Kia ora koutou katoa. It has been fantastic being back at school this week and seeing the smiling faces come through the gate. The children are so happy to be back with their friends, and their teachers. For many of us, the suddenness of this last lockdown was unsettling, and we do recognise this. That was why we provided the distance learning but left it to families to choose how much or how little they did, and this seemed to have been well received.

A warm welcome to the new students and families who have joined our school this week – welcome! Also, a huge welcome back to Ms Clarinda Lau who has been on parental leave but has now re-joined us and is in Room 18. We have missed you Clarinda and are excited to have you back.

Over the last few weeks, the children in Year 0, 1 and 2 have been designing a butterfly house that we can build at school to keep the chrysalis’ safe from wasps so they can hatch. The designs have been amazing, and one Year 2 student, Marko Plackic, even built his design and brought it to me, along with a letter explaining his thinking. It made my day, thank you Marko!

I spent some time with our newest students on Thursday and they are a delight. Their infectious enthusiasm for being at school and for learning new things is engaging. I read them a story about filling their buckets and others with kindness and about thinking each day what they can do to make someone else smile. Knowing them, I am sure they will!

Many of our students recently created beautiful posters for Peace Week 2020 under the theme “Celebrating Diversity”. They were amazing and our Kahui Ako have made some of these into a slide show on their website. This is the link. 

On our calendar, we had Parent-Teacher-Student meetings planned for Week 9 of this term. We have decided not to hold these en masse, are there has been such little school time since the last ones, however we do encourage you to make a time to meet with your child's teacher if you have any questions or want to find out more about their progress. Our teachers are very willing to meet with you either before or after school. This way we don't have to have students collected at lunchtime either. At this stage we are still planning for the Student-Led Conferences in Term 4 to go ahead.

Thank you all for the way you have been dropping and collecting your children this week. The gate arrangements have worked well, and until alert levels change to COVID-19 Level 1, we need to continue with these. 

Coming up in Week 9 we have Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week), a week where we especially focus on everyone speaking Te Reo as often as possible. The teachers have lots of activities planned and will be sharing these with you closer to the time.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Ngā manaakitanga

Sue Cattell

Principal