Kia ora koutou Kowhai parents and caregivers! We have made it to the end of term 3!! What a busy last week of term we have had! Children and teachers enjoyed wearing PJs/Onesies for our fun mufti day today. Thank you so much to all of the parent helpers who helped out with the production, a special thank you to Amy-Jo for providing the beautiful outfits for our Dream Weavers. The children were awesome on the night and made their teachers proud. Pet Day Reminder Pet Day is on Friday 20th October (week 1). A notice has gone home about this today. Check out the following website for information about Pet Day https://wmpetday2017.weebly.com/ School Photos School photo order forms went home this week. If you would like to order school photos you need to have submitted your order by the 18th of October. Sun Hats A reminder that sun hats must be worn when outside during term 4. We will be eating lunch outside next term. School sun hats can be purchased from the office. Have a wonderful holiday, enjoy the break from school and we will see you in term 4! Thelma, Nicole, Jo, Christina, Louise, Natalie & Louise G kowhai@westmelton,school.nz Check out all of our new reading books!!
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Kia ora koutou Kowhai parents and caregivers!
We are nearly there! Just one more week of school until the school holidays, and only three sleeps (and an afternoon lie-down) until our production 'season' begins on Monday night. We are all (children and teachers!) super tired and just a little fragile - tread carefully! :o) Welcome to Finn who started school this week. We were also really excited to meet Ms Berry-Mason on Tuesday, and to welcome Miss Garside to our Community as well. We hope you all have an enjoyable time with us. Production Our production is being held next Monday and Tuesday evening. Please note this is at the Rolleston College auditorium, from 7.00pm - 8.45pm. Children will need to be at Rolleston College by 6.00pm, with entry via the Broadlands Drive entrance. Children will need to be signed in when they are dropped off, and parents will be asked to leave immediately (please do not take offence at this, but we have a limited amount of time to get everybody sorted)! Thank you for your offers of help on the evening - we have enough parent helpers now, and have approached these parents directly. Children can be collected from the Broadlands Drive entrance after 7.45pm on both nights (provided you are not attending that night's performance!). You will be asked to sign your child out as you collect them (or any other children you are transporting). Below are details of how we are expecting children to be dressed when they arrive:
If your child has a speaking part, please continue to practise this over the weekend, focusing on smooth and expressive reading, at an even pace. And, as mentioned a couple of K.I.T. notices ago, if you would like us to dress your child in their pyjamas following the production, please send these with your child on the night. Thank you! Our huge thanks to you all for your incredible support with production preparation. We had a school-based dress rehearsal this morning, and the children all looked incredible. We hope you will be as proud and delighted with their efforts as we are. Production tickets Production tickets were sent home today with those who have ordered them. These have been put in your child's lunchbox (for children in the Allchurch, Buckenham and Sands pods), as we thought this would be the first place you looked on a Friday afternoon! Both performances have now sold out - we hope you were able to secure your tickets. Our numbers for performances are strictly limited due to the fire regulations of the Rolleston College auditorium, and we are unable to offer further tickets. If you have missed out (or have tickets you can not use), perhaps try the West Melton Community Facebook group (or the black market). ;o) Monday On Monday there will be a whole-school dress rehearsal at Rolleston College. We will be leaving school at 9.00am promptly, so please make sure you are on-time (a big ask for the last week of term, we know!). Children will need their school bags with a lunch, morning tea and drink bottle. We will not be using reading packets, so please do not send these to school. We have a range of quiet activities for the children to do while they wait, so please do not send anything extra in the children's bags. Next week we expect there will be continued disruption to our normal programme, and we thank you in advance for your patience. We are all looking forward to Term 4, and a return to normal routine! We are sure there will be many more questions around production, and some things we have forgotten to tell you - please ask any questions in the comment section below and we'll make sure to answer them over the weekend. We hope you have a super quiet and restful weekend planned for your superstar performers, and look forward to sharing all the hard work with you next week. Thelma, Nicole, Jo, Louise G, Christina, Louise S & Natalie kowhai@westmelton,school.nz Kia ora koutou!
