Thursday 26th October 2023

Mā te huruhuru ka rere te manu

Adorn the bird with feathers so it may fly

Email: office@kereru.school.nz
Website: http://www.kereru.school.nz/
Location: 2306 Kereru Road, RD 1, Hastings 4171
Phone: 06 876 0923
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084298596659

Kia ora e te whānau,

We've had an awesome (and busy) start back to Term 4. I have personally loved being back teaching in the classroom this term, hearing all about our students' holiday adventures and seeing lots of great learning happening. With 3 weeks down and 7 more to go, the rest of the term is going to fly!

A big welcome to Meadow, who is our newest 5-year-old. Our tamariki are doing a fabulous job in being nurturing and helping her transition to school.

Pet Day last Thursday was a huge success. Thanks to everyone who helped with the setup, running of the day and pack up. Thank you to Fern Fuels for donating the sausages and BBQ, and to Toby and Kellie for keeping our tummies full. Thanks also to all of the Mums and Dads who juggled the normal morning madness with kids and all of the animals as well. Thank you to our judges: Emily and Grace from ASB, Danny from Kererū Station, and Mary-Anne and Beth. I can imagine it wouldn't have been easy to choose our winners - they were all so good. A big congratulations to Isabella and Daisy for winning the 2023 Champion Pet.

There was a hive of activity at school over the holidays. Our old turf was ripped up and replaced with a brand new sand turf. It has been great to see so many playing tennis and other sports during and after school hours. Our water system has also been upgraded. We now have an additional three 30,000L tanks and a backup system to ensure we can still open with water when the power is out.

In Week 4, we have our Cluster Athletics Day and have been enjoying the sunny weather to get lots of practice in. Thanks to Michaela from Sport Hawke's Bay, who has been helping with our athletics rotations.

Have a great end to the week.

Noho ora mai,

Kelsie Allen

Principal

Roll: 30

A big Happy Birthday to the following ākonga (learners):

• Meadow - 03/10
• Emmett - 12/10
• Patyon 23/10
• George - 10/11
• Morgan - 14/11

This term our specific ADORN focus is going to be around 'Organised'.

This term we would love to welcome Mrs Allen and Mrs Charteris to Kākano. As sad as it was to say goodbye to Ms Bentley, we are so excited to have both of these amazing teachers for our juniors.

Today we celebrated our awesome teachers with some small gifts and cards for World Teachers Day. We know that we are very lucky to have such passionate, hardworking teachers within our school and are grateful for all that they do for us.

The holidays feel like a distant memory now that we're in Week 3! I'm absolutely loving teaching Kākano this term with Mrs. Charteris, and I'm glad I had a nice, long, relaxing break to prepare for this busy term.

During the holidays, Hamish and I spent just over a week in Fiji at Octopus Resort, which is about 2 and a half hours up the coast in the Waya Islands. It's an amazing place with beautiful people and lots of yummy food. The weather wasn't the best, but we enjoyed lying on the beach (trying to tan through the clouds), reading, snorkeling, and sipping on lemonades. A highlight of our trip was visiting the local village and school - it was a back-to-basics experience. It was hard getting back on that plane to come home!

Once we got back, it was straight back to reality as I spent the week helping on the farm and catching up on some school work and lots of washing.

Wow it feels like this holiday went so quick! I am really excited to be teaching in Kākano this Term. It's going to be a crazy busy Term 4 as always with lots of exciting things happening.

I had a wonderful break. We went to Taupō for the first weekend and as Harry competed in the Taupō Winter series for motocross, coming away with 8th place over the six rounds. We then spent a week down South. We did a road trip to Christchurch as Harry was competing in the Nationals Motocross event in Leeston. He had a great couple days racing with some outstanding races and some not so good ones with a few crashes! We spent two days at my sisters in Lyttelton, spending some well needed time with the cousins. We even snuck a day skiing at Mt Hutt which is very lucky to still have fresh snow. We came home to lots of farm work, house work and school work and a gastro bug! But I feel refreshed and ready for a busy term.

Mrs Charteris

I am looking forward to Term 4 and all the fun things it brings! Things certainly get all christmassy and exciting heading to the pointy end of the year.

The holidays for me have been relatively quiet, getting into the garden when the wind was not blowing, catching up with friends and family which always fills one's cup.

