14 November - Term 4 Week 5

Teresa Burn — May 1st, 2024

Teacher Only Day is (TOMORROW) - School is Closed

Coming Up

Friday 15 November - Teacher Only Day - (School Closed)
Monday 18 November - Junior Cross-Country - 9am
Thursday 21 November - Music Education Concert -11am-12.30pm
Thursday 21 November - BOT Meeting - 6.30pm (Staffroom)
Tuesday 26 November - Y6 Trip to Rainbows End
Wednesday 27 November - ERP08 - Torbay School
Wednesday 27 November - Super Cluster Athletics Day

Principal News

Waterwise Thanks
Jingle
School Entrance
New Arrival

Awhi Update

Managing Stress During Busy Times

School Notices

Scholastic Book Orders

Friends of the School/P.T.A

Christmas Special Reminders

School Events

Gumboot Friday Travelwise Event
Waterwise
Past Pupil Achievements
Star Student
Raspberry Pi Club
Korean and Mandarin Interschool Speech Competitions

Principal News

Waterwise Thanks

Last week, our Waterwise programme began. This programme is a vital part of preparing our students to safely enjoy life in our community.

In the early years, children are taught to have good 'water sense.' This means that they are taught basic skills and how to be confident in the water. This instruction takes place in our school pool.

The opportunity to take part in sailing and kayaking is also part of our school`s Waterwise programme. It is an important part of our School Curriculum.

The sailing and kayaking takes place at Waiake Beach on Wednesday mornings and the bus picks the children up from the Pick Up/Drop Off Zone. This means we will have limited space for drop offs on these mornings.

Jingle

Thanks to everyone involved in organising Jingle. It is a wonderful community event and we are all looking forward to it. If you need any reminders about the evening, the FOTS newsletter is linked here.

Please keep those Jingle Jars rolling in. They are such a Browns Bay School tradition.

Please note that on the day of Jingle there will be extra health and safety measures in place. There will be no access to the Jingle set up area until the 3pm bell has gone. (Our normal visitor sign in/sign out process will apply before 3pm).

School Entrance

Thanks to Mike and Peter who have done a great job working on the school entrance. The painting and rebuilding of the gardens have made a real impact and help promote the culture of pride in our school.

Mike and Peter are a great part of the Browns Bay School Team.

New Arrival

Congratulations to Charlotte Marychurch and her husband Andrew on the arrival of their baby girl.

Ayla Audrey Marychurch was born on 12th November at 1.12am weighing in at 3.16kg.

Mum and baby are both doing well.

Awhi Update

Managing Stress During Busy Times
There’s a wonderful buzz and energy around the school as the days are getting warmer and we can spend more time outside. Teams have planned a number of exciting events and activities for your children so there are lots of things to organise and remember. As a result, our Awhi lesson this week has focused on managing our stress during busy times. It would be great to chat with your children about the ways you manage your own stress. Next week’s lesson will teach our students about random acts of kindness. A small gesture can make a big difference to someone else’s day. We challenge everyone to pop some random acts of kindness into your week. Aroha nui.

School Notices

Scholastic Book Orders

Parents wanting to order Scholastic books, to do so online by Monday 18 November .

There will be no cash orders at school.

Online book orders: https://mybookclub.scholastic.co.nz/Parent/Login.aspx

Friends of the School/P.T.A

Christmas Special Reminders

Reminders

Silent Auction

The Silent Auction is now live and will remain open until Jingle Day on 05 December! We have some incredible auction items, thanks to all our fabulous donors who have kindly gifted them in support of our Jingle Day fundraiser.

Click here for more information.

Thank you so much for your time and support.

School Events

Gumboot Friday Travelwise Event

Our Gumboot Friday Travelwise Event was a huge success! Seeing so many students biking, scootering and walking to school with our Browns Bay School teachers, while wearing their gumboots was wonderful. Many students enjoyed participating in our gumboot colouring and gumboot throwing competitions. This event helped to build a real sense of community.

Thank you to those students who brought in a gold coin donation for Gumboot Friday. We raised $781! This money will help to provide free counselling services for students through the I Am Hope Foundation.

Waterwise

We had amazing weather on our first sailing day in Term 4 for our Level 5 Waterwise sailors. The weather was perfect and the kids had a great time.

