Kia ora e te whānau,

It feels very hard to believe that here we all are, at the very end of the 2022 school year. Your children have all settled so beautifully into life at school this year, and their learning has been impressive, to say the least. 

It's been very exciting for us as teachers, and you too, we're sure, on the home front, to witness the social, emotional and physical progress, as well as the academic learning that the children have all made since starting at school. What a wonderful group of tamariki they are! We're going to miss them terribly over the long summer holiday, and will be looking forward to seeing them back again (mostly as members of the Kahikatea team), with their beautiful smiles at the start of next year.

Several of you have requested support with your children's continued learning over the summer holiday, and although the Learning At Home site is no longer accessible through the Beckenham te Kura website, we have found a way of providing you with the link to the site which you were able to access throughout the Red and Orange Traffic Light settings. We do hope that you find this helpful with its range of links, from Phonological Awareness activities to Structured Literacy activities, from Maths to waiata, and there's also an area on the dropdown menu called 'Stories' where your child is able to choose a picture book read by one of the Koru teachers!

Here is the link which takes you directly to the Koru Learning At Home site. We really hope that you find this valuable, as well as lots of fun too!

Final few days:

Many thanks to those parents who have offered to help with some of the cleaning, sorting and tidying tasks that we have listed on the whiteboard outside Hangere this week. We really appreciate your support at this very busy time of the year! There are still a few jobs we'd love some help with:

• cleaning and packaging our Skip and Bouce whiteboard sets
• sorting, tidying and cleaning the games and equipment shelves in both Hangere and Kōmanawa
• sorting, tidying and cleaning in the kitchen area (tote trays, cupboards and drawers, etc.)
• sorting the Lego table and the Duplo container
• cleaning and sorting the sandpit toys
• sweeping, cleaning, sorting and tidying in the shed

Please do ensure that you check that you have all of your child's belongings, before leaving on Thursday:

• all clothing, including sunhat, polar fleece and socks (we have several pairs and single socks, as well as T-shirts and polar fleeces)
• their lunchbox and drink bottle (there are often drink bottles left behind on the last day)
• your child's folders, which will include their books and art works from throughout the year.

Kia ora, e te whānau,

This term continues to fly past at an incredible rate! Here we are at the end of Week 7, and we've had another week filled with new and exciting learning opportunities!

Art Gallery Visit

On Monday we visited the Christchurch Art Gallery. For many of our tamariki, this was their very first experience in this lovely building. They waited so patiently for the bus to arrive and Bianca, the Gallery Educator, welcomed us inside when we arrived. She helped everyone find a cubby for their bags and then proceeded to guide us around the gallery. We stopped and listened carefully while she asked questions and explained about the interesting and beautiful exhibit displays. After our tour, we returned to the art classroom, and Bianca showed us how to create our very own clay masterpiece. We would love to give a huge shout out to all of the wonderful parent helpers who came along to support our tamariki on the bus and throughout the gallery. Thank you so very much. Without your support, our Art Gallery experience would not have been possible.

Water Play has continued to be a popular theme throughout the past fortnight, with the children conducting investigations using a wide range of items. Will they sink or float? This theme has also 'filtered' into the sandpit, the children working in teams to create some impressive structures and water way systems.  

Whānau Picnic

It was wonderful to see so many of our Beckenham whānau at the school picnic event on Wednesday.  Many children enjoyed the fabulous new playground equipment.   Kapa Haka performances were enjoyed by enthusiastic audiences and the Student Council organised an awesome range of games such as the Disc Drop, Nerf Challenge and Balloon Pop.

Please remember to continue searching for wayward reading books which may have found their way down the back of the couch or under the backseat of your car! We will continue with our literacy groups next week, but a reminder that books are no longer going home. You will find some games and activities in your child's Literacy folder instead  

Transition visits to Kahikatea 

This week and next week all of our Koru children are taking time in the afternoons to visit the Kahikatea hub. These visits provide a fantastic opportunity for our tamariki to make connections with next year's teachers and become familiar with their new learning spaces.

Holiday fun:

Please note that there will be one final Blog post sent out prior to the final day of school this year, and in that post, we hope to be able to include a variety of links, which you might find fun and helpful over the summer holidays. We'll have some Literacy links, some Maths links, and perhaps a few links to the teachers reading favourite picture books for the children to enjoy!

Reminders: