Kōwhai News T3 Week 4

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Kia ora Team!

What a busy couple of weeks we have had.

Readathon
On Thursday,  your child should have brought home a readathon card. We have discussed a reading goal for your child to complete each week as art of their readathon. Thank you for supporting your child with this by reading with them each and every night over the next two weeks. This is a great fundraiser for the PTA and is also highly beneficial for the children. 
The cards need to be returned to school on Friday 30th August.
As part of this readathon, there will be a 'Dress Up Book Character Day 'on Friday 30th August. On this day, your child can come to school dressed as their favourite book character.
Each child who returns their card, proving they have read each night, will receive a book mark. All of the returned cards will be put in to a draw for each year level (Y0, Y1, Y2 etc) and the PTA will draw a card from each level and that child will receive a book voucher at the school assembly.

Wearable Arts- Inquiry
We are full steam ahead with our Innovation Topic exploring Wearable Arts. Over the past week, the children have had the opportunity to view a variety of wearable arts, identifying how they have been made and their purpose. We have had a go at making prototypes to see what it is like to make a wearable art on a smaller scale. This was VERY tricky for some!

The children have now created designs either individually or in groups for them to make over the next 2-3 weeks. We are trying to make this learning as sustainable as possible and do not want anyone buying any items. We have a variety of materials for the children to use at school, however, your child may ask for some items to be provided from home.
Here are some examples of the children's designs. We will be sharing these with you at a Wearable Arts Evening in Week 7.


An attempt to create a garment for a toy.

Some of our designs.

Pizza Makers
It has been great to see the children learning how to prepare food safely when making pizzas. Here are our first group of pizza makers. They did a great job of cleaning and preparing the kitchen for pizza making, creating the dough and cleaning up the dishes at the end of the session. Well done team!

Making pizzas and following the steps.
Music Lessons- Recorder
Starting this week, the children in our team will be given recorder lessons on a Tuesday afternoon. Josie, one of our itinerant music teachers will be providing this instruction. Two home groups (Nick and Kate's) will have lessons with her this term, and Rowe and Paulette's home groups will have lessons with her in Term 4. We are really excited to be able to provide this opportunity for the children.

Up and Coming Events
28th August- 2.15pm Parent Meeting Keeping Ourselves Safe Programme
30th August - Book Character Day
2nd and 3rd September - Kowhai Trip to School of Gymnastics
6th September- Readathon Cards and Money Due in


That's all for now.
Have a great weekend
Kowhai Teaching Team

T3 W4 in Pōhutukawa

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Making Dutch biscuits

Today Forest (Rae's home group) were lucky to have Linda, Keanna's mum, come in to share a part of her Dutch culture with the children. They made Dutch biscuits, which looked and smelt delicious.
The children really appreciated the time Linda spent with them, and enjoyed gobbling up the fruits of their labour. Thanks Linda!




 

Head Lice

This is a reminder to routinely check your child/ren's hair for head lice or eggs. Unfortunately the little creatures are sneaky and need to be treated when detected, as they are very easily transferred from head to head.

School email address

As you may have heard, we have had a talk with the students about the way they use their school email address and school Google account. It came to our attention that some students had been using their school email address and school Google account for purposes other than learning. To make it very clear, we talked to the students about the following points:
  • not having extensions (including cursors, GIFs, wallpapers etc)
  • slides and docs are to be learning related and set or directed by a teacher 
  • slides and docs are not to be shared with other students unless allowed/directed by a teacher (to avoid being distracted by commenting chat)
  • school email is to be used for learning purposes only, and not as a means of communication with other students
  • students have been asked to 'unshare' docs, delete docs from their drive which are not school or learning related
  • students can use their school Google account at home for continuing with any work started at school (especially if directed by a teacher), to go on any educational websites such as Studyladder, Nick’s App, Maths Whizz, Prototec, E-ako, Solve Me, ReadWorks or to complete any home learning set by teacher
  • using teacher approved websites only. Some YouTube clips are allowed to be viewed when it is relevant to learning.
For all other usage which is not school or learning related, such as communication (emails), making slide shows or docs with friends, we suggested that the students use their own personal account. This of course would be with the knowledge and permission of parents/caregivers. The recommended age for creating a personal Gmail account is 13 years old. You can create a Google Account for your child under the age of 13 and manage it using Family Link. With Google Accounts, children get access to Google products like Search, Chrome and Gmail, and you can set up basic digital ground rules to supervise them. 

Technology is an ever growing part of our world and we feel it is very important to ensure that at school the purpose of technology is to enhance the students' learning, as well as teach them skills regarding technology to equip them for their future. By monitoring and setting tight guidelines with regards to technology use at school, we hope to grow responsible and respectful users of technology.

Winter sport

Next week is the last week of winter sport. Thank you so much to all of the adults who have volunteered and helped out with a team. We certainly couldn't have done it without you!








Kahikatea Newsletter T3 Week 4

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Discovery
Discovery is still proving to be very popular with the children as they get to explore various activities and use their wonderful imaginations. The children love to dress up and act out scenes and they also love to develop their artistic skills creating ferocious monsters or sketching their favourite cartoon. Here are some pictures of some of the children working collaboratively to create a Duplo, wooden block, train track extravaganza. They spent a long time working on this and what an amazing creation they ended up with!



