Kōwhai News Term 3 Week 2

Kia ora whānau,

We have had a great start to Term 3. The children (and teachers) have all come back refreshed and excited for the term.

We are continuing to have one of our teachers at the flagpole in the morning to greet students and parents as well as teachers being in the hub in the mornings. Teachers have meetings 3-4 days a week which start at 3:15. If you do need to share information or catch up with your child's teacher for a meeting then please email them to arrange a time. 


In Class Music 
This term we are starting our music teaching for the year. Nick and Rowe's class will be taking ukulele lessons on a Tuesday afternoon  with Roger and Laura and Tracey's will be taking recorder lessons with Josie. We will swap these around in Week 7 of this term and continue till the middle of Term 4. We are making sure the recorders are cleaned in a hot dishwasher after each session.

If your child would like to bring their own recorder, then you can find these for about $13-$15 dollars from the music store Rockshop, or you could have a look at The Warehouse as well.
If you do choose to bring your own recorder in, please make sure it is clearly named.

We will not bring in our own ukulele as these need to be individually tuned each week by our ukulele teacher Roger.

Reading
We have such fabulous readers in Kōwhai! Please help remind your child to bring in their reading folder every day, and write in their reading log all the books they read. We have some children who are up to 50 books already which is amazing. Your child can choose to bring their own book to school to read during our independent reading times if they would like. 

We are also still looking for some parents to help us with reading with students and putting books away so please contact Laura laura.williamson@beckenham.school.nz if you would like to do this. 

Readathon
This Friday your child/children will be bringing home their Readathon card. The final return date for this is 21st August, NOT 14th August. Apologies for this error. 
Thank you for you support of this important event. 

Headphones
A reminder that if your child would like to bring in their own headphones then please do. They will need to be named and it will be the students responsibility to look after them. 

Hillview Cross Country
During Level 3 the decision was made that our school was not going to attend the Hillview Cross Country inter-school event this year. We have now been informed that they are going ahead with the event on the 4th of August. Our tamariki will not be attending, but if you would like your child to take attend as an individual then please contact your class teacher and they will pass the relevant information they have onto you. You will need to make your own arrangements if you decide to attend. 

Maths Focus 
We have been focusing on addition and subtraction recently in our Mathematics learning. Below are some examples of how students may solve these problems. To solve these problems children need a good base knowledge of basic facts i.e adding to 10. Please continue to practice basic facts at home to support this. 




Discovery Learning 
This week we have introduced woodwork and gardening into our Discovery Learning. The children have enjoyed learning how to make their own watering can and how to use the woodwork tools in a safe way. 








Have a great weekend! 
The Kōwhai Team - Laura, Nick, Tracey and Rowe




Kowhai News Term 2 Week 11

Kia ora Kōwhai whānau,

We have had a busy week in Kōwhai this week. The students  have all been working very hard on our information reports about various different topics. We have also started learning more about Matariki during our Inquiry time and Kapa Haka.

The Rainbow School Disco 
We have our school Disco on Friday. Year 3 students can choose whether they attend the 4:30-5:30 disco or the 6-7pm disco. They cannot attend both discos. Year 4 students will attend the 6-7pm disco. We look forward to seeing everyone in their rainbow clothes.

Learning Conferences -  Tuesday 30th June  and Thursday 2nd July (next week)
Please remember that school finishes at 2pm on these days. We look forward to seeing you there.

Headphones
A reminder that your child is able to bring headphones in to use with a device during our learning times. Please make sure they are named. They will live in their tote tray and are the students responsibility to look after.

Parents Volunteers
If anyone would like to volunteer to help the teachers with reading to students or putting reading books away, please email Laura - laura.williamson@beckenham.school.nz

Discovery Time
Hatsumi and Elsie have created a "Rock Hunt" which they are going to advertise to the students next week and see who can find their rocks around the school.


We had great fun at our Pyjama and PTA breakfast day last Friday.





We hope you have a great weekend!
From the Kōwhai Team
Rowe, Tracey, Nick and Laura 

Kōwhai News Term 2 Week 9

Kia ora whānau,

We are now nicely settled back into our routines in the Kōwhai hub. This week we have been enjoying creating our Miro inspired sculptures, reflecting on them and getting ready to show them to you at our learning snapshots.

During Discovery this week, we have seen many children start to learn some new skills with Pip as they learn how to make vegetable soup. This included cutting vegetables up, learning how to prepare for cooking and cleaning up after we have completed our cooking. These are great self-management skills for the children to learn and bring home!





