Projects For Term 3

Now that our health topics are completed the children are asking questions about new things that interest them. Across the school there are a variety of topics that are taking shape as the children ask their wonder questions. In Pohutukawa the children are collecting bread tags and are really interested in the idea of saving enough tags to recycle to earn enough money to buy a wheelchair. What a great cause! 

Kowhai children came back from their ice skating trip with questions about the difference between ice and snow and are now doing heaps of ice related experiments to understand its properties. Matai children, after reading a class book about endangered animals want to find out more to understand why some animals are dying out, how many are left and how they can help keep these animals in existence.

Nikau children have become fascinated by the weather, it’s changing patterns and how we predict what it will be like in the coming days and weeks. Our Rimu class have started their project with ‘Once upon a time…’ and have decided they would like to find out more about other countries' history. Finally Karaka children have taken a Bear Grylls approach to how they could survive if they were left in a rainforest or the bush.

It will be interesting to see how these projects evolve and where they take the children’s learning.

Epro8 Team

Last Thursday, as part of our extensions programmes on offer in the school, four of our senior children, Ethan, Eva, Issy and Maia  travelled with Miss V.B. to Ashburton to participate in the Epro8 semi finals competition for technology problem solving. They had already gained a 3rd place in the South Canterbury competition and now were moving up among the more experienced teams. 

Miss V.B. was very pleased with the way they worked collaboratively to try to solve some pretty tricky electronics and technology problems. They gained 8th place out of 12 teams and were praised for the way they went around helping other teams to clear up at the end of the competition. It’s great to hear these children were ambassadors of our Winch Wise values and gained some worthwhile experience in working towards solutions together. I’ve already heard that our two year 5s on the team are keen to give it another go next year and put the things they learnt into practise.

Emergency Practises

Each term the staff and children practise an emergency drill. These are usually either in the event of a fire, or an earthquake or in case we need to lockdown the school. They normally last about 5 minutes, with either an alarm or another signal to let the children and staff know the practise has begun. During these drills the teachers remind the children about how they need to behave and where they need to go explaining the process and we physically go through the motions of doing this - turtle for earthquakes, moving out to the middle of the field in the event of fire or earthquake.

At some time during the next week we will have a lockdown drill. The children will stay in their locked classrooms for about 5 minutes and where possible, close blinds and curtains and move out of sight of windows. Considering the age of the children teachers will talk about some of the reasons why we might need to do this. It’s also a good opportunity for you to discuss this at home. 

These drills are done as part of our health and safety procedures for our children and staff in school so that if an event of this nature were to occur the children would be familiar with the drill and it’s hoped this would reduce anxiety in such an emergency.

Jubilee Organising Committee News

We’ve held a second meeting this week and things are slowly taking shape. We’ve decided the Jubilee event will be held on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October next year. Catherine Bennett has kindly risked ‘life and limbs’ to go up in the school attic and has brought down heaps of old photos of former pupils and registers. Several people have now begun the interesting job of identifying who the children are in these photos and when they were at school.

Here’s some of those class photos:

We are now considering venues and caterers for the main Saturday meal and sorting out musical entertainment.

Soon we’ll have a Facebook page dedicated to the Jubilee and this will be linked to the school website.

Several of our Year 5 and 6 children worked with the regulations set out by NZLT and designed a sign that will go up by the roadside. We’ve chosen Willow and Ruby’s ideas and will send them off to NZLT to see if they approve. Here’s their draft design:

If anyone out there in our school community has a bar manager’s licence we’d love to hear from them as we’d like to provide these beverages for the Friday and Saturday nights.

Already booked the photographer!

Next committee meeting is 24 September at 7pm. All are welcome. 

Nga mihi nui - Kind Regards

Tre