Category Archives: Kowhai

Kowhai News Week 6, term 4, 2017

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Christmas Trip to the City

On Thursday 14 December Kowhai Whanau will be visiting the Transitional Cathedral to sing Christmas Carols under the big Christmas tree. We will follow this up by walking to the Botanic Gardens for a picnic and a play. We will be leaving school at 9.30 to travel to the Transitional Cathedral, arriving at 10am. We will leave the Botanic Gardens at 2.30 to be back at school by 3pm.

The trip will cost $4.00 per child to cover the buses. This donation will be added to your school account. Children will also be able to place a present under the Christmas tree for less fortunate children.

We will need parent help for this trip. If you can support us in this please email your child's home group teacher. Thank you so much. This will be an awesome trip!

Pizza Making

Each Monday, the children who received a certificate at our team hui are be able to make pizzas for their lunch. If you are able to help us with the pizza making, please add your name onto this document. We still need helpers for the last couple of weeks.

Marae Trip

On Thursday 16 November we had a wonderful visit to Rehua Marae. We were welcomed onto the marae with a formal powhiri. This was followed by morning tea and an opportunity to explore the wharenui and sketch the beautiful carvings and kowhaiwhai.

We were so impressed with the wonderful behaviour of the children. They showed immense respect at all times. Thank you to Sherrilee who taught us about the marae and supported us during the powhiri. Thank you also to the lovely parents who supported us on the trip. We hope you enjoyed the trip as much as we did.

Athletics Day

This Wednesday was our annual athletics day. It was wonderful to see all the parents at school supporting their children. The Kowhai children competed in five events:

  • High jump
  • Long jump
  • Shot Putt
  • Discus
  • Sprints


We finished off the afternoon by joining up with Koru to run house relays. Congratulations to Heathcote for their win. It was great hearing your enthusiastic house chant.

Library Visits

We are continuing to visit South Library on Mondays during our literacy time. Each literacy group has one more visit each:

Monday 27 November - Anna and Mike's literacy group.
Monday 4 December - Susan's literacy group.
Monday 11 December - Paulette and Rebekah's literacy group.

If you can help with walking down to the library with us please let us know.

Mandarin

A big congratulations to our star Lauren Maule, who was awarded a certificate of excellence for learning Mandarin. This was awarded at a special prize giving at St Margaret's college. Well done Lauren, you can be so proud of your achievement!

Kowhai News Term 4 Week 2

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Stationery
Some children are still short on school stationery for this term. Can you please ask your child if they require any more pens, pencils, rubbers, rulers or highlighters and make sure they bring anything they need to school as soon as possible. If they are not sure, they can check in their home group stationery drawer to see what is left in their named stationery bag or feel free to e-mail your point of contact teacher. Thank you!



Drink Bottles
There are still a number of children without drink bottles and as the days are getting warmer, the children are needing them even more. We are encouraging the children to keep hydrated on these warm days and they especially need their water bottles for our run up to Athletics Day when they will be doing lots of practice. Could you please ensure that your child has a drink bottle for school and that they bring it to school every day. We really appreciate your support in this.



We Care Day
We had a wonderful day on Wednesday celebrating We Care Day. We started the day by picking the name of a buddy in the hub from a box and then we secretly gave them compliments throughout the day and left notes on their tote trays or by their bags saying what we appreciated about them. It was great fun and everyone enjoyed giving and receiving positive affirmations of who they are. We spoke to the children about that for some this might even be just a smile or a greeting. Some of us were great at keeping it a secret and it kept us guessing until the very end of the day!



Athletics
Next week we are starting our athletics sessions in our lead up to Athletics Day on Wednesday 22nd November. There will be more details to follow on this. The children will be out on the field learning how to sprint, run relays, do long jump, high jump and shot put and they will also be throwing the discus. Our practices will be on every Thursday so could you please make sure that your child has sensible footwear on these days so they can take part successfully. Thank you so much.



KOS
Over the past 2 weeks the children have been learning about how to Keep Ourselves Safe at school, at home and when we are out and about. Next week we have Constable Ross visiting and he will be talking to the Year 3 children about Physical Me and Touch and also Secrets and Tricks. With the Year 4 children he will be talking about the Real World and Abuse. If you want to know more about this then please feel free to come and talk to your home group teacher.

Kowhai News Term 4 Week 1

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Welcome back everyone. We hope you've all had a wonderful couple of weeks and we are really looking forward to the term ahead.

This newsletter aims to inform you of the essentials for the start of the term.

We're all back!

It was wonderful to welcome our Senior Students back to the Beckenham site on Monday. Our team are particularly enjoying having the time to  connect and reconnect with new and old friends. A big thank you to Imedha who spoke on behalf of Kowhai Team. You did an amazing job! We were very proud.

School Hats

A HUGE thank you to all the parents who have hunted out school hats. We have been impressed at the very small number of children who have not had hats at school. On the very sunny days, we also encourage you to apply sunscreen to your child prior to coming to school. We have sunscreen for children to use during the day to reapply.

For the next four weeks our school will be engaging in the 'Keeping Ourselves Safe' programme.  Please click on the link above for all the information you will need to know about this programme.
Keeping Ourselves Safe [KOS] aims to teach children the importance of keeping safe in a variety of situations. For this component of learning, the children will be organised into year levels as there is a different programme for Year 3 from the Year 4s.
Constable Ross will visit our classrooms and take 2 of the sessions.  We really appreciate the help of the Police in developing these resources and their support in the teaching and learning programme. If you have any further questions please visit the website or, alternatively ask your child's teacher.

