Kia ora whānau, We are looking forward to seeing you at our MSL workshops tonight at 3.30 or 6pm. Our team are looking forward to sharing with you at one of these times and the response has been tremendous. Thank you!

Our tamariki are busy and settled. We have had 'Love your Coast' presentations, Cycle Safety and water slide over the last week. We have swimming sports coming up and camp for Team Rangi. We have hauora interviews next week so please ensure that you fill in the info sheet at home and send this in prior to interviews. Coming up we have 'Walk or Wheel day" on Wednesday 4th March.  

I've reminded the children about a few simple rules this week if you could reinforce these at home: 

- hats every day please. (Seniors wrote to the BOT and the BOT have now approved them wearing black bucket hats if parents choose these as a senior privilege. They used awesome powers of persuasion writing to the BOT). 

- no chewing gum or sugary packets such as raro to be eaten at school please, 

- reminding children to respect the van Asch environment and not pull trees apart to create imaginary games  

- bikes and scooters need to be walked in the school grounds

With the crazy cool term that it is, I've been reflecting on where we're at and I'm in a pretty privileged position to be able to know all the different ways in which our whānau are all doing their part to help with the year we have ahead. 

I'd like to just list a few of those work streams that are going on in the background just to share such awesomeness amongst us all. Last Friday we had one of our biggest PTA turn out's ever and there was lengthy discussion about all that we have going on, the future and a real sense of people's willingness to be involved. If you can't make the PTA and still love to be involved please let me know as there are many ways to support our tamariki and our school. 

So just to share the mahi that is going on, we have people assisting on sustainabiliity and eco-friendly procedures in our new school, people helping add our Māori name and vision to our crest and letterhead, people assisting with furniture, helping fill our kitchens in all the learning spaces, people creating artworks or using their design skills for our school, we have a team promoting active transport (walking school bus), people helping with tikanga for our special occasions, people already asking to help with production and sport, people wanting to help create edible gardens in our school, people offering to help us pack or set up, people offering to donate items or their time to us, people teaching haka and waiata to our kids, community learning haka on their Saturday, people offering to donate gifts for dignitaries, people offering to help organise openings, people helping set up coffee at school and people writing to express their thanks and encouragement to the staff and BOT. This list goes on... 

The willingness to share your skillsets and help with all of these different things is truly remarkable. The more the you put in, the more you get out. Diversity in our community and having the willingness to help where we can, is our strength. 

Ngā mihi

Rose