Monthly Archives: June 2016

PTA DISCO Friday 24th June

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PTA DISCO Friday 24th June
Beckenham School Hall


NE-Year 2 4-5pm
Years 3 & 4 5.30-6.30pm
Years 5 - 8 7-8pm


Come have a boogie with your friends and teachers
to the great sounds of Uptown Entertainment


Gold coin entry

Lemonade and chips $1.50, Bottled water $1, Bling $1-$4

Kahikatea Team 2016-06-15 09:45:00

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Hub 2's Matariki Facts


Dear Sarah,

We loved getting your letter. Here are some facts about Matariki.

Matariki is a constellation of the seven sisters which are stars in the sky. 
Matariki is the Maori New Year.
On Matariki people celebrate with food, planting, kites and New Year celebrations.
The constellation comes up in the winter time.
Learning about Matariki is interesting.

Happy New Year. 

from Hub 2.

Week 7 Update

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Week 7! Hard to believe, but we have three and a half weeks left of this term. Here are some important messages for this week.

Korfball: A huge well done to our korfball team who came third in the Christchurch competition at Cowles Stadium on Monday. They did so well, only losing one game. A special congratulations to Jaxon, who was named in the tournament team.


World Vision Famine: It was great to hear about the children's experiences of doing the 20 or 40 hour famine over the weekend. Please encourage your child to collect in their sponsorship money as quickly as possible.

Science: We are in the midst of science fair projects. By now your child should have their question sorted, research underway and maybe a hypothesis written. We are focusing on the paperwork and research at school, while the actual experiment needs to be undertaken at home. If your child needs equipment such as test tubes, beakers, thermometers, wires etc, they need to e-mail their home-group teacher, so these can be sorted.  The children need to take lots of photos of their experiment at different stages and save these photos in their google drive, so they can access them at school. Many thanks to those of you who are supporting your child with their learning at home. Experiments should be happening this week and next.  Note that the experiment may need to be repeated several times to get reliable data.

Showcase: Our Showcase evening is just over two weeks away on Thursday June 30th. The choir, Te Whanau Mahi Tahi, the drama passion group and some band musicians will be performing that evening. All children and their families are welcome to attend. 

Passion Friday Foodies: If your child is in this group, they should have consulted with you about the ingredients they need to bring to make their dessert this Friday. 

Creating gourmet pizzas last Friday. 

Clocks get their first layer of papier mache.

Taping the clock box together.


Term 2 Week 6

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Kia ora!

The last fortnight has been an action-packed one!  Here is a snapshot of what we have been learning...enjoy!

Readers
What a focused group we have! It is great to see readers using our 'animal' themed reading strategies, which most of you received in your Mutukaroa home pack.  See Rowe, Charlotte or Amanda if you would like to know more. 











Have fun exploring this space website at home:  http://spaceplace.nasa.gov

Hockey
We have been so lucky to have the team from Canterbury Hockey coaching our children over the last few weeks. During this time, Emma taught the children some basic hockey skills such as dribbling the ball and hitting the ball safely to one another. Full of gusto on a chilly morning, the
children all had enormous fun playing in the hockey tournament on Wednesday. We are sure you will agree that they look very professional. Keeping our sticks down was the order of the day! Amanda,Charlotte and Rowe were proud of  you all.

Quote of the day,"Great team work everyone " (Oliver)

It was great to see our older New Entrants demonstrated our kete values of 'we care'  and 'we get there together' to the younger children.





Reversal Letter Support 

Here is a rap that the children are learning to help them remember how to form a 'b' and a 'd'.




Cross Country: REMINDER

Cross Country is on June the 16th.

Start time: 9 30 am-we suggest you arrive on the Beckenham Park (the big field) a little earlier to get a good viewing spot.

You are welcome to position yourselves anywhere around the park along the route around the park to cheer and support the children as they are running.
New Entrant girls will start first followed by New Entrant boys.
Please ensure your child is wearing suitable sports clothing, in house colours (a t shirt if you have one or loan one from a friend.) and footwear for this event.

PLEASE ENSURE YOUR CHILDREN ARE ALL WEARING SUITABLE FOOTWEAR EVERY DAY NEXT WEEK AS WE WILL BE HAVING CROSS COUNTRY PRACTICE.

Writing:
We have been talking a lot about making writing authentic for children. This means that children see that writing has a purpose related to everyday living. It is really important for children to see writing modelled in the home,

Here are some ideas to get your children interested in writing at home.

1. Diaries or journals. Even young children like to have a go!
They could include listing birthdays, names of friends,pictures and names of pets, holiday photos with a caption.

2. Letters, postcards or emails

3. Holiday maps and plans

4.Shopping lists

5.Treasure hunt clues eg 'Look on the swing'

6. Rhymes

7. Party lists

Writing with your child is a great idea too. Children just love making a little book about a personal experience.

"Writing floats on a sea of talk".
The conversations you have with your child about the world around them are very important as a foundation for writing. They give your child something to write about, support their growing understanding of sentence structure and help to expand their vocabulary.


ROCKETS



On Thursday Noah's dad Justin came in to demonstrate a plastic bottle rocket. The children watched the air being pumped into the bottle and the water being forced out when the children pulled the string. It was a great chance to practise our backwards counting from 10 as we prepared for launch! We are sure Justin was relieved when this experiment worked !

Plastic Soft Drink Bottles
We would be grateful if  you could send any empty plastic bottles to school next week so we could make our own rockets.



Week 6 Term 2 Newsletter

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Kowhai Team Newsletter Friday 10th June

Hi Everyone,

We hope that you all had a a great, although slightly longer than normal, Queen's Birthday weekend. It was wonderful to be welcomed by so many smiley faces on Wednesday! We have had an action packed week with the children playing in a mini hockey tournament on Wednesday and participating in the Matariki Day yesterday. The children have been highly engaged in their learning and asking LOADS of questions to extend their thinking. As it was a short week this week, so there was no Home Learning but we are back to normal next week with our nightly reading, maths and spelling.


Matariki Connect Session - South Learning CentreTo continue our learning about Matariki, the children are booked in to a session at the South Learning Centre with one of the tutors. They will learn how  to create a porotiti (spinning disk and string game) and use the ipads to take a virtual tour around a marae and whare. As the Learning Centre is so close to school, the children will walk down. Each hub will need some parents to assist them on these trips. Unfortunately we were only offered four sessions, so on this occasion, Hub 7 has been split to enable them to attend the sessions too. Letters will come home closer to the time of each hub trip.
These are the dates for your diary.

Tuesday 14th June- Hub 8 and 6 children from Hub 7
Tuesday 21st June - Hub 9 and 5 children from Hub 7
Thursday 30th June - Hub 5 and 5 children from Hub 7
Thursday 30th June - Hub 6 and 5 children from Hub 7


InquiryOur team has been learning about the weather. We have been investigating why the seasons change, the impact of weather on our environment with a particular focus on the water cycle. We have conducted many experiments to help us learn these science concepts. These science investigations have required us to make predictions, conduct experiments and discuss our findings. Over the next few week we will dig deeper into this topic by investigating the impact of weather on animals and humans, with a closer look at how the weather directly affects us. All our findings and learnings will be on display in the School Science and Technology Fair. The Science Fairs opens on Monday 4th July, 5.30pm - 7pm. We hope you can all come along.

Cross Country - Next WeekOver the past few weeks we have been training for the Kowhai Team Cross Country. The Cross Country is this Thursday 16th June. Our races will start at 11.30am and will follow this order.
Year 3 Girls, Year 3 Boys
Year 4 Girls and conclude with the Year 4 Boys.

Individually the children have been setting personal goals to work towards. These have ranged from being positive about running, improving the distance we can run or increasing our running stamina by running further each time. This year the top six runners in each race will have the opportunity to compete against other schools in our local area in the Year 0-4 Cross Country Challenge at Hillview School. We are aiming to be fierce competition!

Drink Bottles and LunchesWe have noticed that we still have some children that need to bring drink bottles to school. Water is important to keep the children hydrated and it is best if ALL children have a drink bottle at school, especially on wet days.We have also noticed an increase in the amount of food that the children are eating. Some children are eating much more than normal and at times have eaten MOST of their food by the end of the the first break. Can you take the time to ask your child if they have enough food to eat or if they need some more in their lunchbox. Thanks!

Art Gallery TripTo conclude the term, we have a trip to the Christchurch Art Gallery planned in Week 10. We will need parent help for this trip and will send home letters two weeks before. For those of you who need more time to enable you to parent help, the days and hubs are as follows:
Hub 8 and 9 - Tuesday 5th July
Hub 5/6/7 - Thursday 7th July

We hope you all have a great weekend.
Kowhai Teaching Team