Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all

A wet end to the week, with quite a number of tamariki absent due to illness. With coughs and colds, as well as of course Covid, doing the rounds, we are being extra vigilant with our ventilation practices in the team, and giving lots of reminders to cough into elbows, wash hands regularly, and be aware of personal space. We hope you all have a happy, healthy weekend. Please read on for some updates and reminders.

Winter Sports Starts Next Week

 Our Winter Sports programme starts next week and will take place on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. The tamariki will be either participating in non-competitive or competitive hockey, netball, or football.

Non-competitive sports will take place at school on Wednesday afternoons and will be supported by the Year 8 House Captains. 

Competitive sports teams will play in the South Zone Winter Sports competition on Thursday afternoons. If your child is on one of these teams, you will have received a Hero post with all of the information you need to know.

Muddy Months

As we head into winter we are noticing the inevitable increase of muddy shoes and clothes as students come back from play and lunch, having played sports and games on our beloved Beckenham Park. This week we incorporated how to show We Care for our school environment into our PB4L lessons. We will now be asking students to take off muddy shoes before entering the Hub and lining them up neatly outside the door. We are lucky to have wonderful underfloor heating in the classrooms, so feet stay nice and warm, and as an added benefit our carpet stays mud-free! In addition to this, we suggest that if your child is coming home with very muddy clothes, please consider supplying them with a spare pair of school shorts and a spare school top for them to change into once they finish their games. We appreciate your support with this.

Living Springs Camp Movie

Today at our Celebration Assembly, we were lucky to see the premiere of the Kauri Media Team's 'Pōhutukawa Camp Movie'. We have added it here as a link for you to watch and enjoy with your tamariki. 

Noho ora mai

The Pōhutukawa Team

 Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

What an amazing time we spent at Living Springs. We hope the tamariki have somewhat recovered from their exhaustion, and that they've been able to tell you about some of the highs, lows, challenges, and triumphs, which they experienced over the 3 days at camp. Thankfully, the weather played its part; we experienced a lot of sunshine, a bit of rain, some mist, and pretty mild temperatures throughout, which meant most of the time was spent outside in the stunning surroundings that our corner of the world has to offer.

As teachers, we want to pass on that it was a pleasure, and a privilege to be able to offer this experience of camp to your tamariki. The values we talk about so often at school: We Care, We Get There Together, We Make a Difference, We Love Challenge, and We Love Learning, were all on display at camp, and hopefully the students will now have memories that will last many of them their whole lives.

Over the next little while, we will be unpacking the whole experience of camp with the tamariki at school, and reflecting on how camp ties into our kete values. We certainly took a lot of photos, which will be put together for you and the students to enjoy in the coming days. Watch this space!

Finally, we would like to give a special shout-out to the whānau who joined us on camp. Without you giving up your own time to give your tautoko (support), your awhi (help), and your aroha (care) the camp simply could not, and would not, have happened. Mā tātou katoa te waka e hoe, we all row this waka together. Kia pai nga rā whakatā ki a tātou, enjoy a lovely weekend, everyone.

The Pōhutukawa team

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

We are rocketing toward the end of the term now, with our Wonder Project finishing up next week. A massive thank you to our amazing ambassadors Kate, Darren, Kylie, and Richard. The expertise and knowledge that you brought to the Wonder project were invaluable and engaging and got our students excited about a future STEM career. The project will culminate in the final launch of our bottle rockets on Monday next week. That will also enable us to switch our focus to the upcoming Living Springs Camp, and we will be unpacking that with the tamariki over the final 2 weeks of Term 1. More on our camp below, as well as some other important updates.

Living Springs Camp

Thank you to the people who have already filled in the Health and Medical Consent Form that is required for each child to attend camp. The deadline for this form to be completed is Thursday, April 6.

ASB GetWise Financial Literacy Programme

Last week we welcomed the ASB GetWise programme to kura, which taught tamariki about how to become "cash clever". Through the workshops tamariki learned the fundamentals of money in four different stages - from identifying needs and wants and learning to save, right through to budgeting - giving them a solid foundation to build on. It would be good to reflect on what they took away from these workshops at home, too. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning.

