23 July

Dear Parents

Welcome back to Term 3.
We look forward to another busy term at Sacred Heart School.
A special welcome back to Mrs Williams and Mrs Buxton. To Mrs Ashton who will be here on Fridays in Room 5 and to our 3 new pupils, Kate McGregor, Dylan Hawkes and Samantha Ward. We hope they enjoy their time at Sacred Heart.
Also to Fr. Jacob who will be joining the Sacred Heart Parish.

Some of the events this term to note are:

Choral Festival - Practices 5th Aug, 2nd Sept, 15th Sept
- Performance 19th Sept
Reconciliation parents meeting 5th Aug
Poly Festival - 5th Aug
Gymnastic Festival - 28th August
Speech Competitions - local – 9th Aug
- Regional – 14th Aug
- Southland – 23rd Sept
Science Fair - School 6th Aug
- Southland 17th Aug
Zone Netball - 11th Aug
Life Education Van - 10 – 12th Aug
School First Aid Course- 15 & 16th Sept
School Disco - 23rd Sept
Convent Cup - 20th Sept

Our thoughts and prayers have been with the Swney & Spencer-Humm families.

First Reconciliation
Thank you to the parents who have indicated their child will be receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation this term. The parent information evening will be held on Thursday 5th August at 7.00 p.m. The children involved have received a notice today regarding dates and times for the programme.

Reports Consultation
Thank you to the group of parents who met in the holidays to discuss our current reporting systems and where to next. We have started on the process of refining our reporting system to enable more parent information within our existing school procedures.
One of my goals is to eventually be able to provide an internet portal parents can access to view their child’s work and assessments.
At present we have the ability to scan and store this digitally on site, but it can’t be accessed from home. There are a number of e-portfolio tools available that I am investigating for their possible use.

Otatara Bus leaving early Monday 26th July
The Otatara Bus will leave at 1.00 pm on Monday.
Please let Christine know if your child is to be put on this early bus.


Sports & Art Gear for the Children in Samoa
We have finally boxed the sports and art gear to send to Samoa. A big thank you to Tina Paraki for helping with the postage. All the items will be greatly appreciated by the children at Falelati Primary School in Siufaga. Thank you to all who contributed.

Postcodes
Please let Christine know if your postcode is different from 9810, so we can update our files. Thank you.

Parent Help
We have had a number of parents who help to re-box reading books and we GREATLY appreciate this assistance. If there are any other parents who would also be able to help with this, it would be much appreciated. Please see Miss O’Neill next week if you are able to offer some time to do this. Your reward will be in heaven with the odd chocolate bar here on earth.

Wool is required in Room 3 for making pom poms. If you have any spare at home, this would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Canteen – Please note the small cookies have now been increased to .80c

Irish Dancing Salford School Hall on Mondays – lessons for 4yrs and up.
Enquiries to Nicky 230-4570


School Fair ~ 7th November
The fair committee has made great progress with planning for this. It will however, require help from all families to bring it to fruition, create a fantastic school memory for the children and make some money for quality school resources as well.
So please let the school office know or email pladams@xtra.co.nz if you can suggest any of the following:

Does anybody have contacts for bouncy castles to hire?
Are there any hairdressers in the school community who could advise on the funky hair stall?
Does anybody have face painting skills or balloon animals?
Places of businesses who may donate prizes for the chocolate wheel or silent auction.
Does anybody have a harness we could use for horizontal bungy ?
Do you know of any school businesses who may be interested in sponsoring a stall at the fair?












Room 1 Class Happenings

In Room One this week we have been learning about “Taking Care Of God’s World”. One of the things we can do is to make sure we do not leave rubbish on the ground. We went outside and found lots of rubbish. We want to ask everyone to
PUT THE RUBBISH IN THE BIN
and
“Please pick up rubbish and help us to take care of God’s world.”



We will be doing some SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS in our INQUIRY work this term. We will be finding out ways that science is part of our everyday lives. The children have recorded what we did.
Here are two examples of our writing:

I am the leader. I was helping Miss O’Neill. I put the orange in for Miss O’Neill and when she asked, I got her some handee towels. When the skin was on the orange it would float and when the skin was off the orange it would sink.
PHOEBE

Today we have been looking at an orange in a bowl to see if it sinks or floats. When we took the skin off the orange, we found out that the orange sank to the bottom of the bowl. I liked looking at the orange sink down to the bottom of the bowl
ELLA




The orange sinks because the orange peel is full of trapped air pockets, therefore making the orange light for its size (so it floats). When you remove the peel (including the air pockets) the orange weighs a lot for its size. Then it sinks because the orange is denser than the water.