Kaurihohore School Week Two, Term Two News
Manaaki te katoa - be kind to all.
Respect - Empathy - Kindness
Kia ora koutou
Welcome back to school. To the children that have just started with us, we hope you are enjoying getting to know everyone and have started to settle into our school. We look forward to getting to know you all really well. Welcome to our whānau.
If you need to know something your child’s teacher is only a seesaw message away, or feel free to pop into the office with your query.
Thanks to Sarah Moon from Moon Graphics for reworking our logo in preparation for gala signs, love the way it looks now!
At the end of last term you will have got your first instalment of your child’s cumulative report via seesaw. If at any stage you have any questions regarding your child’s progress, behaviour or any other concern, make a time to see your child’s teacher so that these questions can be clarified quickly. Teachers will share results in core curriculum areas as and when they have them and will make them available on seesaw. They may have already done this for Term One. We encourage you to come in and find out how you can help your child further if you are unsure. We do not have parent interviews and urge you to make appointments or send messages as and when you need to, or catch up at school events...just please don’t expect messages or emails that are sent after 5pm or on the weekend to be attended till the next working day.
Please understand that while as teachers we can work very hard to help your child’s progress at school, without your support the impact we have won’t be as great as it will be with your active involvement too. Home support, interest and involvement makes all the difference.
He whakatauki. Ehara tāku toa i te toa takitahi. Engari, he toa takitini.
Success is not the work of one but the work of many.
Picking Up Children
Please follow the guidelines outlined on our school blog.
School Hours, Dropping Off and Picking up Children
We have noticed many people starting to park out on the main road, parking in the moving line, or parking in the staff car park. Parking out on the main road is incredibly dangerous and blocks visibility for those pulling out of our car park. It will cause an accident! Either park in the allotted spaces we have, or join the moving line and move with this, when we see your child, we will send them to you. We will wait till the front cars are loaded up and ready to go before we send children, so you can move your car right to the front of the line. Please be considerate of others. Please avoid blocking the gates or entry areas.
When coming in on foot, use the crossing and don’t walk where cars are exiting, this is unsafe. Do not walk across the car park. Generally by 3.05pm the line has started to clear, so if you do not want to sit in the line, come a little later.
Remember, children are supervised in the courtyard till 3.15pm and then moved to the office area, all children must be picked up by 3.20pm at the absolute latest. If you are running late, please let us know by phone. If your child is going home with someone they would not usually go home with, let us know.
Remember to ask yourself - “what if everyone did this?”
Fundraising
Thank you to our fabulous PSG for their contribution of $13 000 towards our 2021 curriculum spends. For those of you that are not aware, the PSG helps to support our curriculum costs so the BOT can direct some of the budget towards staffing that is not funded by the Ministry. This helps to keep our class sizes as low as possible. We are incredibly grateful for the work that the PSG do. They are simply a group of parents, who give up time in their own busy working lives to go that extra mile to support the school. They now turn their attention towards the gala and other fundraisers and I hope they will have your support. Their target is $50 235, this money will be added to the $142 065 of Ministry funding to pay for our new all weather canopy. As you can see it is a never ending job as they will then need to raise funds to lay a new turf.
Unfortunately that is not where the fundraising stops as the BOT aim to raise $15 500 to add to the PSG’s $13 000 to ensure necessary day to day curriculum costs are covered. All of this is over and above what we are funded by the Ministry. Sadly this is why it feels like we are always fundraising, basically, if we want to keep the school running as it is, we have no option. We are grateful for your support in this when you are able to do so, but understand that sometimes it is just not possible. Support in time and effort is just as important as money, so if you can help in other ways please consider joining the PSG.
We are also very lucky to have Emma Ecochard who is a member of our BOT who works furiously to apply for grants that give our children access to items we would not normally afford. Recently she managed to secure $9865 from Pub Charity for much needed devices in classrooms. We are grateful for the extra effort on Emma’s part and to Pub Charity for funding this amount of money. Pub charity business that have contributed to make this grant possible are:
Onerahi Tavern, Poroti Tavern, Ruakaka Tavern, The Grand Hotel, Waipu Hotel
Bang’n Birds
Thanks to Dianne for organising this fundraiser. We have sent off the order and it will be here soon. We raised just under $400, which will go straight towards our curriculum fundraising.
Breakfast Club
This runs daily at school thanks to the organisation and dedication of Shelley Buckton. If you would like to help out in any way, or provide plain cereals like cornflakes or ricies, see Shelley, we are grateful for any support you can give. Children love the breakfast club, the full bellies and positive interactions set them up for a positive day. All children are more than welcome to use this service, it is free, even if it is for 2nd or 3rd breakfast. We are very grateful to GG (Rory’s grandmother) who comes in on a Thursday and is amazing with the children! It is the children’s favourite day.
Gala 2021
Yes, the gala is going ahead this year. Our fabulous parent support group is working on this, and would love any help you could offer. Many hands make light work and with people taking responsibility for different areas, it makes the process a little less daunting.
However this event can not go ahead without your support and there will be many small ways you can help to make this day a fabulous one!
Set aside the date now: 20th of November, we will need a lot of helpers on the day!
What you can do now:
Save small wrapped lollies and little toys for our ever popular jolly jars, the more we can make of these, the better. Send these into school when you can.
Save any items at home that you may be thinking of donating for the White Elephant. Items need to be in good condition in order to sell, so please don’t save junk. Please note, these items can not be sent in yet and we will let you know when you can start sending them in.
Talk to Lena Newport if you think you can start growing plants for the day.
