Kia ora koutou. Spring has arrived. It was a lovely surprise to see our daffodils all up outside the admin office block when I arrived back at my school office at Level 3 last week.

For most of the Kowhai families online learning has been a new experience eagerly embraced in a variety of ways. It has been memory-making for sure! Between daily zoom story and dance times, and Seesaw learning activities the children engaged in whatever was possible in their context. We have had several themes, including Pirates last week, which saw the teachers attempting to perform a play during the Friday zoom. Most importantly, we have very much appreciated families, including some of our pre enrolled children, joining in to keep us all connected. It has been super lovely seeing the wider whanau join in too, from grandparents, uncles and aunties to other siblings. Notably, the fantastic support and patience of the older siblings helping out their younger ones. The experience has truly been a collaborative one. And now we are very excited about heading back to real school!

The following events can also be found on our school calendar on our school website.

Kākā students proved during lockdown what capable, independent and creative learners they are! Problem-solving, robot stories, science experiments, Kahoots, riddles, constructing paper towers, home fitness, making lava lamps, learning sign language, making “How to…” videos and making treasure maps were some of the activities that challenged us over the last few weeks.

Meet Bentley and Wolfy, the latest additions to the Khandallah team! These delightful dogs are from Canine Friends and they help our students with their reading one day a week. We are very grateful to their wonderful owners, Kate (Bentley) and Kathy (Wolfy) for volunteering their time with us. Our students just love hanging out and reading with these gorgeous boys!

Mataī’s Lockdown- Mataī had a lot of creativity and fun online during lockdown. From dance parties to mine craft maths, and treasure hunts to photography. We loved seeing everyone on our screens each week but are glad to be back in the classroom again.

We are very lucky at Khandallah School to have two new Bilingual Support Workers join our team. Their names are Jing (Mandarin Bilingual Support Worker) and Sunita (Hindi Bilingual Support Worker). They are both at school on Tuesdays and Jing is with us on Thursdays too. The purpose of their role is to support our Mandarin- and Hindi-speaking students, and to help us celebrate the cultural diversity of our students. Welcome Jing and Sunita!

Many of the Year 5/6 students have been very busy over the past three weeks, including creating some great podcasts, time travel stories and fake news, doing science experiments using materials from the kitchen, creating teddy bear tableaux, solving and discussing fractions and geometry problems, learning about financial literacy using Banqer, halving and doubling recipes and then cooking them, learning te reo and creating some great lockdown art projects. We've also played lots of games together over Zoom as we've met as home groups and supported one another through a challenging time. Friday afternoon Kahoot quizzes have also been fun. We held a virtual Kauri's Got Talent competition as well. While it's been fun, we are glad to be back together again.

We would like to welcome all our new students and their families to Khandallah School:

Thank you to all our parents who supported our Book fair this year which we just managed to squeeze in before Covid19 darkened our doors again. Not only did your children get some great new books to read during lockdown but the library also has over $1,000 to put towards it's fab new look (and some new books too).