Kia ora whānau, 

Here's out final update for the term. We have had a fantastic and busy term with our tamariki. The students have been so engaged in our coding and chemistry lessons this term. 

Four Square Festival 

This week some of our students planned and organised a Four Square Festival.  Well done to Eadie, Isla, Toby and Nikoda for their amazing leadership and enthusiasm. A huge thank you to Sue and Jo for helping facilitate this. 

Here are some photos of the festival. 

Pokemon Cards

Please keep Pokemon cards at home. The students are not allowed to play with these during school time. Students have been trading these cards, and can become upset when they realise they may not get that card back. Thank you for your help. 

Next Term 

We are changing out home group spaces next term. We moved to these spaces on Friday. 

Here is where the new homegroup spaces are in our hub:

Nick - Pathway

Meagan - Atrium

Quynh - Nook 

Rowe - Breakout space

Laura - Theatre

Gymnastics 

Kōwhai will be starting a Gymnastics unit and we will be visiting the Christchurch school of Gymnastics in Week 5 and 6. More information about this will come out at the start of Term 3.

We hope you have a lovely holiday and come back to school well rested on Monday the 26th of July. 

Ngā mihi, 

The Kōwhai Team - Laura, Rowe, Nick, Meagan and Quynh 

Kia ora whānau, 

This term has certainly flown by! The last few weeks have been full of many great experiences for our tamariki. 

Hillcrest Cross Country

Georgie took some of our keen runners to the Hillcrest Cross Country on Friday. She shared that she was so impressed with our tamariki and they way they displayed our school values throughout the event. Ka pai to everyone who participated! 

Well done to the following students who came in the top five of their year group: 

Laura Stoney - 1st Year 3 girls

Bianca Ashworth - 4th Year 4 girls

Ben Stoney - 5th Year 3 boys

Matariki

We have been learning about and celebrating Matariki in a variety of ways over the last two weeks such as art, weaving, singing and dancing. Our children have impressed us with their knowledge about Matariki.

Maths

Fun Run

We are really proud of the students who chose to run in the fun run to raise money for Kids Can today.

Discovery

Here are some photos from Learning through Play and Kapa Haka over the last few weeks. 

Have a lovely weekend! 

The Kōwhai Team - Laura, Quynh, Meagan, Nick and Rowe

 Kia ora Kōwhai whānau, 

We hope you all had a lovely long weekend last week. The teachers had a very productive staff only day on Tuesday, learning about many different things. This week the students have been learning more about Changes during our science lessons. They have also been exploring how to code during inquiry as well. We have some future master coders in our hub! 

Literacy Classes

With our structured literacy approach the teachers are constantly monitoring and checking students understanding of letters and sounds. Throughout the year, as we look at where the students are at in their learning, we may reshuffle of our literacy groups to best meet student needs. Your child may not necessarily bring a reader or journal home each night. On these nights, they can choose a book from home to read. 

Small containers

If you are a family that uses My Food Bag or something similar and have many of those little sauce containers around, we would love to have these in the hub. These are great for some of our science experiments and storing paint (with the lids on). If you have any spare please send them in! 

Four Square 

Some of our students have recently started playing four square during Discovery and play breaks. We are still learning the rules, and how to manage ourselves when playing. 

We are focusing on the following:

Kia ora whānau,

 As part of our science inquiry we have been investigating chemical changes. Below are some photos of our " Moving Milk " experiment and the reactions of our little scientists in action.  The children were asked to predict what they thought would happen. They conducted the experiment and made ongoing observations. 

In our technology inquiry we have been learning about creating algorithms and debugging them. 

During literacy some of our tamariki read an article about GAP (Greyhounds as Pets) which is an organisation that finds homes for ex-racing greyhounds. We then had a very special visit from Frida's greyhound Millou! 

In Te Reo lessons we have been researching and writing our pepeha to share our cultural backgrounds. 

 

Have a lovely weekend!

Laura, Rowe, Nick, Meagan, Quynh 

Kia ora whānau, 

We have had a lovely start to our term. On Tuesday the students all took part in our school Cross Country. It was so awesome to see so many people trying their best, and cheering people on from the sidelines as well! The students definitely showed our school value Nau Mai te Wero - We Love Challenge!  

 New Team Members

This term we have welcomed our two lovely new teaching assistants,  Sonya and Charmaine  into the Kōwhai hub. They have already become a wonderful part of the Kōwhai whanau. 

Kapa Haka

We have started our Kapa Haka classes for this term. We are going to be focusing on the students pepeha for the beginning of the term. Pepeha are a way of introducing ourselves by identifying with geographical features such as rivers and mountains, as well as parts of our history. It would be very helpful if you could assist your child with researching theirs where needed. Your child will bring home some information for you to help them fill in, so they can complete this. Please help us by sending this information back with your child. 

Term 2 Inquiry topic

Our inquiry topic this term is split into two areas in which we are exploring the idea of Change. These are Kitchen Chemistry and Coding. We are looking forward to exploring both of these areas across the term. 

If you child has some wired headphones they could use when using technology, please name these and send them in. They will stay in their tote trays. 

Reminder

Just a quick reminder that school will be closed next Friday the 21st of May for a Staff only day. 

Discovery

Here are some pictures of the fantastic learning through play that our students have been doing during our Discovery time. This play involves learning robotics, practicing oral language with headbands, life drawing of the hub fish, creating new different species of dinosaur and many more other activities. 

Have a lovely weekend! 

Ngā mihi nui, 

The Kōwhai Team - Laura, Nick, Quynh, Meagan and Rowe.