It was great to see so many children and teachers dressing up in pink or mufti to show awareness for the ‘speak up, stand up, stop bullying’ campaign, when we celebrated National Pink Shirt Day last Friday. 

Just a reminder that next Monday 26th October is Labour Day, so everyone gets to enjoy a longer weekend, with our exciting ‘Book Week’ starting on Tuesday.

We have received news from Sophie who operates ‘Your Lunch Box’. Sophie is expecting her first baby next month and has been unable to find anyone to run ‘Your Lunch Box’ in her absence, from the start of November. They are looking at restarting lunch orders again from Term 1 next year. In the interim we will continue to have Subway lunches available on a Friday.

What incredible weather we landed on our very special day! Many farmers in the area have since said that it was the worst day of the year, with freezing temperatures and driving rain! Well done everyone for showing such resilience and determination – we still had a great day.

We had 65 lambs, 16 calves, 2 kids, 22 ponies, 12 chickens, 20 caged pets enter, along with 5 lamb entries from preschoolers. For our inaugural Vege Garden competition we had 13 very impressive entries and there was amazing creativity and talent shown in the Horticultural Happenings.

Thank you to everyone involved. We realise it takes a lot of family support to make this day happen, with the caring for animals, growing of gardens and possibly giving up holidays away, through to collecting of the horticultural happening art resources. Celebrating the ‘country’ aspect of our school is important to us, as parents have expressed over the years. It is always wonderful to see the passion and love shown by students to their very special animal buddies.  

A huge thanks goes to this year’s new Ag Day Committee, led by Frances McKenzie, Rachel Algar, Justine Cooper and Kate Millen, who coordinated Ag Day for the first time and did an amazing job.

A huge thanks also goes to our amazing teachers, who spent so much time putting the Horticultural Happenings, but in particular Nicola Spence & Hayley Smit for their coordination and extra work, along with Mandy Searancke. And finally but by no means least – thank you to all our parents who supported your children in their country endeavours – looking after pets, collecting flowers etc, etc. This will be a day and memories that will stay with them long always. Thank you all. 

If you missed being able to attend this great day – check out some of the photos from the day depicting the fun had by persons & pets alike.

We will share our Group Day successes and photo’s next week. And we wish our students taking part in the Waikato Show good luck for next week!

This year we were very excited to run our first ever School Vege Garden competition, with prizes kindly sponsored by AMBER GARDEN CENTRE. We are very grateful to Christiene Ulrich from the Tamahere Garden Club, who took time to visit all the children’s home gardens over the school holidays to carry out judging. Thanks Christiene!!

We were so impressed with all the vege garden entries and the creativity and enthusiasm of our student gardeners!!!!

THANK YOU:

Special thanks to our amazing sponsors this year, without whom our Ag Day would not have been so special. Special thanks to LUGTON’S REAL ESTATE and WAIKATO EQUINE VETERINARY CENTRE for their sponsorship of all the ribbons; FMG for providing some wonderful giveaways and packs; HELLERS for providing the school with more than 500 yummy sausages, through their Sausages for Schools programme. Thanks also go to ASB, FARMLANDS, FIRST CREDIT UNION, TAMAHERE 4SQUARE, NEWSTEAD VETERINARY SERVICES, NRM, SNAZZY PAWS DOG GROOMING, YOUR LUNCH BOX, CAMBRIDGE VETS, PET STOCK, ANIMATES, DATAMARS LIVESTOCK, ACORN ITM, DAIRY NZ, CAMBRIDGE GRAINS AND CAMAROSA.

RAFFLE RESULTS:

We had some amazing raffle prizes to give away from our generous sponsors!

The winner’s were:

Raffle 1: Andrea Dunseath

Raffle 2: Dave Watson

Raffle 3: Tania Sherwin

HORTICULTURAL HAPPENINGS:

This year’s Horticultural Happenings entries were undoubtedly of the highest quality we have seen for a number of years, which made the Judges’ decisions extremely difficult. The time and effort that the students invested was clearly displayed, with minimal waste, fitting well with our Enviro school policy.

Our wonderfully talented Year 2 & 3 Jump Jam team the Tamahere Junior Pups,  took part in the Strictly Jump Jam Competition last Friday night at Hamilton Boys High, competing in the Year 1 – 4 Freshman category. 

They did their absolute best and gave it their all. They received 2nd place! They also got Excellence Awards in ‘Technical Execution’ and ‘ Presentation’.  Congratulations to you all and your amazing coach – Miss Nicola Spence!!

On Tuesday the children in Taupiri Syndicate were lucky enough to have Adele Gaddes, the author of the book ‘Blaze’ visit. 

She talked with us about monarch butterflies and how they are threatened by pests, sprays and humans and what we can do to protect them. The children had an opportunity to dress up as different ‘predators’ and help in this interactive experience. 

It was wonderful for our tamariki to see the hard work that goes into conservation and begin to make links between their own local environment and the impact they have on it.