Kapa Haka and Te Reo Māori

It was fantastic to see Kapa Haka practice a couple of numbers for us at Celebration Assembly today. You can catch a video of the performance here. Whaea Cath Milio continues to be a fantastic kaiako for our tamariki who get so much from their kapa haka sessions both in terms of their performance skills, and also with Cath's wonderful use of "teachable moments" to teach the students some te reo Māori, or explain the purakau, stories, behind the waiata they are learning. This term we have decided use this time to teach te reo Māori tamariki who do not attend kapa haka, so that everyone gets the chance to learn about te ao Māori, the Māori world at the same time.

Term 2 Winter Sports 

Next week we will also be giving the students the options for Winter Sport, which begins in term 2. Everyone in Pōhutukawa will do a sport of their choosing next term. They can either choose to do competitive or non-competitive football, netball, or hockey. If students choose to be competitive, there will be a trialing process and teams will be selected to participate in the interschool competition. Non-competitive players will learn the basics of their chosen sport in a fun way at school with their classmates. It would be a great idea to have a chat with your tamariki at home about the sports they would like to do, and whether they would enjoy to be competitive or non-competitive. Any questions, please let us know.

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

5 weeks down and 5 to go in the term! We have had another busy, eventful week in the Pōhutukawa team. Reading groups have now started and everyone has been allocated a Reading teacher, which is the final piece of our regular daily routine. We encourage you to take some time to ask your tamariki to show you what they are now able to access through their Reading Google Classroom and Reading Site; a great way to keep the reading mileage up at home. Yesterday and today we practiced our emergency evacuation drill. We were very proud of the tamariki who were exemplary in how they left the Hub immediately in a calm, quiet manner. Tino pai rawa atu. Please read on for some updates and news from the past couple of weeks.

Swimming Sports

Congratulations to all of the participants who embraced our kete value 'We Love Challenge' and entered the Swimming Sports. The excitement was palpable in the team, and the tamariki should be proud of themselves for having the courage to step up and jump in to such a competitive event! We hope you enjoy some photos, and keep an eye out for a movie from the afternoon... coming soon. A special mention to those who have qualified for Zones next Friday. Nau mai te wero!

Wonder Project - Blast off!

As part of our concept of Innovation for 2023, this term our Inquiry topic is rocketry! Specifically, designing, building and launching a water rocket. The Wonder Project is Engineering New Zealand’s free programme for schools, designed to get young Kiwis excited about science, technology, engineering, and STEM.

This week students have been exploring what rockets need to get off the ground by watching informative videos, having discussions, and making gliders. We have also been learning about the health and safety rules for launches. We're looking forward to Monday with our Ambassadors to launch the first test flights and play with variables.

We are still in need of 1.5 litre plastic bottle and ice cream containers to use to build the rockets. If you are able to supply a bottle or a container for our project that would be "wonder"ful.

Living Springs Camp Parent Help

Planning is underway for Pōhutukawa's Term 2 camp at Living Springs (1 - 3 May).  If you are able to be a parent helper at the camp, please complete the online form by clicking here.  Responses will need to be collected by Wednesday, 8 March. We require the help of approximately 15 parents if the camp is to go ahead. If you are able to help, your role will involve direct supervision of groups of children (inside/outside activities, evening bunk room duty, setting tables, supporting children during the bushwalk into camp), serving meals, operating the dishwasher, helping with the cleaning of all areas used at the end of the stay. You will need to be able to stay the entire camp. As the cost of parent helpers is covered in the camp fee, we will only take the necessary number of parent helpers in order to minimise costs. If we have more volunteers than we need, we will select first based on the skills needed and then names will be drawn from a ballot.  Finally, if you are selected as a helper we'll require Police vetting and relevant health and emergency contact information from you.

We're looking forward to your responses! Ngā mihi mō tō tautoko, thanks so much for your support. Enjoy your weekend.

The Pōhutukawa Team