Kahikatea Newsletter T3 Week 6

Parenting Week

‘Strategies to help your family through the difficult times and enjoy being together’

‘Neighbourhood Trust is proud to bring you Parenting Week here in Canterbury. It’s happening from the 9th to 19th September and has around 30 events for any stage of parenting. They have a great line-up of experts including Mike King, Pio Terei, Dr Sue Bagshaw, Jenny Hale and Jax Hamilton, all right here.

 Their facebook page: Parenting Week, Christchurch www.facebook.com/parentingweekchch has all the events listed and more information.

Toys

We are looking for toys that can move or toys that can talk. We are starting a technology unit and would love students to bring any toys, that can move or talk, to school. Please could these be named and brought to school as of Monday week 7. As part of this unit we are going to be using the new school Bee bots. Please chat to your children as the week goes on to see what they have done with our new school resource. 

Book week Dress up

What a fun day we have all had! It was so lovely to see everyone who dressed up in their favourite book character. Thank you to each and everyone at home who helped to make the children look as fabulous as they did. 

PTA Readathon

Thank you to all the whānau members who have supported our students with their Readathon challenge. It has been lovely to see how many children have been excited about reading over the last fortnight. As teachers we have loved the enthusiasm that we are seeing from so many readers in our hub. Please remember that cards and money are due back to school on Friday 6th September. 

Keeping Ourselves Safe

Coming up in week 8 we are working alongside Constable Ross to understand what it means to keep ourselves safe.

Sydenham Cricket Club

During week 5 we were fortunate to have Sydenham Cricket Club take each home space for a 30 minute cricket session. The children enjoyed learning some basic cricket skills. 

Talent Show

Thank you to all the family members who are helping support the children who are getting ready to audition for the school Talent Quest. Music has been sent home this weekend for our performers to practice. Amber and Lisa will be holding auditions during Monday and Tuesday lunchtimes this coming week. 

Kahikatea Newsletter T3 Week 4

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.

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?

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?

Kahikatea Newsletter T3 Week 2

Calendar Art - Kandinsky
We are taking inspiration from Kandinsky for our Calendar Art.  This is an important fundraiser run by our PTA so look out for order forms coming home soon.
 
Warm Clothing - Thank You
Throughout the day we go in and out of the hub to get fresh air, to do our fitness and to take our breaks for morning tea and lunch.
Very often, we  experience very changeable weather so we appreciate you sending your child to school with an extra layer of warm clothing, such as thermals or a water/windproof jacket.

Lunches - Thank You
For providing full and filling lunches each day. Lunch eating is actively supervised and we are genuinely impressed by the delicious lunches our tamariki are eating. Sandwiches, wraps, buns  (carbohydrates) and protein (nuts, meats, dairy) and of course vegetables and fruit are essential lunchbox items.

Hygiene
Teachers are actively monitoring daily handwashing routines, especially before lunch eating. We also remind our tamariki to always wash their hands after using the toilet. It is particularly important during these winter months that we are all mindful of maintaining basic hygiene.