Monday, February 8, 2016

Kowhai welcome letter


Kowhai Team Newsletter, February 2016.  

Kia ora and welcome back to school for 2016.
My name is Hine Blair, the children call me Hine and I look forward to getting to know your child this year.

The first two weeks of the year are spent getting to know each other, developing class routines and expectations. In this time stationery needs to be purchased and organised. Book bags and reading books will come home once this process is completed.
Swimming begins immediately as we have only a short window of warm weather in which to swim and it is compulsory. Kowhai children swim each day. Please send named togs and towel in a plastic bag. Togs can stay at school if this suits you.
Sunhats are compulsory and are purchased with stationery.  You can collect your child’s from their room and take home for a wash if needed.
School Lunches Lunch eating is supervised to ensure all children do eat. Hamilton East School is part of Project Energize and supports healthy food choices. Suitable lunches consist of sandwiches, fruit and other healthy snack food. If your child is used to eating rice or other prepared food then send this along in a container.  Packaged sugary snacks and chips are discouraged and sugary drinks are not permitted.   We also respectfully ask parents not to send yogurt to school. Although a healthy food it is so easily spilled and has ruined many books and book bags. Please save for an after school snack.
As an Enviro school we encourage the use of lunch paper and reusable containers rather than plastic wrap. Children are encouraged to drink water and can access their water bottle in the classroom at any time.
Home Readers  After teachers have established students reading levels and stationery is organised, book bags will begin to come home.  They will contain a reading book or reading activity to be shared at home with parents. This reading time should be short (10 mins) and enjoyable If your child is unable to read the material then read it with them.
Home books will begin to come home on Fridays in place of a reading book. They are a reading resource of poems and stories your child has written.
Book bags need to come to school each day and Home books returned on Mondays.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask. We look forward to meeting everyone at the Family Picnic and Goal Setting Conferences later in the term.
Keep in touch with what is happening in Room 3 by visiting the class blog via the school website www.hameast.school.nz.

Hine Blair
Kowhai Team, Hamilton East School



Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Exploring our environment

We explored the grounds at Hamilton East School. 
We looked at some of the places in our school.

Our classroom

The rainbow playground 

The water trough

Fairyland

The butterfly garden

The kitchen garden

The swimming pool



Monday, December 14, 2015

Parana Park

Today we went to Parana Park. We had so much fun on the slides, in the pools and on the swings. Thank you to our parent helpers for their time and making it possible for us to go.















Thursday, November 19, 2015

Visiting Maungatautari

Visiting Maungatautari Sanctuary on PhotoPeach

We visited Mangatautari on the school bus. We have been learning about our environment with a focus on growing. We looked at the flora and fauna at Maungatautari. We heard about the different types of plants that grow in the sanctuary and how people and animals can use them. When we first arrived we heard about the types of predators that they have tried to keep out of Maugatautari and how they manage the pests.

Our highlights were seeing lots of Kaka birds and some were within arms reach. We also saw two Tuatara up very close. One had tried to wiggle it's tail off so it had a stump of two tails. We walked a lot and it was a big day out for us.

We would like to thank the parents that came with us on the trip and made it possible for us to go.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Positive Assembly on the Totara steps


Since our hall has been damaged by the fire we have had positive assembly on the Totara deck.
We bring our hats and celebrate other people's success. We watched the indian dance group perform too. They were entertaining.



Thursday, November 5, 2015

Planting our seedlings

We planted our seeds a couple of weeks ago. They started growing. They turned into bean plants and they grew crazy long. We needed to plant and water them. We had to untangle them and take them to our kitchen garden. In the the garden we planted our seedlings and we helped them to wrap around some sticks so they would grow up nice and tall.

We made slideshows in the Orchard about the stages of growing plants.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Seed Shop Fundraising

Room 6 opened a seed shop last term to fundraise for things to go in our school kitchen. We brainstormed what we thought we needed to buy and decided that we should go on the bus to a shop to buy our items.

We went to visit The Scullery in Hamilton. They were awesome at helping us find the things we needed. We purchased a lot of cookie cutters and a baking tray. The Scullery kindly gave us some cookie cutters too. We choose different animal shapes and some gingerbread shapes too.

As soon as we got back to school we washed our cookie cutters and baked some biscuits to test them out.

We love baking and it was great being able to choose our own cookie shape.