To brighten up the darkness of the night at our Hōtoke Mid-Winter Festival, Class 7 has been preparing and practicing their fire club routine for many weeks.

As the year of nature's seasons is drawing to a close towards midwinter day, we begin to look toward the rising of Matariki. This year, Matariki marks the beginning of a new journey for me, and a new chapter for our school.

Please come and join us to spruce up the kindergarten gardens.

Each year this event is a special one for our community. Coming together early in the morning to a gathering circle to reflect and remember the year before.

We recently sent out a survey to all school whānau to get feedback on the changes we made to reporting about learning and wellbeing so far. Thank you to all who participated and shared their feedback. Your responses will help us shape the way going forward!

Check out our upcoming working bee flyer as we hope to beautify the gardens for the winter months. We are feeling excited to see the improvements we could make to our outdoor environment.

A Big Thank You to all families who regularly make Special Character donations through automatic payments via Kindo. Collectively, by May our community collectively honoured their pledge by nearly 35%, which is great! Let's keep it going and help us reach the full pledge amount!

The inter-school cross country was run on Tuesday with a number of our students coming in the top ten for their year groups. These students arrived back at kura excited to show us their white envelopes contain their invitation letters to the regional cross country competition.

Our fabulous woodwork teacher Paul Denford initiated and is now overseeing the involvement of Class 7 students as they are working on the carved 'Taniwha'. This large carving will complement the Waharoa, the beautfiful gateway that is planned for the entrance to our kindergarten and school.

We would like to support kindergarten and school whānau by publishing notices that may be of interest to members of our community. Publication in this newsletter is not a formal endorsement of events, services or goods advertised.