Rehua Marae

Continuing our Te reo learning from last term, the children will be given the opportunity to participate in a powhiri at Rehua Marae. We had hoped to go to our local marae (Rapaki), however, they are still undergoing renovations. Our Rehua Marae trip will be in week 5, and we will send our further information closer to the time.

Pizza Making

Each Monday, the children who received a certificate at our team hui will again be able to make pizzas for their lunch. If you are able to help us with the pizza making, please add your name onto this document. Pizza making will start tomorrow due to the long weekend.

Library

We are fortunate enough to be able to continue our trips to the Christchurch South Library. This term we are planning on using our Literacy Time (10.50am-12.40pm) for these visits. Hub teachers will send out an email asking for 2 parents to assist us on the walk down. Thanks in advance for your support with this.

We Care Day

This coming Wednesday, we are having a We Care Day at school. The children will each pull out a name from a hat and the day will be filled with random acts of kindness. We are sure there will be many wonderful actions from the children. Here are some of the ideas from our Well Being Team.

  • Draw a picture for your person
  • Give your person a compliment or high 5
  • Read a story with your person
  • Write your person a note saying what they are good at
  • Invite your person to spend morning tea or lunch with you
  • Make a bookmark for your person
  • Stick a positive note in their tote tray
  • Make an acrostic poem using their name


That's all for now

Kowhai News Term 4 Week 10

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Wow! It's hard to believe that the end of the term has arrived. We have had the most productive term and even in the last week, the children are continuing to be involved in a variety of interesting and exciting learning challenges.



Hats 


Image result for red hatIt's nearing that time of year that the children will need to wear their hat at school. Please take time over the holidays to locate your child's hat ready for Term 4. If you need a new hat, these can be purchased from the school office.




Stationery
Some of the children need to replenish their school stationery for next term. Please ask your child if they require any more pens, pencils, rubbers, rulers or highlighters. If these could be brought to school in Term 4, that would be amazing.

MATHS - Mapping (Position and Orientation)
Over the past two weeks, the children across our team have been involved in a variety of hands on activities as they develop their knowledge of mapping skills. We have been working in collaborative teaching partnerships and have encouraged the children to work collaboratively too. This has enabled the children to support and challenge each other with their learning. The children have been learning how to read and make maps, follow and give directions and use positional language including: left, right, forward, backward, 1/4, 1/2 and full turns and compass directions, to name a few. Here we are in action:
Reading a map to find clues hidden in the hub.



Reading and creating our own maps.

Organising 'treasure' to go with our map designs.

Viewing and reading maps on Google.

Following maps to discover hidden clues.
READING - Plays
Reading through the play.
This last week, the children have been working on improving reading fluency through the medium of plays.  For the children to deliver an effective play, the children have worked on maintaining their focus when working in their group so they know when to deliver their line, adding expression to portray the character, use a variety of facial expressions and gestures to communicate the feelings and  actions of characters and to use a clear voice so the audience can hear what we are saying.
Practising our actions.

Adding in actions.


INQUIRY LEARNING - Change
We have been exploring the key concept: Change is inevitable and our actions can have positive or negative impacts. To enable the children to be agentic in their learning (making choices about what they want to learn), we gave them the opportunity to opt into various groups. This has seen children learning about changes with materials and changes with living things. 
One group of children have been conducting experiments to learn about chemical and physical change. We have learnt that physical change in matter is reversible and chemical change is irreversible. Our experiments include:
  • Dissolving substances into water
  • Making salt crystals
  • Making sherbet
  • Trying to prevent ice from melting
  • Floating paper clips on top of a glass of water
  • Mixing cornflour and water to make oobleck (a non-Newtonian substance).

Next term we will be investigating the effects of some irreversible changes on our environment and be looking at recycling.
Making oobleck
Oobleck

Environmental Change - Endangered Animals
Our group has been looking at environmental changes and how these can impact on animal species. Children have been investigating endangered animals to find the reasons these animals have become endangered. The children are investigating ways in which they can raise awareness and possibly fundraise to help make a positive change to save animals from being endangered.

Developmental Play

Over the last few weeks, we have started a new programme in the afternoon for those children who need a break from our normal learning routine. We thought it would be great to give them the chance to enjoy some developmental play which so far has involved building with lego, sketching and making musical instruments. The children have benefitted hugely from this programme and there has been such a calm and focussed atmosphere in the hub. As it has been such a success, we are going to continue with this programme next term. Here are a few pictures of what they have been doing:















WATER - Fresh Water Frolicking
Paulette's group have been learning about water, the water cycle, where we get our fresh water from and fresh water ecosystems. This week has seen the children investigating the creatures that are currently residing in the ponds. We have discovered the water is very stinky! We are going to conduct a water quality test next term to find out how healthy the water actually is. This week we have observed the creatures that are living in the ponds and have discovered many larvae, water boatmen, snails, bugs and even FISH!
Taking a close look.
Catching the creature to study.


Adding the creatures to our tally charts.
Identifying the creatures we find.
Hard at work learning about fresh water creatures.
Investigating the creatures.
We have fish in the ponds!


Have a wonderful break everyone!

Kowhai Leaders

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Zoe and Petra have been running a colouring in competition for Kowhai and Koru this term. We had three different colouring in pictures that we drew that the children could chose from. We had first, second and third place for each colouring in competition. The chidlren coloured in the pictures at lunchtime in the Kowhai hub. They had a great time!