Tena koutou nga whanau, nga mihi nui ki a koutou katoa,

I hope everyone has had an enjoyable couple of weeks - it has been nice to see some more settled weather even though the mornings are getting darker, and the evenings slightly shorter.

Despite the ongoing disruption caused across the country with the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been fortunate to be able to continue our normal school programme. Apart from different break times for children, and strategies to limit contact between learning spaces, as a school we have had little disruption. No doubt, as cases in the community increase this will impact the school and we will keep you updated via Hero. Please make sure you communicate to the office any positive test results in your household, and take the appropriate precautions. Additionally, from Friday please be aware that self-isolation for household contacts has reduced from 10 to 7 days with self administered tests to be taken on day 3 and day 7. This article from Stuff is useful and gives advice for how to take a self-administered test correctly.

This week we have been busy at school. No doubt many of you would have noticed the Life Education van (with Harold the giraffe) parked up in the carpark. The students have all been involved in lessons over the last few days, with the only difference being that these lessons have been held in classrooms rather than the van (again for COVID health requirements).

The Christchurch City Council has also been on site working on ensuring the effective development of safe cycling skills for our year 6 students. They have learned about bike maintenance, safe wearing of helmets and undertaken some road riding skills and slalom courses on the court.

Our new library building continues to grow, with the past week seeing it really take shape with the framing for the walls going up. We can now start to see the spaces with a main library area, smaller storage space and two additional toilets that can be accessed from outside as well. I know Sarah will be excited to move into this space before the end of the year, and this will see the completion of our building project.

Last week, the year 5 - 8 students had their annual school swimming sports. Due to COVID-19 we had to hold these outside and we were fortunate to be able to hire the Governors Bay pool for this event. It certainly wasn’t the warmest day we had ever had for swimming sports but luckily the water was warm, and we had a large supply of mink blankets for students to snuggle under between their races. It was wonderful to see many of the students show copious amounts of determination and grit during their races, character strengths that are important for success in life. Well done to everyone who swam, and additional praise to those students who won their races. As we are not able to hold whole school assemblies at this time, certificates will be handed out in the separate teams. Thank you so much to Lizzy for all her organisation, Nancy Vance for her support and the time she puts in to train our Swim Squad swimmers, and all the parents who helped out on the day.

Today our year 4s headed off on their overnight camp to Living Springs. This is their first school camp experience and we are lucky to have such a wonderful facility so close by for this. No doubt we will hear more about this when they return. Thank you to Karen Steedman for her organisation and again, to our wonderful parents who put their hand up to support the school by giving generously of their time.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and we wish everyone all the best for the next couple of weeks.

Ngā mihi nui,

Jill.