'Our Life' is the name of a unit that our Specialist Teachers and Aides put together to give our Te Toka Āhuru seniors a taste of what it takes to prepare for adult life after Pāpāmoa College.

Our Year 11-13 students learned about budgeting for meals, preparing shopping lists, purchasing ingredients at Countdown and cooking good Kiwi dishes, like ‘spag-bol’, ‘mac-n-cheese’, and ‘sausages & mash’, which they then ate together, and shared with students from Tauranga Special School.

At the beginning of each week, students prepared shopping lists for our ‘meal of the week’. They compared the prices of ingredients and had to decide what items to purchase. They also learned that budgeting is an important part of planning for shopping! Once the shopping lists were completed, we travelled by bus to Countdown at Pāpāmoa Plaza. The students really enjoyed our grocery shopping trips throughout Term 3 and learned how to use their Bee cards. They soon realised how important it is to tap on and off the bus!

Countdown kindly gave the students and staff a behind-the-scenes tour of the store where we learned about unloading trucks, crushing boxes, online shopping processes, and how cold it is in the chiller! We were treated to a yummy morning tea in the staffroom and the students were given a voucher each to contribute towards food for our end-of-term picnic held on Monday 11 September. The ham and egg sandwiches, fresh fruit, chips with kiwi dip, and choc chip muffins went down a treat.

We want to say a HUGE thanks to Countdown Pāpāmoa for their amazing support and kindness in helping our Te Toka Āhuru students reach their goals of being healthy and independent young adults.   

'Our Life' Coordinators:
Specialist Teachers: Chris Taane and Cindy Hurren
Teacher Aides: Sandra Naylor, Debbie Frost, and Sarah Boyes