Outdoor Classroom Day - 17th May 2018

This is a day that has become cherished by the children.  Our children are very lucky to be in a play-based environment and to enjoy a playground that embraces play and discarded rules a long time ago.  We have replaced these rules by embedding the values of kindness, empathy and respect.

We have an outdoor day to celebrate and honour the importance of play.  Play is the ultimate way of learning.  Play allows children to develop social and emotional skills in an environment based on experience.  Play encourages persistence, imagination, creativity, responsible risk taking and so much more.  These days are often messy and always filled with joy!

This is us and this is who we are!

Below are some photos captured today.   Children have driven all areas of learning on this day and have spent time planning their activities for the day in their own time.

This Week

Couple of reminders....this week Outdoor Classroom day is on Thursday 17th of May. Children need a change of clothes (or even two) a towel and a couple of plastic bags, or reusable bags would also be valuable for dirty clothes storage. They will need clothes they can play outside in if it is cold...jumpers and rain jackets are a great idea. If it is light rain we will go ahead, if the weather is really bad, we will postpone. Just as the name suggest, children will spend the day outside playing. Adults are all welcome to come along and play during the day, supervised pre-schoolers also welcome. Children may bring along to school anything they think they may need for the day (I know many will have been planning an outdoor project.)

Also...this Friday the 18th of May is Pink Shirt Day. We urge you to assist children to wear anything pink, a touch of pink, or head to toe pinkness is up to them. Gold coin donation from everyone please, money raised will go towards supporting victims of bullying. This is an issue close to all of our hearts and we would love to see everyone get in behind a great cause!

Health Survey Results

Thank you to those that filled in our recent Health survey that was circulated
at our whånau evening.  The staff and BOT appreciate your responses.

It was great to have such positive feedback about our focus on kindness and
empathy, you can be rest assured that this will continue to be important to us
and an integral part of Kaurihohore school.

From our survey the areas identified in order of importance were:

1.Understanding bullying and being an upstander

2.Kindness and empathy

3.Keeping myself safe (police programme)

4.Body care and physical safety

5.Eating for good health

6.Water Safety

7.Sun Safety

8.Road Safety

9.Mental Health

10.Building relationships

11.Safety at home

12.Mindset

13. Fire safety

14.Coping with anxiety

15.Sexuality education (puberty, understanding my body)

16.Drug and Alcohol awareness

17. Coping with grief and loss

18.Finding out about helping agencies

Obviously many of the areas crossover and can be grouped together.  
Some items like kindness, mindset, empathy, eating well, understanding bullying,
sun safety, having healthy friendships (relationships) are covered regularly, often on a
daily basis and are delivered as and when needed.  Water safety is taught in Term 1 and 4
through our swimming programme.
Many of the aspects of body awareness, physical safety, and keeping ourselves safe are
delivered to all classes every second year through a recognised police programme.  

All of these areas are always pitched to the level of the children and are age appropriate.  

Puberty is taught to Year 6 children. Drugs and alcohol awareness is not something
that is taught at a primary level, but is taught at an intermediate level,
so is still in the primary curriculum.  This would only be covered if the need arose and any
need to do so would be clearly communicated to parents.

In many instances we are responsive to need.  Classes will focus on a certain area of Health
if a need arises.  Thank you to those that commented on our abilities to do this.

Capturing the Essence or Signature of our Place

https://docs.google.com/document/d/161qOf-24eZ1sVMFocZm4PbNIxWjOqgWp4XEJMRcfVwI/edit?usp=sharing

What is the essence of Kaurihohore?

This year as part of our curriculum review process we are exploring how
we can deepen and consolidate our understanding around the culture of our school.  
Through this we are particularly focusing on values, competencies and principles
that are important to us. We believe competencies and principles identified as important
in Måori culture offer a valuable lens for us to really look at what makes our school special.  
Particularly the values of:

• Whanaungatanga (belonging)
• Manaakitanga (respect, empathy, extending kindness)
• Wånanga (communication, problem solving, innovation)
• Tuakana/Teina (older/younger relationships)
• Kaitiakitanga (guardianship of our natural resources)
• Aroha (love and kindness)
• Hiringa (perseverance and determination)Kotahitanga (oneness, togetherness)

• Mohiotanga (sharing of information, knowledge and understanding)

• Wairua (wellbeing and connectedness)

We would really like is to decide on a Maori proverb/Whakataukī that captures the
essence of our school.  We have been given a couple of ideas but want to ensure that
whatever we decide really captures what our school community believes us to be.  
We want our community to have ownership over what is decided upon.