Money raised from the gala will be put towards the all weather canopy that we are building, this is a massive project and we urge you to support the PSG in any way that you can!
Term Dates
Please note that all dates and other information are kept as up to date as possible via our school blog, you can access this at kaurihohoreschool.blogspot.com
Term Two
Ends 9th of July
2nd of June - Winter Sports Year 4-6
7th of June - Queen's Birthday
8th of July - Empty Classroom Day
Term Three
Begins 26th July
Ends 1st October
Within this term will be Cross Country and Sponsored Run (dates yet to be set)
Term Four
Begins 18th of October
Gala - 20th November
Athletics day will also be held within this term (date yet to be set)
Prize giving - 10th December 1pm
Term Ends - 12.00 December 14th
We have not formally set the return date for 2022 as we are waiting to hear from professional development providers around dates they can run training for us, however it is very likely it will be a similar date to this year, which was the 2nd of February. We will advise you of the correct date for this as soon as we know.
Our Environment - Our Community
All classes have been running environmental audits, finding problems in their direct environment and coming up with strategies to fix them. As part of this process we have been discovering one major problem. We have a waste issue. There are some pretty easy solutions to this that you can help us with.
Name children’s belongings, so if it does get lost, it can be handed back
Expect children to look after their own items and ensure they find what they have lost, rather than replacing them with new ones.
If you see rubbish or something that needs cleaning up around the school and you have a moment, help us out and clean it up.
Keep plastic waste out of your child’s lunch box, often this ensures the lunch provided is healthier and more nutritious.
If you see an area in the school that needs a bit of an upgrade, beautification or a clean up and you think you could actively help to do this, just sing out, we’d love the help.
Winter Term
As we are now in a cooler term, children do not need full brim hats, if they want to bring a cap along to school, they are now most welcome. Please ensure your child has a change of clothes in their bag, no matter their age. For this term, gumboots are great footwear, if your child is not yet able to tie their laces, send them along in shoes that they can manage independently.
Behaviour and Kindness At School
As you know we actively teach children about their emotions, how to recognise emotions in others, understand how to manage our emotions without hurting others either physically or emotionally. We also actively encourage kindness as a default behaviour. Our ultimate aim is for children to be kind without need for reward. We also actively teach children about bullying, what it is and what to do if it happens.
However as adults we have to remember that school is very much a reflection of society, not everything goes right all of the time, and sadly children do make mistakes, they do hurt others and they can be very unkind. Despite our absolute best efforts, we can not always prevent these things happening.
What we as adults need to remember is that they are children, not little adults. They are still learning and it is our role as the adults in their life to model kindness, to support them to learn from their mistakes, and remember that every child makes mistakes, just as every adult still makes mistakes. It is important to display empathy for all sides of a problem, understanding that no child is perfect and at some stage will have a different role to play in incidents. Supporting your child to talk about minor incidents that may have upset them at school helps them to develop resilience and allows them to bounce back rather than dwelling on the negative.
As adults we also need to clearly be able to identify what is rude or mean behaviour as opposed to bullying which is ongoing and repeated. It is not appropriate to label every little negative interaction as bullying and it is important children know the difference. As a staff we follow set guidelines and deal with any unpleasant behaviour fairly, most incidents that happen in school are minor and can be dealt with restoratively, with children owning, fixing and learning from their behaviour. Restorative practice allows us to gather all sides of the story, sometimes this takes us some time, but it is important to understand that there is always more than one side to a story and that incidents are handled fairly.
At times some behaviour does require a more punitive consequence and we will apply this if we think it is warranted. We will always inform you if something has happened that we think you need to know.
If your child is struggling to deal with something that may have happened at school, please tell us, we can support them through this and come up with strategies to help.
If you do believe your child is being bullied, please come and see us straight away with as many details as you can and we will forward it directly to the KiVa team. KiVa works really well to put a stop to genuine bullying, rather than one off mean or rude behaviour.
Once again, the key is clear, timely and open communication between home and school
This link will take you to the procedures we use when dealing with negative behaviour if you are interested in knowing more.
Procedures for dealing with unwanted behaviour
Kindness Without Reward
We were super proud of our children for raising $617 to donate to an assault victim. This was done without need of thanks or any kind of reward. It was truly kindness in action and it was amazing to see how many children were keen to do extra chores to raise more money. We are grateful to you for supporting us in this and to Kim Christensen for counting up the money and delivering it to Nick Owen at the police station.
Seasons For Growth
We are always looking for programmes that we can deliver at school to further assist children with their wellbeing, growth and development. The reality with funding for learning support and education in general, is that it is incredibly lacking. We are lucky to have a staff so willing to learn more about different approaches and run programmes over and above their teaching requirement. This enables us to be pretty self-sufficient, rather than waiting for ‘experts’ to come in and run programmes or struggle to find the funds to do so. Seasons For Growth is a fantastic programme designed to help children cope with change. Any kind of change. This allows them to process any stress the change may have caused them and to see that like the seasons, fine sunny days will always follow the cold dismal ones. Seasons for Growth also allows children to understand emotions and develop coping strategies, understanding that while we have sad times, we also have happy times and that is very normal. Processing emotions is something all children need to be taught about. We are lucky to have trained several of our staff in this programme and to offer it to children for free. If you think that this sounds like something your child would benefit from, please feel free to talk to Kelly Glasgow or Tanya Gwyn and they will add them down to the list of future participants.
Need to know now…
Collect items for the gala as detailed at the start of the notice, think about how you may be able to help.
Look out for sausage sizzle forms and order by Wednesday if your child wants one
Noho ora mai - stay well, look after yourself and look out for others!
Leslee Allen