A huge thank you to those parents who are assisting with the programme either as instructors or parent helpers.

We are indebted to those parents who have trained to be instructors to support the programme, and in particular our group of instructors who are ex-parents who continue to come down every week to help us. We would not be able to provide this opportunity for our children if we did not have that support.

For any parents who are interested in training to become a Waterwise Instructor, the next training course is at the end of January next year.

Please email Jo Hewitt if you are interested - joh@brownsbay.school.nz

Our swimming programme has started at school with the pool temperature being at a warm 30 degrees. Please ensure that your children have their swimming togs on their designated days as this is an important part of our P.E. programme for Term 4.

Past Pupil Achievements

It is always very special for us to hear about past pupils and their achievements. Over the first few weeks of Term 4, Rangitoto College held various prizegivings to acknowledge the huge achievements their Senior pupils have made over 2024.

We were very proud to hear of the following past pupils of Browns Bay School who achieved Major Academic Awards:

International Baccalaureate Dux Award - Alice Leader

International Baccalaureate Summa Cum Laude ( top 2% of cohort) - Summer Bailey

NCEA Summa Cum Laude ( top 2% of cohort) - Joules Jordan

Summit Cup for Wider Contribution to College - Summer Bailey

Student Volunteer Gold Award- Summer Bailey

Allan Peachey Cup for Outstanding Leadership - Rui-Yi Ong

Head Boy Medal - Hamish Flemming

Pacific Excellence Award - Benjamin Bibbie

Other Past pupils who were recognised for Excellence and/or with University Scholarships were:

Luke Gillespie, Dani Glen, Martin Chemlev, Casey Richardson-Mould, Roxanne Mulholland, Jack Lemon, Sini Patel & Lauren Haine.

We would like to congratulate all these outstanding young people and wish them every future success. We hope they remember their time at BBS fondly.

Star Student

Harvey from Room 27 and his dance partner Eloise have won 8 of the National Championship titles at the 73rd NZ Open Dance Championships held in Nelson 2024. Well done!

Raspberry Pi Club

Every Thursday a group of talented students meet with Mrs Cebalo and Clive Jordan, an ex-parent and Pi expert, to learn about Raspberry Pi`s and to develop some projects using them. This year we have had a different group each term to learn the basics, and then a project group in Term 4. The children learn to make circuits using electronics such as LEDs, light sensors, distance sensors and motion sensors, buzzers and servos. They also learn to code in Python to make their circuits work. I would very much like to thank Clive for continuing to come and offer his expertise when his own children have long since left the school!

If you would like to learn more about Raspberry Pi, there is a wealth of information online, including here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/learn/

K. Cebalo

Korean and Mandarin Interschool Speech Competitions

This year our Kāhui Ako, in conjunction with the Oneroa Kāhui Ako, resumed the Korean and Mandarin speech competitions. A large number of our Korean and Chinese students worked on their speeches at home over the holidays and we held a BBS competition when we came back to school, to select our representative and runner up. Last week, Soonsoo presented her speech at the Korean competition and Lucas at the Mandarin competition, both held at Northcross Intermediate School.

Soonsoo's speech was about "Pokarekare Ana" which has special significance in Korea as, during the Korean War, New Zealand forces supporting South Korea sang "Pokarekare Ana" while they were in Korea, missing their homes and families. In Korea the song is known as "Yeonga".

Lucas's speech was about "Resilience" and how challenging starting school in New Zealand without understanding the language or culture can be. He spoke of how he was able to overcome these challenges and improve his English - what a great example to other new students!

Thank you to their families and to Cecilia and Gemma for preparing them both for the competition.

Both students represented the school admirably - they spoke well, presented themselves well, and showed all four of our BBS values.

I am delighted to say that Soonsoo won first place overall in the Korean competition! She was a clear winner - a very strong and confident speaker, the content was highly informative and the judges felt her topic was very relevant.

She is pictured with one of the judges, the Director of the Korean Education Centre, Sunghoon Cheong, and also with our BBS Korean competition runner up, Elynn who came to the finals to support Soonsoo.

Lucas is pictured with the competitors from the other Primary schools and with the Chinese judges including Cheryl Han of Open and Connect.

Congratulations to these students for having the capability to be fluent in both of their languages and to represent our school so impressively.

K. Cebalo