Kōwhai News Term 2 Week 5

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Kia ora e te whānau / Talofa lava,

Happy Samoan Language Week! / Manuia le vaiaso o le Gagana Sāmoa!

We have enjoyed learning a few Samoan phrases and greetings this week. Did you know that there is an ancient pyramid in Sāmoa?

Discovery

We have been continuing to do a lot of purposeful Learning Through Play activities such as Stop Motion Animation, making our own Top Trump cards and creating world flags.










Mask Reminder

Please remember to send your child to school with a named mask each day, as we have now run out of child-sized masks. Please also encourage them to re-use and look after their masks to make sure we are staying environmentally friendly.

Frost Dragon Spelling Book

We sent this home last term as something you can use to practise reading and spelling at home with your child. It is a valuable resource for revisiting what they have been learning at school. Please make sure to use it when you can.

Please contact your child's homegroup teacher if you would like to have another copy or would like information on which stage your child is at for Structured Literacy.

Junior School Cross Country - Tuesday 14th June

Some important points to remember:

  • Parents/Caregivers are welcome to join us at this event on June 14th.
  • The afternoon will start at 1:00 p.m., with the oldest year group levels running first, on through to the New Entrants towards the end of the afternoon.
  • Practices will be taking place regularly between now and the Cross Country event: if you wish your child to be exempt from practices due to health reasons, please email your child's HG teacher as soon as possible to let them know.
  • Please send your child to school in appropriate footwear for daily running practices.
  • Please ensure that your child has their water bottle at school each day, including on the day of the event.
  • Children will be able to wear their house T-shirts on the day of the Cross Country
  • The postponement date for our Cross Country is Monday, June 20th.

Thank you for your support and we look forward to seeing you on the day of the Junior School Cross Country.

Junior Celebration Assembly

We had our second Junior Celebration Assembly last Friday. Congratulations to the students who received their Citizen of the Week and Kete certificates!




We wish you a fun and relaxing long weekend. 

Fa'afetai lava,

The Kōwhai Team.

Kauri Whānau Weekly Update: Term 2 Week 5

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 In this post

  • Winter sport begins
  • Cross country video
  • Cashmere High open day
  • Ski Day Term 3 - parent help request
  • Cheese Roll fundraiser
  • VelocityKarts photos

Winter Sport

Our local competitive winter sports programme gets underway this Thursday. Many thanks to the parents who have put up their hands to be involved. This opportunity could not go ahead without you. 

Cross Country

Our cross country event took place three weeks ago, with many children really taking on the challenge and pushing to give their very best. Well done to our zone competitors who gave their all at Hansens Park last week.

This video of the school event has been put together by Keira from our media team.



Cashmere High Open Day

Cashmere High School has their open day on June 9th. Check out this timeline for 2023 enrolments.

Ski Day Term 3

We are very much looking forward to taking the team to Mt Hutt for a day in the snow, especially after Covid cancelled this trip last year. We are all booked in for Thursday, September 1st. If you would like to join us on this trip as a helper, either on skis or on foot, please fill in this form. 

Cheese Rolls

With a number of outdoor trips this year, we need to raise some funds. Later this term we will be rolling out our very popular cheese rolls. Order forms will come out next week. The children are the workforce for this fundraiser, with guidance from a small group of parents. Our making day is scheduled for Wednesday, June 29th. If you are able to help by supplying equipment, ordering or picking up ingredients or helping on the day, please fill in this form.

VelocityKarts

Lots of fun was had at VelocityKarts in week 3. The highlight for many was the thrill of the blokarting, with human foosball a close second. It was fabulous to see our tamariki embracing this new challenge with huge smiles and whoops of joy. A huge thanks to the parents who joined us on these days. 























Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto Newsletter Rāmere (Friday) 27 May, 2022

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Principal's Patch

Kia ora koutou

What a frosty start it was today, and what a lovely day it turned into!


We are getting back into a routine of having regular assemblies again each week. It is really great to be able to be rebuilding our sense of family and community, after having spent so long working just within individual hubs.

Whānau Hui and Hāngi - Wed 22 June from 5pm

Please make sure you get this date into your diaries! At 5pm on Wednesday 22nd June we will be having a Whānau Hui. We will meet with a welcome in the hall from Te Whānau Mahi Tahi (masks on please) and then families will be invited to go to a hub and participate in some learning activities about Matariki. At 6:15pm, you are invited to come back to the hall and we will finish the hui with a performance from our Pōhutukawa and Kōwhai kapa haka rōpū. 
Those who are not staying for hāngi will be able to go home around 6:30pm, whilst those who have ordered hāngi will stay on. 

