As part of our Keeping Ourselves Safe Unit, the Year 4 children are going to become chief babysitters for an egg! Yes an egg! The children will be responsible for the egg for up to four days and will have to take care of the egg at all times. The children can name their egg and create a bed or house for their egg. If the children want to leave their egg, they have to engage another person to egg-sit!

The aim of this activity is for the children to learn to look after themselves and others – a theme that comes through the KOS programme.

The children will hopefully get an appreciation of the hard work you do as parents!

This will be an egg-citing challenge, and an egg-ceptional week. I am looking forward to watching your children become responsible and egg-tremely great parents!

Thank-you for your co-operation!

We have a few important updates for you this week.

Kōwhai Team’s Wearable Arts Performance

Over the next couple of weeks, the children in Kōwhai team are exercising their creativity by creating a wearable art garment as part of our inquiry into innovation.

We would love to share this learning with you in a Wearable Arts Performance.
Date: Thursday 5th September
Where: School Hall
Time: 6:15pm-7pm

On the night, the children will need to meet in the Kōwhai Hub by 6:15pm to be ready to perform at 6.30pm.
Each home group will have time to share their garments on the stage. The evening will conclude with a Kōwhai choir performance.

We are sure this will be a fun and memorable evening for you all and hope to see you all there.

Trip to the School of Gymnastics

To conclude our gymnastic unit, we will be going on a trip to the Christchurch School of Gymnastics. This trip will provide the children with the opportunity to apply the gymnastics skills they have developed at school in a formal setting and under the supervision of professional gymnastics coaches. To cover the cost of the trip, a request for your contribution of $7.00 will be added to your term account. The P.T.A. have kindly funded the cost of the buses for this trip.


Nick and Kate's home groups will be going on Monday, 2nd September from 10:30am - 1:10pm.
Paulette and Rowe's home groups will be going on Tuesday, 3rd September from 10:30am - 1:10pm.

The children will be required to wear appropriate sports a clothing for this trip i.e., tracksuit or t-shirt and shorts or bike pants. They will also be required to have bare feet in the gym. The children are not able to to wear, jeans, dresses, buckles, belts, zippers, jewellery, wrist watches or anything that will scratch the gymnastic equipment or coaches.

Term 4 Mini Ball

During Term 1 and 4, we offer the children in Kōwhai the opportunity to play mini ball in Term 4. Mini ball is a modified game of basket ball. The games are held at Pioneer Stadium on a Wednesday and Thursday (first time players) afternoons. The game times vary each week. Games are 30 minutes in duration and are played between 3:30pm and 5:30pm.
As a school, we provide the children with tops and the cost of the term is approximately $35. The team size is 8-9 children with 5 players on the court at a time.
We will need parents to coach and support the teams each week as our teaching staff have meetings on these afternoons.
If you would like to have your child participate, please fill in this form. The number of teams we can enter will depend on the support we receive from parents to coach and support. Please note, by filling in this form, it does not guarantee a place for your child.

Paulette on Leave

During Weeks 8-10, Paulette will be on leave as she travels to Europe with her family. Susan Walsh will be teaching in her place. Susan is very familiar with both the children and the programme so this will make a seamless transition. Paulette will be in contact sharing the places she is visiting while she is away.

Kōwhai Teaching Team
Nick, Rowe, Kate and Paulette

Hi everyone

This is the calendar art for Rowe's home group. Some children painted an autumnal scene based on an impressionist style, some used pastels to draw Wassily Kandinsky circles and a couple of children were keen to choose their own design.  Feel free to come in and check it out! We have worked so hard and are very proud of our creations.

Kia ora Team!

What a busy couple of weeks we have had.

Readathon
On Thursday,  your child should have brought home a readathon card. We have discussed a reading goal for your child to complete each week as art of their readathon. Thank you for supporting your child with this by reading with them each and every night over the next two weeks. This is a great fundraiser for the PTA and is also highly beneficial for the children. 
The cards need to be returned to school on Friday 30th August.
As part of this readathon, there will be a 'Dress Up Book Character Day 'on Friday 30th August. On this day, your child can come to school dressed as their favourite book character.
Each child who returns their card, proving they have read each night, will receive a book mark. All of the returned cards will be put in to a draw for each year level (Y0, Y1, Y2 etc) and the PTA will draw a card from each level and that child will receive a book voucher at the school assembly.

Wearable Arts- Inquiry
We are full steam ahead with our Innovation Topic exploring Wearable Arts. Over the past week, the children have had the opportunity to view a variety of wearable arts, identifying how they have been made and their purpose. We have had a go at making prototypes to see what it is like to make a wearable art on a smaller scale. This was VERY tricky for some!
The children have now created designs either individually or in groups for them to make over the next 2-3 weeks. We are trying to make this learning as sustainable as possible and do not want anyone buying any items. We have a variety of materials for the children to use at school, however, your child may ask for some items to be provided from home.
Here are some examples of the children's designs. We will be sharing these with you at a Wearable Arts Evening in Week 7.

An attempt to create a garment for a toy.

Some of our designs.

Pizza Makers
It has been great to see the children learning how to prepare food safely when making pizzas. Here are our first group of pizza makers. They did a great job of cleaning and preparing the kitchen for pizza making, creating the dough and cleaning up the dishes at the end of the session. Well done team!

Making pizzas and following the steps.

Music Lessons- Recorder
Starting this week, the children in our team will be given recorder lessons on a Tuesday afternoon. Josie, one of our itinerant music teachers will be providing this instruction. Two home groups (Nick and Kate's) will have lessons with her this term, and Rowe and Paulette's home groups will have lessons with her in Term 4. We are really excited to be able to provide this opportunity for the children.

Up and Coming Events
28th August- 2.15pm Parent Meeting Keeping Ourselves Safe Programme
30th August - Book Character Day
2nd and 3rd September - Kowhai Trip to School of Gymnastics
6th September- Readathon Cards and Money Due in


That's all for now.
Have a great weekend
Kowhai Teaching Team