Kia ora, e te whānau,

What a wonderful start to the year it has been in the Koru team! The tamariki are doing a great job at independently completing their morning jobs of putting their lunchbox and drink bottle on the shelf, sliding their name up on the board and settling into a quiet activity before the bell, learning our school routines, and getting used to school life. Over the last two weeks we have been very busy! We have learnt some of our new Milo the Monkey sounds and characters (Little Learners Love Literacy), explored some different areas of Mathematics, completed different types of artworks, played with a range of equipment within our hub, and have started creating relationships with others in our hub. Our tamariki have settled in beautifully and we are so proud of the progress they have made already in the first few weeks of school. Some photos of what we have been up to:

What our year will look like: In the Koru team, we learn lots of amazing new things. Here is an overview of some of the things we will learn in our different learning areas:

Literacy: We will learn about our sounds, how to use these sounds to make words by segmenting and blending, and using our skills to read Sam, Pip and Tim books. We will also read different picture books and big books, and will look further at the different elements these stories have (sentence structure, vocabulary, grammar, big and exciting words, punctuation etc.)

Maths: In Maths this year, we will be looking at a wide range of elements within mathematics. We will explore problem solving, rapid routines, addition and subtraction, equal sharing strategies, counting, statistics, measurement, patterns, time and sequencing and much more. We will also practising writing our numbers.

Kinetic Letters: For handwriting, we follow the Kinetic Letters Handwriting Programme. We teach the children about different movements, strong body positions, and letter families. The letter families contain different letters that have similar movements, to help support the child in writing these. Once the children have learnt the different letters in lowercase, they then go on to learning uppercase.

The Arts:  We will be looking at a range of aspects of the Arts this year such as Visual Art, Dance, Drama and Music. In Visual Arts, we will look at different styles of Art such as painting, collage, pastel and crayon work, drawing, and will use one of these styles for our Calendar Art. In Dance, we will look at different ways to move our bodies in the time to a musical beat. In Drama, we will look at story telling and role play and this will be incorporated into our Learning through Play. In Music, we will explore different rhythm patterns, and finding different ways we can make sound using different objects/things. 

Te reo Māori: We will explore different aspects of Te reo Māori including learning our mihi, the words for colours, body parts, numbers, days of the week and months of the year, different instructions, and lots of waiata. 

Wellbeing/Health and PE: In Wellbeing/Health, we will learn about Hauora through Te Whare Tapa Whā, exploring the physical, emotional, spiritual, and whānau aspects of our wellbeing. We will also be taking part in Life Education this year. In P.E, we will learn different movement skills through games, ball skills, and fitness. We will also be partaking in our whole school Cross Country and Athletics.

Science: In Science, we will be looking at Planet Earth and Beyond and will learn about our Solar System, our Earth Systems and will explore their natural features and resources. 

Social Sciences: In Social Sciences, we will be looking into our school wide concept of Identity. This will be interlinked through our other curriculum areas, as well as learning about Matariki, who we are, and our stories. 

Technology/Digitech: Later on in the year, we will be exploring different concepts of Digitech. We will learn about coding, looking at what it is and how we can explore it through using unplugged and plugged resources. 

Friday Waiata sessions: We are so lucky to spend some time with Whaea Cath on Friday's singing waiata and learning some te reo Māori. It was such an awesome session, we can't wait for Whaea Cath to come back!

Friday Buddies: On Friday afternoons, we are very fortunate to be able to have 4 big buddies from the Kauri team come down and hang out with us. We have had two sessions with our big buddies so far which have been awesome! We have created some butterfly art, read lots of stories, played with the vehicles, and built really all towers with our Duplo. We had so much fun, we can't wait until next Friday!

Library: On Fridays during the middle block, the Koru tamariki get to go down to our school library and have a look at the different books there are on offer. In our team, we get to choose 2 books to take home that have a yellow dot in the top right hand corner. We get to keep these stories until the following Friday, where we can bring them back in to swap them for 2 more new ones. If we forget to bring our books back, that's okay, we just keep them for another week. If the Library books are forgotten a couple of times in a row, we will get an email from Anne to say these books are overdue and we need to bring them back. Here are some photos of what our Library looks like, the types of books we can get out, how we wait in the line to get our books issued from Anne, and where we wait with our folders once they have been issued. 

This box is where your child will put their Library Folder when they bring them back

Some Reminders:

Friendship List: On Friday 9th February, Georgia sent out the Koru Whānau friendship list to all families who wished to be on it. This will be updated every term as new tamariki start school. If you have not received this yet, please check your spam/junk folder as sometimes these emails end up there. Any questions, don't hesitate to email or ask.

Lunchboxes: A few reminders about your child's lunchboxes:

• Please ensure your child is only bringing water to school in their lunchboxes/drink bottles (no juice or other drinks). 
• It is also important to help teach your child how to open and close their lunchboxes, so they can do this independently at the start and end of eating times. 
• It would be great if you could also either precut or teach your child how to open packets in their lunchboxes (for example potato sticks, chip bags, twisty yoghurt pouches, muesli bars etc.)

We hope you have a lovely weekend ahead, and we will see you on Monday ready to go for another fantastic week!

Ngā mihi mahana,

Georgia and Stacey