Hāngi order forms will be available next week. There will only be 120 serves of Hāngi available, so if you want to order hāngi you will need to get your order in quickly.

New Entrant Enrolments

Enrolments for the rest of the year - Do you, or one of your neighbours, have a pre-schooler who is turning 5 and wanting to start school this year? If you haven't yet enrolled them, please pop into the office and get an enrolment form, or download one from our website and fill it out and send it into the office, as soon as possible. We need to be able to accurately predict enrolment numbers to ensure we have the appropriate staffing ready.

Ngā mihi nui
Sandy Hastings
Tumuaki - Principal

Term 2 Dates

Wednesday 25 May - Zone Cross Country at Hansen's Park
Wednesday 25 May - BOT Meeting - 5.30-7.30PM in te Rūma Kaimahi (the Staff Room)
Wednesday 25 May - PTA Meeting - 7.30-9.30PM in the Green Room
Monday 6 June - Queen's Birthday - School closed
Wednesday 22 June - Whānau Hui & Hangi
Friday 24 June - Matariki - School closed
Friday 8 July - Last day of Term 2

Citizen of the Week

Mitch Welch - Year 6

Mitch, you make a difference through your actions. You are a great communicator and show that we can all work together to be successful. Your kind and caring nature shines through in your compassion for others and in how you take care of our environment at Beckenham. "Nā koe he rereke te Ao", the world is different because of you!

School Notices

Winter Bugs

As we head into Winter, and in a Covid environment, we see an increase in sickness, including Head colds. If your child is unwell please keep them at home to recover. If a child becomes unwell at school during the day, we will contact whānau to arrange for the child to be collected. The Covid-19  practices we have in place will also support our school community with remaining as well as possible over winter.

Long COVID in children

Long COVID describes the symptoms that continue or develop after the initial COVID-19 symptoms.
 
This is usually longer than 12 weeks after a person is first infected.
 
Most people with COVID-19 recover completely and return to normal health. People usually recover from COVID-19 after two to six weeks and many make a full recovery within 12 weeks.
 
KidsHealth has provided some useful information about COVID-19 symptoms in children which you can see summarised here (and read more in the links below):
  • for most children with mild COVID-19, they will be back to normal within a week. A small number of children might take up to two weeks to feel back to normal
  • most children with COVID-19 will have a mild illness and get better quickly
  • for a child or young person to have a diagnosis of a post-COVID-19 condition (long COVID) their symptoms need to be having an impact on their everyday functioning and cannot be explained by another condition
  • nearly all children will fully recover and return to normal health
  • scientists and health professionals are still learning about long COVID, but studies so far have found:
    • children are much less likely to have long COVID than adults
    • children recover faster than adults
    • it mostly affects children over the age of 10 – it's very rare in younger children.
Further information is also available on the KidsHealth website, including caring for a child with COVID-19.

Masks Reminder

At Beckenham we are still seeing the benefits of continued mask wearing and we are asking everyone  - staff, whānau and students (Year 3/4 and older) to continue to wear masks when indoors at school

We know that Cashmere High School has had another peak of cases in the past week, and with many families having children at both schools, we just want to continue to be as safe as we can.

We no longer have any child-sized masks available at school, so we do need you to send your child to school with a named mask each day, please.


Update from SIEPP about Roadworks on Eastern Tce

We received this email from SIEPP this week to share with you:
I want to update you on the works we are currently doing on Eastern Terrace with the water main renewal. Works have been taking longer than we had initially planned there due to having to deal with existing contaminated ground in the road where we are installing the pipe. Currently, we are up to the Fisher Ave end of Beckenham Park and are continuing to install the pipe towards Tennyson Ave. We are now coming up to a section of the road that has been identified as having traces of asbestos within it. Due to the health risks of asbestos, we need to follow strict precautions while excavating the material that has been identified as at risk. While completing these works we will need to set up an asbestos containment zone within our site. Anyone working within the at-risk area will be required to wear full hazmat suits with face masks and gloves. We will have decontamination zones to ensure that all of the material is contained within our work site.

I just wanted to let you know that this work is upcoming so that the school community understands what is happening when they see it commencing. The work we are doing is very low risk as there has only been a small amount of asbestos traces found in the ground and it can be easily contained. However, we must follow all of the required protocols for obvious reasons. We will put black polythene around our fences to make it harder for pedestrians to see in but will also have asbestos warning signs on the fences.

The asbestos area is from the end of Beckenham Park through to Fisher Ave and we plan on doing this work for aproximately 3 weeks.

