3 May
Dear Parents
Thank you to your children for their interaction with the Special Character Review team who visited our school this week. The team commented positively on the school culture which they saw as being sensitive, responsive, caring, inclusive, planned and professional.
They found the school community warm, welcoming and friendly.
The children enjoyed El Gregoe on Monday afternoon. One told me how he made bottles of wine appear out of nothing. I am sure that is a skill a lot of the parents would like to learn.
This week we have 2 sports initiatives from Sports Southland starting. The Year 4 Bike Safety programme this afternoon and Room 1-5 (Yr 1 & 2 only) skills programme on Friday mornings.
Logic Problem - See if you can figure out how this is possible.
A Missouri farmer passed away and left 17 mules to his three sons. The instructions left in the will said that the oldest boy was to get one-half, the second oldest one-third, and the youngest one-ninth. The three sons, recognizing the difficulty of dividing 17 mules into these fractions, began to argue.
Their uncle heard about the argument, hitched up his mule and drove out to settle the matter. He added his mule to the 17, making 18. The oldest therefore got one-half, or nine, the second oldest got one-third, or six, and the youngest son got one-ninth, or two. Adding up 9, 6 and 2 equals 17. The uncle, settled the argument, hitched up his mule and drove home.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Harrington family.
*REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL READING (From Lectio Devina)
BEARING FRUIT
This powerful speech in John’s gospel paints a vivid picture of the relationship Jesus has with the Father and with his followers, people like you and me. In last week’s reading Jesus described himself as the ‘Good Shepherd’ (John 10). In today’s passage Jesus speaks about himself as ‘the real vine’. Vineyards would have been a common sight in Jesus’ day, just as they are in some countries today.
Three ‘characters’ stand out: Jesus the vine, the Father or gardener, and the disciples or vine branches. The vine sustains the branches; one cannot bear fruit without the other.
The Father tends the vine. He prunes branches encouraging strong growth and a bumper crop of fruit. Branches that don’t bear fruit are cut off and thrown away.
So how do the ‘branches’ remain united to the ‘vine’? Jesus offers two ideas; ‘remain in me, and I in them’ (verse 5) and ‘my words remain in you’ (verse 7). We are to live like Jesus and accept the cleansing and ‘pruning’ the teaching of Jesus will accomplish in our lives (verse 3).
The purpose of our lives and the fruit we need to bear is that of giving glory and praise to the Father. Put simply we need to surrender ourselves completely to doing the will of our loving God.
MEDITATION: Spend some time thinking about what it means for you to remain in Jesus. Consider too how his words can remain in you. How do you feel under God’s correction or ‘pruning’? Remember how much God loves you. Does it help to remind yourself that pruning will produce more fruit?
PRAYER: To pray today take a sheet of paper and a few coloured pens or pencils. Sketch a simple vine bearing fruit – lines and blobs will do. Draw in some roots too. By each root write the name of something that feeds your relationship with God. Imagine you are one of the branches. Forgetting modesty, as this is between you and God alone, try to name some of the fruit pictured on your branch. This is harder to do, but ask the Holy Spirit to help you. On some of the other branches write the names of people who strengthen your relationship with Jesus. Consider this prayerfully. It may take a little time, but when you’re ready offer it to God in thanksgiving and trust for future crops.
PTA
The PTA’s next Meeting is on Monday 14th May 2012, 7.30pm School Staff Room – all welcome.
Entertainment Books still available from the office - $55 each.
Sample copy able to be viewed at the office.
Cross Country
Classes are practising for the school cross country planned for the 23/ 24 May. This year all children will take part in the run, which will be a lot of fun for the junior classes.
Tomorrow we will be practicing our Cross Country Course for this year. Part of the track goes to the Donovan Park Rugby Grounds. This will not be weather dependent.
Could you please send a change of trackpants, shoes and socks to school tomorrow and each day for the next 3 weeks? We will be running on wet grass, which could become slippery and wet.
Many thanks for your support.
Basic Facts
This term we are trialling a new basic facts programme throughout the school. It is designed to make the learning of basic facts more transferable to the classroom numeracy units. Often children can score very highly in basic facts tests, but fail to see the link to other maths applications. We hope this programme will address that.
Because of the very high set up costs we will have to charge $2 for LOST cards
2012 School Fair ~ I am asking for parents from each classroom to volunteer to be on a ‘Fair Committee” to help organise and run the fair in November.