The children have also been taking the opportunity to take part in a variety of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) activities. These have included using Lego to create their own rainbows and using paper folding skills to create boats and see how long/far the boat will float for.



There have been many other creative activities being completed during Discovery as usual as well.



Cross Country Update
Now that we are at Level, 1 we are happy to announce that some children will be taking part in the school Cross Country event next Tuesday, the 16th of June. This year for Kōwhai is an optional event. The children chose whether they wanted to sign up and have been training throughout the week. The details of when the Cross Country are as follows:

When: Tuesday 16th June
Time: 2:30 for Kōwhai kids
Course: Two laps around the field and by the ponds. 

Please ask your child if they have signed up. If they have, please help with their training by reminding them to wear their sneakers/trainers, rather than school shoes or boots to school.
We look forward to seeing you there!

Headphones in the Hub
We have a limited number of headphones in the hub. Theses are in high demand, especially during our reading rotations when many devices are used. If your child would like to bring their own set of headphones in to use with our devices, then please do. They will be kept in their tray and will need to be named. We recommend that they have a case or named bag to keep these in. It will be the children's responsibility to look after their headphones and take care of them.

Parents Volunteers for Reading
We are looking for some parents to volunteer to help with reading with students during the day and putting reading books away. Putting reading books away can be done before school, during school or after school. If you would like to help out, please email Laura: laura.williamson@beckenham.school.nz

We look forward to catching up with you over the few weeks.

Ngā mihi,
The Kōwhai Team
Nick, Rowe, Tracey and Laura

Kōwhai Term 2 Week 7 News

Kia ora whānau,

What a lovely few weeks we have had settling back into our routines in the Kōwhai hub. Both the teachers and the students were very excited to be back.

We have seen lots of examples of "We Love Learning"  and "We Love Challenge" during Discovery time this week.






Some of the students also showed our "We Get There Together" value by helping to protect the plants in the new playground with Pip, Rowe and Paulette.










Just before lock down your child would have brought home their small booklet with login details for websites etc. Please make sure that this is sent back into school, as the students will be continuing to use these to log in during our learning times.

An update to the community calendar: at this stage we are not having a whole school cross country event happening this term. We will keep you updated with whether a smaller event may happen at a later date.

Next week we will be starting to create some sculptures in the style of Joan Miró. We have all sorts of things for the children to use to create their sculpture already in the hub. Your child may choose to bring some other bits in to help their plan and ideas come to life. The children will need to have a shoe box or something of a similar size to keep the parts of their sculptures safe. Please help remind your child to bring this in.

Your child will have started to bring home their reading books again this week. They may not have a reader every day, and on those days they can choose to read a book of their own choice. If your child is reading chapter books, they can continue reading these at home for reading every night. Each student has a list of essential words that are stuck in the front of their home learning book. These are to help them practise their spelling. The children can also use Studyladder and Nick's basic facts website to help practise their math skills at home. Please ensure your children bring their reading folder back into school daily. If the children do not have a reading folder, a reading book will not be able to be sent home.

This week our Kete Certificates have been awarded for:

Congratulations to Matthew Welch, Lukas O'Connor, Georgia Shaw and Aloise Armstrong-Gallot. Keep up the good work!

We hope you have a lovely long weekend!

The Kōwhai Team
Rowe, Nick, Tracey and Laura




Kowhai update Week 5 Term 2

Kia ora whānau,

We are very excited to see you on Monday. The teachers have been busy at work for the last two days preparing our hub for you to come in, making sure it is nice and clean for us all.

If you haven't had a chance to look at the video with some information about coming back, watch it now - it has lots of important things for you to remember. You may want to make it full screen to see it best.


Parents: here is a video with information for you about pick up and drop off. 



Some things to note for coming back to school:

 Drink bottles - The students will need to bring their drink bottles in each day and take them home at the end of the day. Please make sure these are named clearly with a permanent marker. The drinking fountains are all closed. If your child does not bring their drink bottle in, you will get a phone call from Jacky requesting you bring a drink bottle in. 

Skateboards - your child can ride a skateboard to school but it needs to be put in the bike and scooter area on Sandwich Road. It will be locked away throughout the day. 

Sanitiser - your children will be sanitising their hands every time they enter a space and exit a space. If your child has skin allergies and cannot use sanitiser, please contact your child's homeroom teacher and they can discuss this with you. 

Borrowed Chromebooks - if you borrowed a Chromebook,  please return it on Monday to the library verandah. Someone will be there to collect it.

That's all for now! 

Have a lovely weekend and we cannot wait to see you on Monday.

The Kōwhai Team
Nick, Rowe, Tracey and Laura