Apologies from Nic in the Coffee Cart

She won't be available this coming Monday 30 May

PTA News

Last orders for peanut butter TODAY! 

There are 3 Products available:

750g Super Crunchy Peanut Butter
750g Smooth Peanut Butter
500g Everything Butter

Jars cost $11 each $11 a jar (we get $3). 

Please click the link (before midnight tonight) to get your jar!

Community Notices

(Notices placed here are contingent on space and do not reflect the views or opinions of the school.)

FluTracking NZ

With the relaxing of COVID-19 control measures and the reopening of borders, we’re expecting a resurgence of flu in 2022.

We need more participants around New Zealand to help us track the impact of both flu and COVID-19 in our local community.

Please consider giving 20 seconds a week to reply to a survey and help NZ track flu and COVID-19. In return, you will receive a weekly report and a map of respiratory illness in our community!
Click on this link to find out more and sign up!
https://info.flutracking.net/

Thanks for your time and support.

Flutracking New Zealand
https://info.flutracking.net/
Public Health Group
Population Health and Prevention
Ministry of Health


Rhyme and Reason


Jemma and Nick Smithson, (parents of Bryn (Kowhai) and Elsie (Kahikatea)) are excited to share with the community the opening of their new preschool Rhyme and Reason in Opawa. Community open days are scheduled for both Saturday and Sunday this weekend, so come on down to view their renovated and newly fitted our Early Childhood Centre.

Parliament and its grounds are a place for everyone to share and enjoy, and we are excited to share a creative way for our tamariki to connect to Parliament.

Tell any tamariki you know that Parliament is putting the call out for wild, fun, and creative ideas for how the Parliamentary grounds could be an even more welcoming place!

With this new activity, we want to know what tamariki would do if they were in charge! Would they add another playground? Or cover the lawn with pink flowers? Or maybe add in more statues of people or things that inspire them!

Bring a vision to life and encourage them to design their own Parliament grounds using either the template on the other side of this sheet or freestyle it completely with their own ideas! Your work will be displayed in Parliament and shared with all who work and visit here – and who knows you may even get a special shout out from the Speaker!

Encourage any tamariki you know to take part – it’s easy!

Just follow this link, and use the template provided or create their own design.  Please send their mahi by Thursday 23 June 2022 to the Education Team at: Education Team, Level 11, TSB Building, 147 Lambton Quay, or by emailing to DesignParliamentGrounds@parliament.govt.nz.

We look forward to seeing what they create!

Koru Team Term 2 Week 3

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Kia ora, e te whanau,

We hope this finds you and your family all happy and healthy at home. We have had a busy first 3 weeks of Term 2 and all our newbies are settling in so well! We love seeing all their smiling faces at drop off time and enjoy seeing them cheerily say their goodbyes. We appreciate your support in helping your child become independent at carrying their own school bag and unpacking their bag when they arrive at school each morning.

Structured Literacy:

We have been enjoying hearing about all the practice children are involved in, with their Structured Literacy at home. Thank you so much for your support with this. It is making a huge difference with the children's progress through the Structured Literacy stages. Just a reminder that children who are just starting their Structured Literacy journey will be bringing home a few letter sounds to practise at home and these will be added to, as they progress. These can be used to practise the pure sounds the letters make and then can be blended together to form words. A word about 'heart words': these are words that cannot be sounded out, simply need to be learned 'by heart' and will also start coming home for children to practise reading and writing with you at home. Once children are proficient in segmenting and blending the first 8 sounds together, and know the first five heart words, they will start bringing home decodable books to read with you at home. The ability to segment and blend sounds together is paramount to children's success at decoding words, so this stage of learning may take longer for some learners. It is very exciting to see the children's progress take off once they have accomplished this skill. The next step is for the learner to be able to write the sounds they hear in words and we do lots of practice with this within our lessons. This would be a great home learning activity once children are secure in the sounds they are bringing home.

Please make sure your child brings back their folder, with their sound pack and books inside, to school every day, as these are used in the Structured Literacy lessons. The sound packs are also added to as the children learn new sounds and heart words.

Identifying the correct letter for a sound given, using our cute character cards.

Practising writing, then reading their sounds...
then writing a dictated sentence.
Playing 'Jump' with some of the Stage 1 letter sounds: "Jump on the letter that makes the /m/ sound."
Forming 'consonant, vowel, consonant' words: beginning sound...
middle sound...
...and final sound
...then segmenting and blending to read
Covering up and segmenting to spell and write: beginning sound...
middle sound...
and final sound. 
We have been working hard in our maths sessions to solve problems.

Our Learning Through Play topic for this fortnight is 'Construction'. The children have been exploring a variety of equipment for use in their constructions. 

