Kia ora

It’s been so great visiting the Pouaka Room while Garden to Table is on and seeing the students so excited about cooking! They are really enjoying working together to create yummy food they have firstly harvested then prepared, cooked and finally eaten. Yesterday, the Room 5 students made vegetable risotto and fruit crumble. The new garden beds and compost bins look amazing and are starting to be planted out. Thank you to the parent helpers and the Year 5 team, especially Miss Grace Osborne who leads this initiative. Lucky Year 5!!

A huge congratulations to our chess team who won the competition this week and are the North Shore Primary Schools Chess Champions. Well done to Jack Chen, Emily Gan, Isaac Wang, Bevis Jiang and Peter Zhou. We last held it in 2011 (as well as the preceding two years), so it is really nice to have it again. Thank you to Ms Loren Morris who leads Chess in our school.

Our football teams represented us so well yesterday at the North Shore tournament. The Year 3/4 team came second in the Championship, and the Year 5/6 team second in the Plate, with great sportsmanship shown by all players. A big thank you to Mr Scott Polkinghorne for taking these teams.

We are conscious of minimising classroom disruptions that distract learning, and would ask that if parents have messages for their child, that they phone the office who will pass it on. Please do not phone the classrooms. The office is also the best place for messages about changes to after school pickups, as emails to teachers may not always be read during the school day. We also ask that you do not phone your child during the school day, as mobile phone usage (including smartwatches) is not permitted between 9am and 3pm.

I have been pleased to see that most students are wearing correct uniform, and just ask that you check that their footwear, socks, stockings and hair ties are all the correct colour. The polar fleece is warm, however if your child needs to wear something else, a long sleeve skivvy may be worn under the Milford top but the sleeves must be black or navy only. A raincoat is useful given this unpredictable weather and we do have an optional uniform one. A reminder the NZ Uniforms are our uniform supplier, and items can be purchased online or at their store in Albany.

I hope you are enjoying the newsletter format, and have worked out the translation feature so you can read the newsletter in different languages. We are constantly looking for ways to maximise communication between home and school. I hope you have all booked your parent/teacher/child meeting for next Thursday, and have let the teacher know if your child is leaving school at 12.30pm. If you have any difficulty booking times, please contact the school office.

Next week is Peace Week and the students have some great activities planned. We are holding a mufti day on the Friday with the gold coin donation going to Kidsline. You can read more about what is planned in this newsletter.

Have a great weekend everyone and I hope to see many of the children at the movie night tonight.

Ngā mihi nui

Sue Cattell

Principal