This week, as part of our Speech Session with Helen Griffiths, we hunted to find Matariki stars around the school.
We also completed some stars to add to our mural in Kopa Wha as well as practising our Matariki Dance.
I have also included Kopa Rima’s beautiful Matariki display outside their room.
Have a wonderful Matariki Day tomorrow and we look forward to seeing you all next Tuesday morning for our early morning Puanga Breakfast beginning at 6.45am.
This week Kopa Wha has been focusing on the Letter Gg. We have been using our new Better Start Literacy resources and investigating a variety of words beginning with the letter Gg.
We have also been discussing what we are grateful for on a daily basis. We found a variety of pictures of things we are grateful for in magazines and stuck them onto our colourful leaves. This created a beautiful mobile for each tamariki.
Today Whaea Bridget worked alongside our tamariki to create a tree which we can hang our grateful leaves on. Next week I will update this blog with photos of the completed activity. We are very excited to share our mahi with you.
This week Kopa Wha has been working on the Letter Ff.
We have been looking at the emotion of frustration and what that may look like. This emotion appears often throughout our day at school in numerous settings. Our tamariki have been looking at a variety of short clips of others feeling frustrated when playing with a variety of toys. An example of this is when we build a tower and it repeatedly falls down.
We have extended this emotion to relate to the environment as well. I shared how I become frustrated seeing rubbish when out in our beautiful environment. We incorporated our Community Outing to visit Ngamotu Beach where we put on gloves and collected rubbish from the beach. We collected a bin full of rubbish and also while we were there collected seaweed, driftwood and sand. Once we returned to school we created some artworks with our seaside findings. These are displayed outside Kopa Wha.
Our tamariki have also enjoyed reading about the ‘Rainbow Fish’. They created some beautiful collaged rainbow fishes which you can see displayed in Kopa Wha.
Welcome to 2025!
I am super excited to be back in Ruma Wha this year. I am so fortunate to be working alongside a very experienced and lovely colleague, Shelley Cook. Shelley is our new Lead Teacher for the Whare Manaaki. She is also the teacher in Ruma Rima. Please feel free to come in and say hello to both Shelley and I anytime.
This week all tamariki have been re establishing routines and settling back into school life. The highlight of each day has definitely been swimming. It has been delightful to watch and hear the squeals of delight during our swimming time. It has also been pleasing to see how confident our students are becoming in the water. This is such an important part of the curriculum for all our tamariki in our kura. I am looking forward to extending our children’s abilities so that ultimately, they are safe in any body of water.
Please mark in your calendar the 12th February as the whole school (including Whare Manaaki) are attending the Aquatic Centre from 9.30 am. We would love for you to join us and partake in the fun with your tamariki in the pools. See you there!
Kidz Korner is a highlight of the week for all of the Whare Manaaki students. The children practise a range of gross motor skills on all the different apparatus such as the zip lines, slides, shooting hoops while jumping on trampolines and foam/ball pits. The tamariki also walk along wobbly planks and climb a variety of uneven surfaces. It has been wonderful to watch and play alongside our tamariki as some of them create different sized towers with soft blocks and then knock them down again and again. What a wonderful safe venue this is for our tamariki to explore and develop a huge range of skills.
