20 February 2009

Dear Parents

As I mentioned last week, we look forward to Mrs Fortune beginning work in Room 6. She will begin on Monday. The BOT are investigating options for the Library and will be meeting with Stuart Young – the manager of the Catholic Education Office in Dunedin to discuss some of these.
It was good to see some of the summer sports starting this week. We plan to provide links from our school web page for parents to check if their sports are on or not. More on this later.
Individual classes also may have blogs up and running. Please check as this is an excellent way of keeping in touch with what is happening at school.
Congratulations to Olivia Thornbury who is in a NZ Swim camp this weekend.

ASH WEDNESDAY
The children will be attending the Parish Mass next Wednesday 25 February - 9.30am, to mark the beginning of the Lenten season. Families are welcome to join us.

PAL’S
The year 6 children will take part in an Active Schools Programme at the Stadium next Wednesday from 9.30 am – 2.30 p.m. This will give them skills to introduce and monitor younger children in games at lunch times.


Room 2 & 3 Class Happenings


ROOM 2 ~ We have had a very busy couple of weeks in Room 2, learning about school routines and gaining the confidence to work independently. We have completed a statistics unit, and discovered that Mrs Stupples is the only person in the room with green eyes, and we made pictographs about how we travelled to school. For our inquiry unit we have been learning about what our bodies need for fuel, and just like cars, we need specific fuel to help our body and brain to work properly. Cars work best when you fill them with petrol, just like people learn and work best when you fill them with healthy brain food, like water, fruit, vegetables and sandwiches. Other food is okay for a treat, but it can make us feel tired or make it hard to sit still in class!

On Thursday, Rooms 1 and 2 began a new entrant programme run by Stadium Southland. This covers lots of physical, gross motor skills and this week we learned about balancing and jumping with two feet together. This week we also began learning how to use a laptop computer and we took some very silly pictures of ourselves, it was lots of fun! The first two weeks have flown by – it will be Christmas again before we know it!

ROOM 3 ~ Week 3 already and we are back into the swing of school life. In RE we have been learning about prayer. We have found out that you can pray anywhere and that God will hear you. We know that it is important to show that we respect God and one another during prayer time.
During writing time Mrs Ashton brought popcorn to school and we were given some to try. Then we had to write a story about popcorn. Below are some examples of what we wrote.

I really like popcorn. It tastes buttery and salty and sweet. It tastes nice. It’s yummy. Pop, pop, pop. It feels funny. Pop, crunch, crunch. I don’t like getting popcorn in my teeth.
By Claire

Pop, pop, pop went the popcorn. Yum, I like popcorn. It tastes buttery and sweet. It feels rubbery and oily and it smells delicious.
By Piper

Popcorn looks like a little monster with lots of eyes and it tastes yummy. Popcorn smells sweet. It looks like a snowball, crunched up yellow. Scrunch, munch, I love popcorn.
By Shaun C




HOUSE COLOUR DAY
Tuesday the 24th of February is House Colour Day all students will participate in fun activities for their House. Students are required to come dressed in mufti clothes that are the colour of their House.

We are asking that if the children are able they bring a gold coin to donate to the Red Cross fund for the victims of the Australian Bush Fires. No toys or clothes are to be donated just money.

The children will participate in the normal classroom programme in the morning. The afternoon programme will include: Parade, Most Colourful House, House Photo, Tug of War, Chants and Sack Races.

SCHOLASTIC BOOKCLUB ~ closes Wed 25th February. Please make cheques out to Scholastic NZ.

GARDENER AVAILABLE ~ to do small or large jobs. Contact Liz 217-6222.

WAIKIWI CUB/SCOUTS ~ There are vacancies available for Cubs 8 – 10 year olds. If interested, please contact Mark Swain 9310347.