30th April 2019 



Dear Parents/Caregivers

Swimming at Aqua Gym

We are really looking forward to the swimming lessons at Aqua Gym that start  Monday 13th May.

Please make sure that your child has a separate named swimming bag to keep all their swimming belongings in. Over the weekend, we would appreciate you taking the time to check your child’s uniform, towel, togs, swimming cap and bags are all clearly named. As you can appreciate, it would be quite challenging to find the owners of unnamed clothing when taking 97 children swimming. 

Reminder: Aqua Gym requires ALL children to wear a swimming cap for their lessons and the children will be required to wear a suitable swimming  costume: either shorts or togs. Please no bikinis. If you have any spare swimming caps that you are happy to loan us, please send them to school on Monday for us to use for any students that don’t have a cap.

We recommend you packing a few extra items in their lunch box too as they will no doubt have a greater appetite when swimming everyday.

Thank you to the wonderful parents who have kindly offered to help us at the pool. 

For parent helpers:
Thank you so much for offering to be a parent helper. Here is the timetable for the week.

Expectations of parent helpers:

Please be at school by 8.50am to leave on the bus at 9am for the first group of swimmers. If you are unable to parent help on your given day, can you please email Kate or Rowe as soon as possible so we can organise another parent helper.

Your role is to be an extra pair of hands to help supervise children on the bus and at the pool. As a parent helper, you will be helping out at the pool until the last group of swimmers has finished which is 12pm.

At the pool during changing times, please check that all children have their belongings in their swim bag and they will need to bring these out from the changing rooms and put them  into the cubbies by the pool.
Please could you assist children with putting on swim caps before their lesson.
At the end of the swimming lesson, the children will change independently and we would love for you to help the children put on shoes and socks and check the changing rooms are clear of belongings.`








Have a wonderful week ahead
Kind regards

Kowhai Teaching Team
Paulette, Nick, Kate and Rowe

Welcome back, everyone!

We are really looking forward to seeing the children on Monday and hearing all about their amazing adventures over the past two weeks.

This term we welcome Dorinda to our teaching team. She is super excited to be working full time with our tamariki and we are so pleased to have her incredible talents at our disposal! Our home groups are all beginning in new spaces this term so the children and teachers have an appreciation of the areas in our learning space.
Kate- The Breakout Room
Rowe-Nook
Nick-Gallery
Dorinda- Atrium

What's on this term?

This term we will be learning about inventions and what it means to be innovative. We have some really cool learning experiences for the children to explore these ideas and we will also integrate this into our Literacy programme.

Reading

This term, children reading Level 20 and below will continue to have a guided reading session every day with their teacher and will take home a browsing book for reading fluency each night.

Children reading above Level 20, will be asked to have a chapter book that they can comfortably read and for enjoyment. If your child is reading a chapter book at home, please send this to school on Monday in their book bag. Each day after morning tea, the children will DROP and READ for 15minutes. This will also be the book they will read at home at night for 15-20 minutes.
We would encourage you to discuss what your child had read to you to ensure they understand any new vocabulary and to monitor they are comprehending what they are reading. Continuing to read to your child is invaluable!

School Photos

Apologies, in the madness of packing up the hub in preparation for getting the carpets cleaned, the school photos didn't get sent home. These will come home with your child on MONDAY and will be found in their book folder. Please make sure your child has their book folder at school.

Swimming

THANK-YOU to all the wonderful parents who have kindly offered their support at our swimming lessons. Rowe and Kate are taking over the organisation of this and will be in touch to confirm the days that you are needed. We only need one more parent for Wednesday 22nd May. If you can help, please fill in this form.

XCountry

We have our school cross country on Monday 6th May. Our start times are at approximately Year 3- 2.15pm and Year 4 - 2.20pm. We do need the help of some parents on the day to be course marshalls. If you are able to help us, please fill in this google form ASAP so we can ensure the safety of the children on the day. On Monday, we will walk the children around the course so they know where to go.  Here is the map of the route they will run for your reference.

• Start at the cricket pavilion facing school
• Run towards school
• Turn right to run parallel alongside school
• Turn right to run away from school running in front of the tennis courts
• Turn right to run along the back fence behind the row of trees.
• Turn right to join the gravel path that runs in front of the cricket pavilion.
• Stay on the gravel path and follow it along the ponds and back up to the school for a second lap of the park.
• Turn right and run behind the tennis courts.
• Turn right to run along the back fence behind the row of trees.
• Turn right to join the gravel path that runs in front of the cricket pavilion.
• Turn right, guided by the cones into the finishing shoot.
• After crossing the finish line stay in order and line up at your year group’s

Here is the latest updatete from our team

Supplies Wanted
We are on the hunt for some wooden pallets, old car tyres and house paint for our inquiry projects next week. Please email your home group teacher if you can help source some of these supplies.

Choir Performing
Dorinda has been working with a wonderful group of students who have been keen to create a Kōwhai Team Choir. Next Friday 12th April, theya re going to perform 2 songs at the school celebration assembly. If your child is in the choir, feel free to pop along. The assembly begins at 12.10pm. We will envevour to record the item and put in on the blog for those of you who are unabel to make it due to work committments.

Art Attack
Over the past few weeks, the children have opted into a variety of art workshops that they were interested in. It has been great to see their creativity flourish as they create unique pieces of art. We gave the children the options of paiper mache, digital art, totem poles and printmaking. Here are some pictures of the children at work.





Passions
The Green Group have had a fantastic few weeks weeding out the garden beds behind our hub, planting seeds and seedlings. Also last Friday we made porridge from scratch!

Cross Country
We are currently training for the school cross country. Each day we are working on improving our own performance by running for longer distances or running with a more positive attitude. Each day we record our efforts with the aim to be stopping less in each run and running further over time as we build our fitness up. The school cross country will be on Monday 6th May. We will send out our starting times once they have been confirmed along with the cross country route.

Swimming Lessons
Next term, as part of our annual swimming programme, we have been booked in for 9 swimming lessons at Aqua Gym. Each child will receive a 30-minute lesson in small groups. We will be travelling to and from the pools via bus and will be seeking parent help to support us without swimming programme. More detailed information will come out next week once prices have been confirmed. We noticed a huge improvement in the children's ability to swim last year due to the high-quality instruction and from having an intensive focus on swimming.

Leadership Roles
We like to grow the leadership skills of our tamariki. This term we have had some children being leaders in the Treemendous area at lunchtime and we have also established some learning buddies in our hub to help grow some of our spelling skills.


Art Gallery Trip
We had an amazing time last week when we visited the Christchurch Art Gallery. The children had a great time exploring Julia Morrison's 'Head Space' art installation. We were very impressed with the different heads that she had created. Susie, the Art Gallery teacher, took us all for a lesson where we worked with clay to create our own head. It was wonderful to see the children really exercising their creativity and demonstrating our school values, 'We care' 'We love learning' and 'We love challenge'. A HUGE thank you goes out to our incredible parent helpers who assisted us on this outing. We couldn't have gone without your assistance! Here  are some examples of what the children created.





That's all for now!
Kōwhai Teaching Team


Up and Coming Events

Term 2
Cross Country- Monday 6th May
Swimming lessons- 13th May-24th May (Aqua Gym)