Reading
Next week, teachers will be completing Running Records with your children so we can gather up-to-date information on their progress in reading. This means that there will be no guided reading lessons and your children will be taking home books from their browsing boxes. Please do make sure you are reading with your child every night as it is really making a difference! Thank you so much for your ongoing support with this.

Readathon
The readathon starts today! Your child will have brought home a Readathon form to fill. Please feel free to discuss a goal with your child which will be manageable for them but also set a bit of a challenge. Then you can collect some sponsors who can support your reading quest and help to raise money for the PTA. Go on, you can do it!



Talent Show
Rehearsals for the Talent Show will be up and running next week. The children are extremely excited about it and have lots of fantastic ideas about what to do. We will give them a chance to rehearse during lunchtimes and it would be great if you could support your children at home too.  The act or performance is to last no longer than 3 minutes. The Talent Show finals will be in Week 10 and we will update you on this nearer to the time.

Image result for cartoon images of talent show for children

Heavy Work
We have recently introduced a new programme which involves doing 'heavy work' with those children who are proprioceptive. This means they have more difficulty in sensing the position, location, orientation and movement of their body and its parts. A way to help these children is to get them to do heavy work like pushing up against a wall, moving the logs around on the grass and also using a weighted blanket which we have just acquired. It is a way for these children to regulate themselves and we are finding that it really works!



DMIC

The children are continuing to work really well on their Maths problem solving and they are solving some very tricky problems! We thought we would share a few of the problems we have been working on and you can try them out with your child at home. How many different ways can you solve these problems? Now there's a challenge!


Maddox, Luca, Thisev, Lily and Hayzel are Milk Monitors in this story. They had 100 cartons of milk. They gave lots of cartons out. There were 24 left. How many cartons did they give out?

Image result for kandinsky circles

The children were creating Kandinsky circle art.
Each child had 73 circles to colour in. On the first day, each child coloured in 27 circles. How many circles were there left to colour in?

Koru Week 4 News

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Week 4

Wow, almost half-way through Term 3 already!
The provocation of 'Change' has filled our recent weeks with a busy variety of topics. Some of them have been about the change of temperature (freezing versus heated objects), colour and growth.

Look out for ordering your child's Calendar Art, these are great for Christmas gifts.  This too has filled the afternoons with expression through creativity and lots of hard work.

Our new outdoor space is beginning to show more colour and plant life with each passing week.  We are still on the look out for any large planters or containers for the transfer of seedlings.  A big thank you for the donated containers and baby plants so far.
Creating at Discovery Time

Focussing at writing time

Working as a team at Discovery Time

Skip and Bounce handwriting

Making potions

Literacy time

Calendar art preparation

"Look at my handwriting, Kristika!"

More team work


Caring for our plants

Proud of our new hanging baskets

Seed sprouting experiment

Friends showing We Care

Preparing for the seed sprouting experiment

Quiet time in the Chill Zone

A Discovery Time challenge


Roctopus fun!

Mindfulness activities


Experimenting with vinegar and baking soda

Look at our amazing volcano!

The result of changing runny yogurt into frozen yogurt - yum!



Experimenting with colour mixing

More experimenting with colours

Who would have thought you could change the colour of a flower? How does this happen?

Showing We Care for our learning spaces

Showing We Care by tidying the book shelves

Showing We Care by stacking the chairs

Showing We Care by cleaning and tidying the children's teaching station

Creating our very own experiments with food colouring

Preparing the pots for seed planting


Planting the seeds (sunflowers)

Making truffles: what sort of change is this?


Kauri Whānau Weekly Update: Term 3 Week 4

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It was exciting to see so many fabulous Cantamath projects arrive at school on Tuesday. It was obvious that many children had spent hours investigating and creating as they explored the maths within their chosen topic. Our hub display was up very briefly as we needed to reclaim the space for learning. Next week we will set up a display of all Cantamath projects in the hall foyer that will be open for viewing from Thursday through until Friday late morning. You are welcome to pop in before, after or during school to take a look. We have spoken to a few children about mathematical enhancements that need to be made to their projects if they are to go through to Cantamath. These projects will need to be back at school by Wednesday.

Ski trip

We are now just three weeks away from our ski trip to Mt Hutt and it is time to get started with preparation lessons at school and ensuring everyone has access to appropriate clothing.

It is essential that everyone fills in the ski trip form. So far half of the hub have filled this out. Please complete it now if you have yet to do so.


Circle time 

Every Friday we have circle time, where we discuss a wide range of topics that impact well-being. Last week and this week we have been looking at happiness. This video has been very thought-provoking.

BYOD

Part of the BYOD agreement is that students bring their device, fully charged, every day. If your child has a BYOD please remind them to bring them.

Home-Learning


  • A few children will need to do some work on their speech writing over the weekend. The main group need to have their introduction and first 'filling' paragraphs completed by Monday. Jenny's group need their introductory paragraph and their three topic sentences completed.
  • The other home learning focus is Maths-Whizz. A minimum of three progressions should have been achieved for the week.


Photo Gallery

A couple of learning highlights in the past week have been programming our Bee-Bots as part of our inquiry into self-driven cars and starting our next PE focus on both yoga and learning how to play korfball.