Term One

Well Autumn is well and truly here, the days are getting shorter and mornings are chilly! It’s almost time to start lighting the fire again.

Kitch Doctor

The whole community is still deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Kitch Doctor. Kitch was not only the devoted husband and father to our Lucy, Trey, and Braxton but also such a proud supporter of our school and community. It was very rare if we had a school event that Kitch didn’t attend. He loved to spend time with all the children and would come and help us with our kapahaka by playing the guitar and singing with the tamariki.  He will be missed by us all but I know he will be still watching and supporting us from amongst the stars.

The staff and children walked out to the road to wave goodbye to Kitch on his final drive from Lochinver last Friday. 

Bike Taupo

Cath Oldfield will be out at school with her bikes on the 1st of April at 9 am.  Cath teaches safe riding skills for all aged children and we are lucky that she has found some time in her calendar to come out to see us. Children are allowed to bring their own bikes and helmets but Cath will have a van full just in case. Feel free to come along in the morning. Preschoolers are most welcome.

 

Playgroup 

Our weekly Thursday playgroup has been a huge success this term. We have around 5 mums coming out each week with their pre-schoolers and babies.

We have also had Bae Boocock attending from REAP with her van full of toys for the children to play with. Bae is new in her ECE roll at REAP but comes with a lifetime of ECE knowledge from teaching in pre-schools and kindergartens.

 

 

 

COVID

We are very lucky that we are the only school in Taupo that has not had a Covid-19 case at school yet. (fingers and toes crossed please). We do have cases in our community so need to be careful around sanitation, space, and mask-wearing when needed. We have thousands of boxes of masks and hand sanitize if you would like some. Please just ask.

HALL

Thank you to all that responded to our call for committee members for the hall. It looks like we have lots of people interested in joining the committee now. We are just finalizing the date and time for our first meeting.

BUS NEWS

The school sent a very stern letter to the Taupo Bus Network letting them know that we have the required number for the bus now and would like to get it reinstated. I know they received the letter and discussed it but as yet I have not had a reply. Thank you all for sorting transport issues so that we can get all our students to school each day.

Te Reo Maori Class

The children started their te Reo Maori lessons yesterday by the virtual classroom on our new Active Board.  We will be taking part every Thursday morning.

This week our homework is to add a photo of our family and write a little piece of family history or share a  story from our family history for others in the class to read and make connections to. You will need to talk to your children about this and write down some information to use in our writing. We will also need a family photo if you have one. These will be uploaded to the virtual classroom.

SUCCESSES

• We have had some great success with our spelling testing this week with all students making great gains in their spelling ability.
• We had a long visit from the Enviorschool teacher, Jenny.  I took her on a walk through our bike track, down to the chicken coop, and across to the Rangitaiki River.  Jenny was most impressed with what we have out here and what we have already done. She gave me lots of ideas of how to improve our envio studies and use what we already have. Jenny will be back soon to start planning our bush school development with us which will see us using the bike track area as a natural classroom one day a week.
• We have been busy learning about Our bodies in class. The children learned about the skeletal system and organs. Now we are learning about our 5 senses and have been doing fun science activities through the House of Science Kits. Yesterday the children were using their senses to find out what colour jelly bean they were eating while blindfolded.
• I have been on a course that was all about Six Bricks. It involves the students using six Duplo blocks of different colours to do hundreds of learning activities. It was so much fun and the children and I have been using them every day in the classroom.

 

WHATS COMING UP

Easter – Easter Friday is the start of the school holidays. 15th of April till the 2nd of May.

School Docs- I will send you home some information on how to locate the school policies on school docs. Please familiarise yourself with this site as we need you to add comments from time to time.

Board meeting- The next board meeting is Wednesday the 23rd of March at 6.30 pm in the staffroom. All are welcome.

Stay well and be happy. Its Friday!

Andrea Haycock

Principal