E te whānau, tēnā koutou katoa,

We are very pleased to be able to host an evening for KNS whanau with Kathryn Berkett on Wednesday 23 November, from 7.00pm to 8.30pm. Kathryn will leading a workshop for parents/caregivers, focusing on ‘Building Resilience and Managing Anxiety – how to support children through change’. All our children will be experiencing change over the next 3 months, changes of classmates, teachers, schools etc. and many, if not all, will get anxious about this, how we as adults respond to this, will have an impact on whether our children grow in independence, because of this challenge or not.

We all get anxious at times and need to learn strategies to deal with anxiety. I believe that children need to learn that being anxious is a normal human reaction, however, this message seems to have been a bit lost in today’s world. I know that as a parent myself, I have at times tried to ‘smooth the way for my children’, to sort problems for them, rather than helping them learn to solve problems independently. Every time I’ve heard Kathryn speak, I’ve coming away feeling that I wish I’d heard her message when my children were younger. I suggest that you diary the date now and arrange a babysitter, further details in this newsletter.

This Friday, our ako classes are focusing on the theme of; ‘He Kaitiaki Tātou – At KNS we are kaitiaki. We look after our kura and take care of our environment’. Please see more details in this newsletter and encourage your children to wear green.

A huge thank you to our parent/caregiver community for your continued support of our school, recent highlights have been:

• Ros Ross and Sophie Clarke stepping up to organise last Friday’s PTA Disco, this provided a great amount of fun for our children.
• The parents/caregivers who are organising and running the KNS Spring Pop-up Gala 2022 that opened today.
• The many parents/caregivers who have participated in our Team Totara camps over the past three weeks. It is a big commitment to go on camp for a week and we couldn’t provide this opportunity for our children without your support. Thank you also for the many positive messages from you about the great behaviour and attitude of our children and the hard work of our staff.

As always if you need any support or have any questions, please contact one of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT):

• Conrad Kelly ckelly@kns.school.nz
• James Appleton jappleton@kns.school.nz
• Phil McIntosh pmcintosh@kns.school.nz

Whakataukī o te wiki

• Mai i te kōpae ki te urupa, tātou ako tonu ai. From the cradle to the grave we are forever learning.

A thought to share with your children:

“There is little success where there is little laughter.” (Andrew Carnegie)

Ngā Mihi

Conrad Kelly

Principal