all these new concepts and making us more aware of how important birdlife, insects and trees are to our lifestyles. Please enjoy looking at the photos of our amazing outing and we can't wait to share some more when both Elizabeth's and Nicola's home groups are able to go on this outing. 

Walking over all together ready for a great day

Walking together (part 2)

Listening eagerly to Celia and showing 5!

Celia teaching us about pūtangitangi - paradise ducks

Finding our bird buddies

Are you a kererū like me?

We're all pūtangitangi

A fun game of listening to bird calls and trying to find our parent bird

Not my bird parent, off I fly to search again...

Yay - we've found our bird parent!

We've found ours, too!

So have we! 

Looking around at the different birds at the ponds

Bird walking 

Talking about how pollination and seed dispersal works

Our friend Betty, the praying mantis, came to visit

Learning about the different bugs we might find, while exploring

I think we found something!

We found a bug on this leaf

I wonder what's in here?

Celia talked to us about decomposition and how our insects help make this happen

Look at our great costumes for the Tumble Tree Forest game

Our birds are ready to fly

Ladybugs and bumble bees

Look at those colourful wings and red and black spots

Flying around the forest

Uh, oh! Here comes a woodcutter, ready to chop down our home!

Back to safety we go!

Our final flight around Tumble Tree forest

Finishing off the session, talking about how our trees grow, and recapping what we have learnt today.

Once again, thank you so much to our parent helpers for helping to make this trip possible. As you can see, it was such a terrific learning experience for all our tamariki and even as teachers we learnt something new. We can't wait for Elizabeth and Nicola's home groups to get to experience this outing soon!

We also want to say a big thank you to Amy. Amy has been a student teacher in our Koru team for the past 7 weeks and has taught multiple groups across different curriculum areas. Amy has created such wonderful and positive connections and relationships with all our tamariki, and we are all so sad she is leaving us. She has been an amazing addition to our team and we are going to miss her immensely. We wish her all the best on her teaching journey and we can't wait to have her back and visiting again soon!

We hope you are all having a wonderful, safe and restful Queen's Birthday weekend. We cannot wait to see all the smiling faces back at school tomorrow, ready to experience lots of fun and exciting learning!

Ngā mihi mahana and take care,

Georgia, Elizabeth, Nicola, Stacey, and Jeanette

Kia ora, e te whanau,

We hope this finds you and your family all happy and healthy at home. We have had a busy first 3 weeks of Term 2 and all our newbies are settling in so well! We love seeing all their smiling faces at drop off time and enjoy seeing them cheerily say their goodbyes. We appreciate your support in helping your child become independent at carrying their own school bag and unpacking their bag when they arrive at school each morning.

Structured Literacy:

We have been enjoying hearing about all the practice children are involved in, with their Structured Literacy at home. Thank you so much for your support with this. It is making a huge difference with the children's progress through the Structured Literacy stages. Just a reminder that children who are just starting their Structured Literacy journey will be bringing home a few letter sounds to practise at home and these will be added to, as they progress. These can be used to practise the pure sounds the letters make and then can be blended together to form words. A word about 'heart words': these are words that cannot be sounded out, simply need to be learned 'by heart' and will also start coming home for children to practise reading and writing with you at home. 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. The ability to segment and blend sounds together is paramount to children's success at decoding words, so this stage of learning may take longer for some learners. It is very exciting to see the children's progress take off once they have accomplished this skill. The next step is for the learner to be able to write the sounds they hear in words and we do lots of practice with this within our lessons. This would be a great home learning activity once children are secure in the sounds they are bringing home.

Please make sure your child brings back their folder, with their sound pack and books inside, to school every day, as these are used in the Structured Literacy lessons. The sound packs are also added to as the children learn new sounds and heart words.

Kia ora, e te whanau,

We hope this finds you and your family all happy and healthy at home. We have had a busy first 3 weeks of Term 2 and all our newbies are settling in so well! We love seeing all their smiling faces at drop off time and enjoy seeing them cheerily say their goodbyes. We appreciate your support in helping your child become independent at carrying their own school bag and unpacking their bag when they arrive at school each morning.

Structured Literacy:

We have been enjoying hearing about all the practice children are involved in, with their Structured Literacy at home. Thank you so much for your support with this. It is making a huge difference with the children's progress through the Structured Literacy stages. Just a reminder that children who are just starting their Structured Literacy journey will be bringing home a few letter sounds to practise at home and these will be added to, as they progress. These can be used to practise the pure sounds the letters make and then can be blended together to form words. A word about 'heart words': these are words that cannot be sounded out, simply need to be learned 'by heart' and will also start coming home for children to practise reading and writing with you at home. 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. The ability to segment and blend sounds together is paramount to children's success at decoding words, so this stage of learning may take longer for some learners. It is very exciting to see the children's progress take off once they have accomplished this skill. The next step is for the learner to be able to write the sounds they hear in words and we do lots of practice with this within our lessons. This would be a great home learning activity once children are secure in the sounds they are bringing home.

Please make sure your child brings back their folder, with their sound pack and books inside, to school every day, as these are used in the Structured Literacy lessons. The sound packs are also added to as the children learn new sounds and heart words.