Every 2nd year the PTA/School hold a school fair to raise funds for equipment/resources for your children. The last school fair raised over $10,000, the majority of which was spent on the sports equipment trolleys and the resource cupboards in the corridors.
To help with the organisation, we plan to have different classrooms responsible for different areas of the fair. Many hands make light work of the task, so please consider this. If unsure, volunteer yourself and a friend. Unfortunately if we do not get a committee together, the fair will not go ahead as planned, and parents will be asked for increased donations.
On-line Newsletter
Every week I transfer the newsletter to our website. My apologies for last week’s effort. The blog site developers have changed the format, which meant the newsletter text ran together rather than appearing as it should have. Hopefully it will be back to normal this week.
Achievers Board
We have an Achievers’ Board to recognize and celebrate our pupils’ successes.
Please encourage your child to see Mr Forde or Mrs Lieshout before school on a Friday morning to get a photo taken.
School Donation
The school donations are now due. These have been set the same as last year and we would appreciate you paying these at the office at your earliest convenience.
Activity Fee: 1 child = $70 2 x children = $100
Compulsory Books: Rooms 1 & 2 = $15 Room 3 – 9 = $30
Uniform – We have a large number of unnamed jerseys in the lost property. If your child has misplaced theirs, please check these.
Altar Servers
Saturday 5th May 7.00 pm Patrice & Aimee Brookland
Sunday 6th May 10.30 am Abby Humm & Caitlin Smith
Children’s Liturgy Jacqui O’Connor
Achievements
Congratulations to Tyler Pool who received his Waikiwi Rugby Team ‘Player of the Day’ on Saturday.
Mother’s Day 5km Fun Run/Walk
Spend quality time with Mum or encourage her to take some time out for herself this Mother’s Day by joining in the Jennian Homes Mother’s Day 5k fun, run/walk on the 13th May, 10am at Thompsons Bush. This event supports the Heart Foundation’s “Go Red for Women” campaign. While the day is focused on enjoyment, there is a serious message too. Heart disease is the biggest killer of women in New Zealand. The campaign reminds women to take time out to look after their health so they can keep on caring for their families in the future. For entry and details: http://www.jennian.co.nz and click on Southland. Entry includes T-shirt and Goody Bag to be picked up on the day.
Fruit Order
Parents are welcome to fill in the form on the noticeboard in the junior corridor if they want to order fruit. Delivery is Thursday 10th May and orders must be in by lunchtime this Monday 7th May.
Netball Southland Selecting Workshop Monday 7th May Stadium Southland - 6pm $10
This is a workshop designed for coaches, managers and selectors to explore new ideas to assist with selecting teams, looking at player selection options and provide templates to help with trial process. If this interests you – check out the noticeboard in the junior corridor on how to register.
Richard Till – Kiwi Chef Extraordinaire – Workingmens Club 6th May 2012
Check out the notice board in the junior corridor.
Room 3 Class Happenings
What a busy couple of weeks we have had in Room 3. On Monday of this week, we were lucky enough to see a magic show. El Gregoe performed magic tricks that even had the adults wondering at the end. His key message was about bullying.
“I liked it when he changed the little bird into a big bird.” Conna
“It was funny when El Gregoe pulled the ladies shoe out of the box instead of Reid’s shoe” Caleb
During maths we have been working on learning our basic facts by using flashcards with our peers. For many of us these basic facts are the basis of our maths goals. We look forward to bringing the flashcards home to share with you to continue to strengthen our knowledge.
A special thank you to Mr Pask and Mrs Sheehy for helping us in our class over the past two weeks. We wish them all the best for their future teaching career.
Incredible Years Parenting Program Series
Some of our teachers are currently participating in the “Incredible Years Teacher Programme”, and are finding this very informative and worthwhile. The Incredible Years parent training intervention is a similar series of programmes focused on strengthening parenting competencies (monitoring, positive discipline, confidence) and fostering parents' involvement in children's school experiences in order to promote children's academic, social and emotional competencies and reduce conduct problems. The Parent programs are grouped according to age. Babies & Toddlers (0-3 years), BASIC Early Childhood (3-6 years), BASIC School-Age (6-12 years) and ADVANCED (6-12 years).
Each newsletter, we will be bringing you tips from this programme.
posted by PeterForde @ 2:42 PM
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