Important Camp Information

 

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

What a fun filled Friday we had with so many creative costumes filling the Hub with colour and excitement for the Animal Dress Up Day. By the looks of the huge amount of donated goods and money, the SPCA will be happy, too! A great way for tamariki to show We Make a Difference. Thank you for your support.

 

Your tamariki should have today arrived home with the gear list for the Living Springs Camp in their school bag. We spent time this week going over this list, the programme for camp, and the Social Story; hopefully, you have been getting lots of excited chatter about it all at home too! We did a quick countdown with the students today at Team Hui, and worked out that there are just 7 school days before camp! Of course, we have Easter, the school holidays, a teacher-only day, and ANZAC day all between now and camp, too, but the excitement is definitely building!

 

We have attached here all of the things mentioned above: the camp gear list, and the camp Social Story, which includes the camp programme. Please go through these together with your tamariki, as the more they are prepared and the more questions we can answer before the school holidays, the more successful their camp experience is likely to be.

 

Finally, thank you to the 85% of whānau who have already filled out the Health and Medical Consent form. Click here for the form. We would really appreciate you filling this in as soon as possible as it gives us a clear picture of the needs of the children on camp and enables us to plan and support them while on camp.

 

Have a great weekend, everybody. Kia pai ngā rā whakatā.

 

The Pōhutukawa Team

Pōhutukawa Update, Term 1, Week 5

 

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

We are rocketing toward the end of the term now, with our Wonder Project finishing up next week. A massive thank you to our amazing ambassadors Kate, Darren, Kylie, and Richard. The expertise and knowledge that you brought to the Wonder project were invaluable and engaging and got our students excited about a future STEM career. The project will culminate in the final launch of our bottle rockets on Monday next week. That will also enable us to switch our focus to the upcoming Living Springs Camp, and we will be unpacking that with the tamariki over the final 2 weeks of Term 1. More on our camp below, as well as some other important updates.

Living Springs Camp

As mentioned above, Living Springs Camp will be the focus for us over the last 2 weeks of the term. Next week the students will be going over the gear list, sleeping arrangements, activities, and the camp programme, amongst other things. The programme is challenging, stimulating, and safe. The activities include archery tag,  zipline, swimming (heated pool), group initiative challenges, low ropes course, bouldering wall, orienteering, animal survival and recreational activities. 

 

All children will be well supervised and all risks well managed in accordance with our Camp Safety Action Plan and the Living Springs Risk Management Strategies. It will be an exciting learning opportunity for your child, as well as a chance to live our kete values outside of the classroom. The children will be sleeping in carpeted bunk rooms, which can be heated if required. As well as regular meals, there are two snack times during the day. 

Thank you to the people who have already filled in the Health and Medical Consent Form that is required for each child to attend camp. The deadline for this form to be completed is Thursday, April 6.

ASB GetWise Financial Literacy Programme

Last week we welcomed the ASB GetWise programme to kura, which taught tamariki about how to become "cash clever". Through the workshops tamariki learned the fundamentals of money in four different stages - from identifying needs and wants and learning to save, right through to budgeting - giving them a solid foundation to build on. It would be good to reflect on what they took away from these workshops at home, too. He taonga te ako, the treasure is learning.

Kapa Haka and Te Reo Māori

It was fantastic to see Kapa Haka practice a couple of numbers for us at Celebration Assembly today. You can catch a video of the performance here. Whaea Cath Milio continues to be a fantastic kaiako for our tamariki who get so much from their kapa haka sessions both in terms of their performance skills, and also with Cath's wonderful use of "teachable moments" to teach the students some te reo Māori, or explain the purakau, stories, behind the waiata they are learning. This term we have decided use this time to teach te reo Māori tamariki who do not attend kapa haka, so that everyone gets the chance to learn about te ao Māori, the Māori world at the same time.

Term 2 Winter Sports 

Next week we will also be giving the students the options for Winter Sport, which begins in term 2. Everyone in Pōhutukawa will do a sport of their choosing next term. They can either choose to do competitive or non-competitive football, netball, or hockey. If students choose to be competitive, there will be a trialing process and teams will be selected to participate in the interschool competition. Non-competitive players will learn the basics of their chosen sport in a fun way at school with their classmates. It would be a great idea to have a chat with your tamariki at home about the sports they would like to do, and whether they would enjoy to be competitive or non-competitive. Any questions, please let us know.

Pōhutukawa Update, Term 1, Week 5

 

Ngā mihi e te whānau, warm greetings to you all,

5 weeks down and 5 to go in the term! We have had another busy, eventful week in the Pōhutukawa team. Reading groups have now started and everyone has been allocated a Reading teacher, which is the final piece of our regular daily routine. We encourage you to take some time to ask your tamariki to show you what they are now able to access through their Reading Google Classroom and Reading Site; a great way to keep the reading mileage up at home. Yesterday and today we practiced our emergency evacuation drill. We were very proud of the tamariki who were exemplary in how they left the Hub immediately in a calm, quiet manner. Tino pai rawa atu. Please read on for some updates and news from the past couple of weeks.

Swimming Sports

Congratulations to all of the participants who embraced our kete value 'We Love Challenge' and entered the Swimming Sports. The excitement was palpable in the team, and the tamariki should be proud of themselves for having the courage to step up and jump in to such a competitive event! We hope you enjoy some photos, and keep an eye out for a movie from the afternoon... coming soon. A special mention to those who have qualified for Zones next Friday. Nau mai te wero!

Wonder Project - Blast off!

As part of our concept of Innovation for 2023, this term our Inquiry topic is rocketry! Specifically, designing, building and launching a water rocket. The Wonder Project is Engineering New Zealand’s free programme for schools, designed to get young Kiwis excited about science, technology, engineering, and STEM.

This week students have been exploring what rockets need to get off the ground by watching informative videos, having discussions, and making gliders. We have also been learning about the health and safety rules for launches. We're looking forward to Monday with our Ambassadors to launch the first test flights and play with variables.

We are still in need of 1.5 litre plastic bottle and ice cream containers to use to build the rockets. If you are able to supply a bottle or a container for our project that would be "wonder"ful.

Living Springs Camp Parent Help

Planning is underway for Pōhutukawa's Term 2 camp at Living Springs (1 - 3 May).  If you are able to be a parent helper at the camp, please complete the online form by clicking here.  Responses will need to be collected by Wednesday, 8 March. We require the help of approximately 15 parents if the camp is to go ahead. If you are able to help, your role will involve direct supervision of groups of children (inside/outside activities, evening bunk room duty, setting tables, supporting children during the bushwalk into camp), serving meals, operating the dishwasher, helping with the cleaning of all areas used at the end of the stay. You will need to be able to stay the entire camp. As the cost of parent helpers is covered in the camp fee, we will only take the necessary number of parent helpers in order to minimise costs. If we have more volunteers than we need, we will select first based on the skills needed and then names will be drawn from a ballot.  Finally, if you are selected as a helper we'll require Police vetting and relevant health and emergency contact information from you.

We're looking forward to your responses! Ngā mihi mō tō tautoko, thanks so much for your support. Enjoy your weekend.

The Pōhutukawa Team