Friday 05 September 2014  – Term 3 - Week 7

Value Focus for next fortnight: Responsibility and Tolerance

From The Principal

Kia ora tatou katoa, Talofa, Malo e lelei, Bula vi naka, Kia orana Nga mihi nui ki a koutou, Namaste, Nihao, greetings to you all.

Welcome to all our new families, we trust you will enjoy your time at Elm Park School.

The weather is finally improving and our children are able to get outside and play more during the break times, which enables the children to get some fresh air and exercise.

Just a friendly reminder to ensure that your children are coming to school wearing the correct uniform including hair ties (black, white or blue) earrings that should be plain studs,  plain BLACK shoes and white or blue socks. Some children are not wearing their uniform correctly which is very disappointing.

Our Junior Choir represented our school at Vodafone Centre in Manukau.  Thanks to Mrs Darukhanawalla and Miss Ladley for all your hard work and for taking the children for singing practice in your lunchtime. One of our students, Kieran John-Francke, was chosen out of 10 schools to sing a solo. Congratulations, we love talented children to be recognized.

You may be aware that Stuart Myers, Principal of Pakuranga Intermediate will be resigning at the end of the year. He has been Principal at this neighbouring school since 2000. We wish Stuart all the best in his new career.

Our Kapa Haka group will be performing at the Official opening of the Emilia Maud Nixon Whare, 35 Uxbridge Road, Howick, Saturday 13 September from 1.00pm - 3.30pm. Our Elm Park group will be performing at 2.30 pm. We look forward to being part of these events.  

Have a lovely weekend.

Trish Plowright

Principal

POSITIVE SOCIAL INTERACTION

Congratulations to the following students who were selected and acknowledged this fortnight for their responsible, friendly behaviour.

Personal Presentation Winners - The following students were voted as the overall fortnights winner in their year level for the most neatly presented in their uniform.

Community Notices

Habitat for Humanity Build Challenge Build a LEGO® house for Habitat!

Join the Build Challenge: build a house out of LEGO® for Habitat for Humanity and make a difference! Be in to win some great LEGO® prizes too. Join one of our fun local events during the school holidays, or build at home (27 Sep - 12 Oct). Check www.buildchallenge.org – registrations open from 27th Sep.

We are proud to announce a new initiative by the NZUT

The very first Kiwileles holiday programme!

 Second week of the school holidays Monday 6th – Friday 10th October

9am – 12pm  

Courtyard Room of St Lukes Community Centre, 130 Remuera Road

Years 4 – 6 Kiwileles students

$100 for the 5 mornings

For more info admin@nzukulelefestival.org.nz

Focus on Children

On Tuesday the 26th of August Room 12 went with Rooms 13 and 14 to Bucklands Beach to do a beach clean up.

First we had to get changed at school into old clothes because we didn’t want to get our uniforms sandy and wet. We had all brought rain coats and sunscreen as well because we didn’t know if it would be cold and wet or hot and sunny.

Next we had our morning tea. We had to eat early so that we had lots of energy for our beach clean up.

Then we all loaded on to the bus with our bags. It was very squishy. Some of us were singing songs on the bus. The bus took about 10 minutes to get us to the beach.

When we got there we were met by the people from camp MERC who were helping us out. They talked to us about what we were going to do and then split us up into groups.

After that we went with our group leaders to start our beach clean up. It didn’t look like there was much rubbish until you knew what you were looking for. All together we picked up 70kg of rubbish! That is about twice the weight of most of us. We found lots of lollipop sticks, we need to remind people to put these in the rubbish.

Once we had finished our clean up we sat down for lunch. We were very hungry from all our hard work. The people from MERC put out some cones and we had to stay between them for our lunch break. Mrs Lashlie took some people across the road to go to the bathroom.

The last part was the best. We got to go through around six different activities. They helped us to learn about the bad things that were happening to the marine animals and how we could help. We learnt about how it is really important to cut milk bottle rings before we put them in the bin so that if they make it to the ocean no animals get stuck. We learnt that it is important that rubbish doesn’t collect in the ocean because pests like rats can use it to float over to protected islands. We learnt about the effects that oil can have on the animals if it spills. We also learnt about how it felt if you were a marine animal caught up in a net, and many other things! We had to do a scavenger hunt and we even saw some crabs! Our favourite activity was when we had to stand outside a circle and use ropes to try and lift a 2L bottle of oil (it was actually water) out of the middle of the circle. We didn’t quite get there.

Last we took the bus back to school. We were much quieter because we were very tired.

We had a fabulous day cleaning up the beach and learning more about how we can protect our marine animals. We hope this teaches you something new too.