Pōhutukawa Update, Term 4, Week 8

 

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

As this is the last team newsletter of the year, we'd like to take the opportunity to say a big thank you, nga mihi nui, for your tautoko, support throughout 2024. Mā tātou kātoa te waka e hoe, we all row the waka together. We've all really enjoyed the year, and as always it's such a pleasure seeing our students develop self-awareness as learners, and grow in confidence, independence and maturity. We wish our Year 6 students all the best as they head into their intermediate years, and we are looking forward to seeing our Year 5 cohort flourishing in their role as tuakana in Pōhutukawa next year. Although we're not quite there yet, we wish you all a wonderful summer break. The final school newsletter for the year will be sent out next week with information regarding the final few days of school. Please do read on for some updates from the team, and information about an upcoming celebration next Friday here at kura for the Pōhutukawa students.

Navigating the Journey

This week we concluded our Navigating the Journey lessons. We concluded with our last theme of Staying Safe. Students learned about and discussed factors that influence personal safety online, and we identified together skills to ensure safe online use and strategies, and how to respond positively to challenging situations. The Navigating the journey Te takahi i te ara resources use the metaphor of navigation to describe a person’s lifetime journey of  physical, social, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of hauora (wellbeing). Thank you for your support with this by discussing this with your tamariki at home.

Cycle Safe

It has been great to have such miharo, awesome weather over the past week for our Year 6 tamariki to get out there on their bikes and embrace the challenge with the Cycle Safe team from the CCC. It's always such a beneficial programme for our Year 6's to do to learn the benefits of cycling and how to ride with confidence and be road-wise. the programme will continue next week and conclude on Tuesday.

End-of-Year Celebration Picnic

The students have been planning in groups of 2, 3 or 4 what they would like to bring to our picnic next Friday. We have asked them to ensure the people in their group agree on what to bring, and thank you for double-checking at home, too. Even though there have been ambitious plans of fruit platters, and cheeseboards, simple is best, so thanks for your support in ensuring that students bring something small to share with their "picnic group", or enjoy themselves.

It is a normal school day, and we have our Final Celebration Assembly in the morning, so please ensure that your child is wearing their school uniform as normal. Thank you checking that tamariki are not bringing lollies, chocolates, or any drinks except water. We will be supplying them with an ice-block as a thirst quencher.

Finally, our picnic time will be from 10:50 am until 12:40 pm, and we will have a normal lunchtime break in the afternoon. If you think your child will need some extra food, please send them with a lunchbox as normal.

Library Books and Sports Uniforms

As we head towards the end of the year on December 17th, it's a good time to remind your tamariki to return any library books they still have issued, or sports uniforms that are sitting at home and need to be returned. The Lost Property on the library deck is where unnamed property ends up, and this is also a place to check as it will be taken to ther Salvation Army at the end of the year