Kia ora, e te whānau,
It's been a very busy couple of weeks for us all in the Koru team, as we come close to the end of Term 3. We have had new children start throughout the last couple of weeks, and they have settled in beautifully! Over the last few weeks, we have had some exciting opportunities for our Koru children, including a cricket awareness session, Keeping Ourselves Safe sessions with Constable Meg, and Te Wiki o te reo Māori (Māori Language Week). We have our Beckenham's Got Talent Show coming up on Friday Week 10, and have some of our children performing. The tamariki did an awesome job showcasing their talents at our mini Koru Talent Showcase.
Mini Koru Talent Showcase highlights:
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| Three bananas performing... |
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| The bananas escape from the ravenous dinosaur! |
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| Why is 6 scared of 7? |
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| Take a bow! |
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| The 'second hand' shop joke! |
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| Our flexible friends! |
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| Bridges and handstands... |
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| Tricks with hula hoops. |
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| Great spinning skills! |
Te Wiki o te reo Māori:
Last week was Māori language week. We have included some cool activities for the tamariki based on different aspects of te reo Māori. This included learning the names of colours and colouring in a rainbow, singing waiata, making bookmarks that had kowhaiwhai patterns on them, and learning new kupu. It has been an awesome week!!
Cricket:
On Thursday 7th September, each home group had an awesome 25 minute cricket awareness session with Cat, from Southern Districts Cricket Club. This was a great opportunity for our tamariki to participate in, and they all enjoyed themselves enormously. The children learnt different skills based on throwing, catching and batting. All the children were engaged and had such a great time! We will be sending out more information soon about skills sessions that are held on Saturdays at the club.
Keeping Ourselves Safe:
This term as part of our Health Curriculum, teams are teaching the programme called Keeping Ourselves Safe, in Years 0 - 6. In the units, our Koru children have been looking at:
- describing where they live; identifying things that make them special and explaining when they feel safe and unsafe
- learning to use the correct names for body parts and describing whether a touch is one they like, one they don’t like, or one that is confusing
- learning to say ‘no’ to touch, behaviour and words that worry or confuse them and talking about moving away and seeking help
- identifying the difference between good surprises and bad secrets
- identifying people they trust and understanding family safety rules.
We have been working with the children these last 2 weeks on our Keeping Ourselves Safe programme and you may have noticed the children have brought home some homework sheets to complete. A reminder that these sheets can stay at home once completed. It has been really awesome to have discussions with the children about their address, their phone numbers, different feelings we may have, and what to do if they get lost. We were also lucky to have 2 sessions with Constable Meg where we discussed what a police officer is, the different body parts, and talking about good touch, bad touch and confusing touch. If you have any questions about any of this programme, please come and chat to one of the kaiako.
Reminders:
- A reminder that we are a water bottle school, and prefer it if the children drink water throughout the day, rather than flavoured milk or juice.
- Next week is the last week of Term 3.
- Calendar Art: We have sent home the information sheets with the code you need to use if you wish to order your child's calendar art. This is only for Elizabeth, Stacey and Georgia's home groups. Please check the photos on the windows to see the awesome work your child has done.
- Click on these links and join in as your children sing one of their favourite songs, Sprinkle a Little Sunshine (here with the lyrics, and here, without, but with very cute images instead!)
- For those new families to the Koru team, a link through to the National Anthem which we sing each morning - your children are doing an awesome job with this, participating and trying their very best each morning
- Clicking here will take you to a variety of links for those of you who would like to read more about The Science of Reading and Structured Literacy.