If your Whānau would like to order your own copy of Adele’s book ‘Blaze’ please visit the office, where you can see the book and get an order form. Next week Adele will be visiting Pirongia Syndicate on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we took 16 Year 6 leaders to The Amazing Race, held in the Hamilton Gardens, where the children worked in two groups to complete a variety of team-building activities and challenges. It was a test of perseverance, communication, and problem-solving. Our students represented our school with incredible positivity and a Kia Maia attitude. A huge congratulations to the following students who came first overall, out of 30 plus teams from around the Waikato: Lucy J, Finn D, Daniyal P, Nikau W, Dahna S, Luca M, Lucie M and Sophia T. A special thanks to Claire Ruffell, Kathryn Downey, Megan Malcolm, and Kara Ackerman for providing supervision and transport on this day.

Paula Dunton

A national tour of New Zealand is underway for a squad of football players from the Ricki Herbert Football Academy, including our very own Jaxson M of Manuka 16.

The Ricki Herbert Football Academy National tour was meant to happen in Australia, but due to COVID 19, the Academy is now touring around the North & South Islands of New Zealand. Jaxson is away all this week, playing various teams in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

What an exciting opportunity!!

We have exciting library news, with our Library Book Week happening next week.

WEEK 3:

It’s ‘Dress up as a Book Character Day’ next Wednesday. All students are encouraged to dress up for the day. The parade is usually held after morning tea.

THE LIBRARY BOOK SWAP REMINDER:

Just a reminder that the Book swap is being held in the Library during morning tea and lunchtime next Wednesday 28th October, for those children who have dropped off books to swap.

Students can bring in the maximum of 5 (picture, fiction or non-fiction) books for Book Swap into the Library during lunchtime, up until Tuesday next week. They will be given a token sheet for their donated books, then these tokens can be exchanged for books on Book Swap Days.

Please remember to bring your tokens with you on Wednesday.

WEEK 4

The Scholastic Book Fair is being held in the school library on Monday 2nd, Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th of November, between 2.30pm-5.30pm. Cash, cheques, credit and debit card payments will be accepted and an eftpos machine will be available.

Come along and buy books for Christmas. All purchases contribute towards free books for our school library.

This year the Vela School pool will be open for the 4 weekends from Saturday 14th November through to Sunday 13th December 2020. Please note that any unused passes from last season can be redeemed during these weekends.

From January 2021 new swim passes will need to be purchased. We will be keeping the same prices – see below for the discounted swimming concession passes. 

Please return all winter sports uniforms, in a named bag or with name attached, to the office.

The Tamahere Community Centre Committee’s AGM is happening tonight at 7.00pm in the Tamahere Community Centre. This is a community committee where anyone who pays rates towards the Tamahere Community Centre can get involved. We encourage you to attend, so that you can have a say. 

Everyone is welcome!

How about becoming a trustee and using your skills and experiences to help shape a positive future for our children?

The Board of Trustees is the employer of all school staff and sets the school’s overall strategic direction. The membership of the school board includes elected parent representatives, an elected staff representative and the Principal, who is the board’s ‘chief executive’ and manages the school operations in line with the board’s policies.

School trustees have a very important role in making sure every child at our school can reach their highest possible standard in educational achievement. If you want to know more about what trustees do, view here.

Here are some of the things they do:

• Work with the principal and consult with staff, students and the community
• Set the educational goals and strategic direction of the school
• Monitor progress and inform parents on how the school is progressing against its annual targets and on the development of the students
• Decide how the school’s funding will be spent
• Select the school’s principal and support the development of all staff
• Ensure the school is a physically and emotionally safe place for all students and staff, and is inclusive of and caters for students with differing needs
• Oversee the management of staff, property, finances, curriculum and administration.

What sort of skills do trustees need?

Trustees are active leaders in their schools and need a balance of skills and experiences. They need to work well in a team, be able to put plans in place for the school’s future, ask challenging questions and have good communication skills. It helps to have strong links to one or several of the school’s communities, as well as an understanding of financial matters and the education sector, and experience in managing people.

Contact your school if you want to find out about standing for election, nominating someone else or voting in the election – they will be happy to help.

For our school community to stay informed about cyber safety, Family Zone has recently updated the content of their webinars, adding new tips and tricks to ensure safe and happy digital homes.

Please click here to see what webinars are coming up.

Kia ora,

My name is Rachel Zakaria and I am a postgraduate student studying towards a Master of Speech and Language Pathology degree at the University of Canterbury.

I am currently undertaking a research project that is looking into parents’ perspectives on their children’s language learning in New Zealand. The target participants of this research are parents/caregivers who:

• live in New Zealand currently
• were born overseas/abroad
• are speakers of another language that is not English, Te Reo Māori, or New Zealand Sign Language, AND
• have one or more children who are attending preschool or school

The survey should take approximately 10-13 minutes and it is completely anonymous.

Survey link: bit.ly/nzparentsurvey

Or scan this QR code:

Thank you so much for considering to be part of this survey. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Ngā mihi nui,

Rachel Zakaria

Master of Speech and Language Pathology

University of Canterbury

Email: rpz12@uclive.ac.nz