Using shapes
Experimenting with balancing and stacking cardboard tubes
Wow, what a tall tower!!
...and, crash!
Demonstrating 'We Get There Together' to build towers...
and more towers...
constructing puzzles together...
and building mini worlds using blocks and animals.....
and using the duplo.
Last Friday we were lucky to have some Kauri students (Years 7 and 8) help set up a fun obstacle course for us outside.
We had to balance over the seesaw then roly poly on the mat...
and zig zag in and out of the cones.
...and, of couse, we just LOVE Kate coming to teach coding in Digitech each week!

We are very excited to have our Junior Park Explorers outing coming up. Please see this post that was sent out on Tuesday for more information. If you are able to be one of our parent helpers, please email your child's Home Group teacher. We are still needing some more parent helpers for each outing.

Elizabeth's and Nicola's Home Groups' outing is on Monday 30th May 9.30 - 11.45 a.m.
Georgia's Home Group's outing is on Tuesday 31st May 9.30 - 11.45 a.m.

We hope you have a lovely weekend together.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
The Koru Teachers: Elizabeth, Georgia, Nicola, Stacey, Jeanette and Amy. 

Koru Team Term 2 Week 3

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Kia ora, e te whanau,

We hope this finds you and your family all happy and healthy at home. We have had a busy first 3 weeks of Term 2 and all our newbies are settling in so well! We love seeing all their smiling faces at drop off time and enjoy seeing them cheerily say their goodbyes. We appreciate your support in helping your child become independent at carrying their own school bag and unpacking their bag when they arrive at school each morning.

Structured Literacy:

We have been enjoying hearing about all the practice children are involved in, with their Structured Literacy at home. Thank you so much for your support with this. It is making a huge difference with the children's progress through the Structured Literacy stages. Just a reminder that children who are just starting their Structured Literacy journey will be bringing home a few letter sounds to practise at home and these will be added to, as they progress. These can be used to practise the pure sounds the letters make and then can be blended together to form words. A word about 'heart words': these are words that cannot be sounded out, simply need to be learned 'by heart' and will also start coming home for children to practise reading and writing with you at home. Once children are proficient in segmenting and blending the first 8 sounds together, and know the first five heart words, they will start bringing home decodable books to read with you at home. The ability to segment and blend sounds together is paramount to children's success at decoding words, so this stage of learning may take longer for some learners. It is very exciting to see the children's progress take off once they have accomplished this skill. The next step is for the learner to be able to write the sounds they hear in words and we do lots of practice with this within our lessons. This would be a great home learning activity once children are secure in the sounds they are bringing home.

Please make sure your child brings back their folder, with their sound pack and books inside, to school every day, as these are used in the Structured Literacy lessons. The sound packs are also added to as the children learn new sounds and heart words.

Identifying the correct letter for a sound given, using our cute character cards.

Practising writing, then reading their sounds...
then writing a dictated sentence.
Playing 'Jump' with some of the Stage 1 letter sounds: "Jump on the letter that makes the /m/ sound."
Forming 'consonant, vowel, consonant' words: beginning sound...
middle sound...
...and final sound
...then segmenting and blending to read
Covering up and segmenting to spell and write: beginning sound...
middle sound...
and final sound. 
We have been working hard in our maths sessions to solve problems.

Our Learning Through Play topic for this fortnight is 'Construction'. The children have been exploring a variety of equipment for use in their constructions. 

Using shapes
Experimenting with balancing and stacking cardboard tubes
Wow, what a tall tower!!
...and, crash!
Demonstrating 'We Get There Together' to build towers...
and more towers...
constructing puzzles together...
and building mini worlds using blocks and animals.....
and using the duplo.
Last Friday we were lucky to have some Kauri students (Years 7 and 8) help set up a fun obstacle course for us outside.
We had to balance over the seesaw then roly poly on the mat...
and zig zag in and out of the cones.
...and, of couse, we just LOVE Kate coming to teach coding in Digitech each week!

We are very excited to have our Junior Park Explorers outing coming up. Please see this post that was sent out on Tuesday for more information. If you are able to be one of our parent helpers, please email your child's Home Group teacher. We are still needing some more parent helpers for each outing.

Elizabeth's and Nicola's Home Groups' outing is on Monday 30th May 9.30 - 11.45 a.m.
Georgia's Home Group's outing is on Tuesday 31st May 9.30 - 11.45 a.m.

We hope you have a lovely weekend together.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou,
The Koru Teachers: Elizabeth, Georgia, Nicola, Stacey, Jeanette and Amy.