It's hard to believe that we are at the end of Week 8 already - the weeks are just flying by, and especially with our upcoming production . This week we welcomed Seth and William to school. We hope you both have a wonderful start to school! Next week we will be giving an extra warm welcome to Miss Louise Garside who will be joining the Kowhai Community from Monday. Louise is a post-graduate student from the University of Canterbury College of Education, and is on her final teaching placement. Louise will be with us for seven weeks (so will return after the holidays), and we are really looking forward to having an extra pair of hands around the place! Louise will be working alongside Mrs Sands and will be working with reading groups, maths groups and all the other things teachers do! Please do come and introduce yourself and make Louise feel welcome. Also being welcomed next week on Tuesday is Mrs Pam Berry-Mason. She will be starting with us in term 4 due to roll growth. As with Louise Garside, please introduce yourself and welcome Pam. Production Today all children that are performing in the production were given a "paper" notice, to take home to ensure that all important messages have got to everyone. On the two nights the production children will need to arrive at Rolleston College at 6pm and all children will need to have foundation (make-up) applied at home. Children will need to attend both nights, even if they don't have a parent attending on the night eg, if a parent was coming to watch on Tuesday, we'd still expect the child to be there on the Monday. Girls in the "Dream-Weaver" group will need to have their hair in a bun, please. If you have any questions/queries, please don't hesitate to contact a Kowhai teacher. Core Learning Due to our production practises "core learning" has and will continue to be interrupted. This means that on any given day they could miss one or two of the following; reading, storywriting, mathematics. This also means that your child is unlikely to get four reading books for the week. Reports As mentioned last week our teachers have been busy with assessments and preparing reports to go home at the end of the term. These will come home on the Monday of week 10 (25 September). If you have any questions about reports, or are unsure if your child will be receiving a report, feel free to check with your child's pod teacher. Reminders
We hope you all enjoy a relaxing weekend - it's going to be very busy again, next week! Thelma, Nicole, Jo, Christina, Louise & Natalie kowhai@westmelton,school.nz Kia ora koutou! It's the end of Week 7 already - the weeks are just rocketing by, and we still have lots to do before the end of the term. This week we welcomed Beau to school. We hope you have a wonderful start to school, Beau! Hearing and vision tests This week we were visited by the hearing and vision testers. These tests are to follow-up on children who may have shown some difficulty with hearing and vision at the B4 School checks. Letters related to these tests went home with individual children who were tested, and contain information about the results of the tests, and any necessary follow up. If you have a concern about your child's hearing or vision at any stage, we would recommend discussing this with your GP in the first instance. School photos Information about school photos went home today with all children, and was also emailed from the school office. The Kowhai Community will be having their photo taken on Thursday morning. As well as community photos, there will also be individual photos and family photos for those that wish to have them taken (signed slips need to be returned to school for these). Production The children (and teachers!) have been working very hard to practise and prepare for our end of year production. With just two weeks to go, production practices will start to take priority next week. We expect there will be some disruption to our normal community programmes (reading, writing and maths), and there will be some nights when your child comes home without a new reading book. We apologise for the disruption, but are sure you will understand when you see the final extravaganza! A reminder that tickets for the production are limited to two per family (you can enter the ballot for more if needed), and can be purchased through the 'shop' link on the school website. Our production is entitled 'The power of the dream', and each learning community is preparing a section looking at the past, the present, and the future of a particular concept or idea. In the Kowhai Community we are looking at the 'dream' idea very literally. Our section of the production will feature a group of children who come on stage in their pyjamas and go to sleep. Then some dream fairies will come in and sprinkle dream dust on them. A third group of children represent the first dream of those sleeping children, which is about a day at school. They will wear school uniform and have a dance representing different school activities. We finish our section with a combined song that all children will sing, and a group of children who will dance representing a dream about themselves as adults. Phew! It all sounds very complicated, but we are working to make it as simple and enjoyable for all children as it can be. We'd ask again that if you know your child is unable to make the production performances (Monday September 25, and Tuesday September 26) that you please let your child's