To do this we want your input.  We will also be asking for the input of the children and
teaching staff as part of the process.  

Once we have this Whakatauki we will be ensuring it takes pride of place in and
around our school and will be celebrating its inclusion into our school in a more formal way.  
(if you would like to help with this, please let us know.)

So far in english our school motto or values statement is:

“Enthusiasm and values for life through learning”

With the pillars or framework that makes the strong foundation of our school being
“Learning to be, Learning it do, Learning to learn, Learning to live together.”  
The values listed above fit beautifully within this framework and add a more specific focus to
what these statements actually mean.

The Whakataukī will sit alongside these statements or intentions, and will
capture who we are and what we want for our children.

This is where we would like your input.  We would appreciate if below this blurb,
you could write words that you think encapsulate who we are and what we want for our children.
 If someone else has added a word that you would also like to tautoko (agree with)
simply put an asterisk next to it.  These words can encapsulate things we do, values and
dispositions we encourage, or specific ways of learning (anything goes really as long as it is positive.)

From there Jo Kake will seek support from knowledgeable others to find a whakatauki that
captures these words as best we can.  If you would like to assist with this please contact
Jo or I directly. Leslee (principal@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz) or Jo (rm6kauri@gmail.com) or
alternatively, just add your name below indicating you would like further input into this.  
We would really appreciate your help and support with this.

We will also be sending this home in hard copy if you are having difficulty accessing the doc.

Please click on the link at the top of the post to visit the google doc and add your thoughts.

Our Next Focus - Manaakitanga

 Over the past weeks we have been focusing on displaying aroha for others.  Each class has had a jar, for every act of kindness a marble has been placed in this jar.  These marbles have then been combined by placing them in our big jar. 

Now the jar is full, we will move onto our next focus.  This focus will be manaakitanga, displaying respect and caring for others.  This virtue is so important, respect is something that is lacking in our society today and desperately needs to be modelled for our children.  It also links beautifully with kindness and goes hand and hand.

This is something you can talk about at home, and something you can directly model for your child.  

Just as we have done for our last focus, we will work together to fill the jar.  

Love and kindness received, love and kindness given.

Our next group of Good Citizens

If you are new to our school and wondering about the concept of Good Citizens, I have included a description below.  It is amazing to reflect back on how we were, and how we are now.  I love our school.

Kaurihohore Good Citizens

The Good Citizen project was begun in 2006 in response to a lack of leadership and role models amongst children in our school.  We had a lot of children making poor choices, particularly boys.  Research showed that to promote leadership the children who may be consistently well behaved and perhaps go 'unnoticed' a lot of the time needed to be promoted to positions of leadership and be given a more visual presence in the school.

In conjunction with other strategies we saw this project have huge benefits for our children and children became much more aware of the effect their actions had on others.

Good Citizens continue to have a big role to play in our school.  Good Citizens are selected based on the fact that they consistently help others and display empathy, without need for reward.  They show the ability to be role models for others and a willingness to carry out extra responsibilities in their own time if required.  Good citizens also display excellent manners and a high level of respect for others.  Being selected as a Good Citizen is a huge acknowledgement and not given lightly, it is always given for a genuine reason and not one that is shared around to all children unless well deserved.  This means that some children may get it more than once in acknowledgement of their consistent citizenship.

Teachers do not take their decision lightly when choosing their two representatives and if for any reason the child lets themselves down during this time, the award may be taken away from them.

Parents can be assured that if a child is selected as Good Citizen that they have truly earnt it.

At the end of the term all Good Citizens are awarded with a certificate in recognition of their efforts.  One child is voted by the children as the overall citizen for their class and then the school votes on these finalists to find the Good Citizen of the term.

At the end of year the whole school again votes out of the four finalists to find our Good Citizen of the Year.  This is a very coveted prize.