pod teacher know as soon as possible. Details of production costumes are given below - please read through carefully and note what your child needs. We would like all costumes brought to school on Monday 18 September, so we can be sure that everybody has what they need. We are planning to do a very small face-painting on each child (just to make it fun for the children, and more stressful for the teachers!) - please let your child's pod teacher know if your child has an allergy to face paint. We also thought we could help you out by changing your child into their pyjamas once our section of the production is finished. That way, when the entire production is finished, you will only need to collect your child from us, take them home and put them to bed. If you think this could be helpful, please let your child's pod teacher know. We'll figure out the finer details during the week and let you know in next week's K.I.T. notice! Our thanks to those parents who volunteered to help a few weeks ago - Mrs Sands will be contacting you via email over the weekend. We're wondering if there are any parents who would be able to come to school and help the children with producing props during the week, or parents who would be able to help out with face-painting prior to the production. If you are able to help with either of these, please comment below. Production costumes We'd like your help, please to source costumes for our production. We've tried to keep our requirements simple, but thought we would share these with you now so you could prepare! Below are listed the names of children in each group (as outlined above), and the details of their costumes. If there are costume items that you do not have, please leave a comment below and hopefully somebody will be able to locate something to loan you. Please do not feel you need to purchase items specifically for production! We've also included the name of the teacher who will be working with each group. If you have any questions about requirements, either comment below, or approach the teacher who is working with your child.
Group 4 (adults) - Miss Simons These children have identified what career they would like to have when they grow up. They will need to dress in a costume representing their chosen career. Please ask below (in the comments) if you would like some help sourcing a costume, or feel free to redirect your child's idea if you have an easier costume at home!
Reports
Our teachers are currently busy with assessments and preparing reports to go home at the end of the term. These reports are for children who have been at school for 6 months, 1 year, 18 months or 2 years. If your child received a report at the end of Term 1, you will receive a further report at the end of this term. We have two types of reports - a progress report (at 6 months, 18 months and 30 months) which reports the progress your child is making in reading, writing, and maths; and an end of year report (at 1 year, 2 years and 3 years) which reports the progress your child has made against National Standards (in reading, writing, and maths), as well as a comment about their work in other school areas - health and pe, the arts, and inquiry. If you have any questions about reports, or are unsure if your child will be receiving a report, feel free to check with your child's pod teacher. Reminders
Phew - this K.I.T. notice must win the prize for the longest in history. Well done for making it this far! Have a restful weekend, everyone - it's going to be super busy next week! Thelma, Nicole, Jo, Christina, Louise & Natalie kowhai@westmelton,school.nz Kia ora Kowhai parents and caregivers,
Welcome to the end of week 6 and the beginning of Spring! Although we haven't had the warmest start we are getting closer and closer to Summer! We have finished another full on week and teachers are working hard on reports - there is a lot happening! Celebration of Learning This week the Kowhai Community had a taste of performing when we shared a song we have been working hard on with the rest of the school and community. The children were very excited and are really looking forward to performing it in our production at the end of the term! Lucky Book Club Your child will have brought home a Lucky Book Club booklet during the week. A reminder if you are wishing to purchase anything, orders need to be completed by Monday. Sickness This week we continued to have many children absent due to a variety of illnesses - vomiting bugs playing a big part. A reminder that children need to remain home for at least 48 hours after vomiting has ceased. Seesaw We apologise for the confusion over the use of Seesaw in the KIT notices for weeks 3 and 5. This is something that has not been used so far this year by Mrs Herring, Miss Simons or Miss Stuart. They will be using this in the future. Happy Father's Day to all the dads! Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday for another busy, fun-filled week! Thelma, Louise, Natalie, Nicole, Jo, and Christina kowhai@westmelton,school.nz |
K.I.T. noticesK.I.T. notices are published every second Friday. They contain information that we hope will help to keep you up-to-date with what is happening in our learning community as well as the wider school. Please feel free to comment on each week's post with any news items or community notices of your own, or to ask any questions you may have! Archives
December 2020
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