Amongst all this I found a new passion for WASGIJ puzzles. I ended up doing 2, that's 2 more than I have ever done! It is certainly a good rainy and windy day project! I am feeling fresh and ready to start a fun Term 4!

Hello everyone!! Well, I had a visit from my big sister Julie from Australia. She this was her first visit to us since we moved to New Zealand 7 years ago! We had a very relaxing time at home for a few days. Julie couldn't get over how green it all was! I had to stop every 5 minutes so she could take a photo. I even took her through the river and showed her how I got to school each day after the flood. She was rather impressed being a city girl. We then went and stayed at Taupō and enjoyed a relaxing soak in the hot pools. I was sad to see her go, but a week was long enough! LOL.

School Fun

I like our school because we do lots of things that other schools don’t like: we play Bean Boozled and our teachers encourage us, especially in our athletics training! My favourite events in athletics are high jump and discus which I really enjoy (I nearly made 1 meter in high jump!)

We also set goals for ourselves like having a reading pizza wheel to see how many books you can read to get a free pizza! I am on my second pizza wheel and I am determined to finish it!

Most of the students here also like to play sports like tennis, we have a tennis cup every year which pushes us to our very best! Most of us can play chess quite well as we do in tennis but for chess we have a kereru school competition and an inter school competition which is cool to play people you don’t know and sometimes beat them!

We have been learning to do some fun fractions and our teacher Mrs Revell she has been helping us and explaining to us how they work in an easy way!!

Pet Day was also lots of fun and we did some pet art for judging which I thought was pretty cool

The events were best dressed pet, dog and lamb obstacle course, lamb drinking challenge, dogs best trick, mixed pet and vegetable animal creation. It was an amazing day.

We've loved getting stuck into some great learning in Kākano this term. With Athletics Day right around the corner, we've been outside training and practicing our techniques. We did some great Pet Day art with Mrs Charteris. Bruno came 1st, Autumn 2nd and Emmie 3rd. We have also been learning about inventors and inventions. We became inventors ourselves and made a slide for our quiet critters. We had show our collaboration, co-operation and communication skills. We've been getting really snappy at our basic facts and have been doing lots of awesome reading and writing.

The sun was shining last Thursday and we had a great day with all of our furry friends. Thank you so much everyone who helped, transported, judged and cooked - we couldn't have done it without you.

Congratulations to Isabella and Daisy for winning Kererū School Champion Pet 2023.

Congratulations to all of our award recipients at our most recent Assembly.

It gave us a huge amount of pleasure baking cookies for the road workers who are still going on all of our roads to keep us safe. They loved getting a treat. Thank you so much for all your mahi!

Don't forget to get your tickets through Sheryn in the office for the Dance!!

Please pay $25 each into the FOKS account.

Kereru School PTA

12-3145-0282292-00

If you, or anyone you know, are able to help sponsor the dance this year, please get in touch with Sheryn in the office.

This will be our major fundraiser for the year. We understand it's been a tough year for our amazing community, we are hoping this will bring us all together for a great night out.

The school works on a subscription basis with SchoolDocs to maintain, update, and review our policies. SchoolDocs provides us with a comprehensive core set of policies that have been well researched and follow the Ministry of Education National Administration Guidelines. The policies and procedures are tailored to our school, and the school supplies specific information such as our charter, and procedures for behaviour management, reporting to parents, etc.

SchoolDocs updates, modifies, or creates policies in response to changes in legislation or Ministry guidelines, significant events, reviews/requests from schools, and regular reviewing from the SchoolDocs team. Our board of trustees has the opportunity to view changes/additions and comment on them before they are implemented. We will advise you when policies are up for review and how you can take part in the review.

http://kereru.schooldocs.co.nz

Username is “kereru”

Password is “kereru1912”

TERM 4:

• 26/10 - Emergency Drills

• 02/11 - Athletics Day

• 03/11 - Junior Chess Tournament

• 04/11 - School Dance Fundraiser

• 06/11 - St John Visit - Student First Aid

• 27/11 & 28/11 - Rachel from Field Based Stem

• 01/12 - Teacher Only Day (Te Mataiaho Focus)

• 06/12 - BOT Meeting

• 13/12 - Prizegiving

• 14/12 - Last Day of Term 4

These links will give you some ideas on how to help your child's learning at home:

• Ministry of Education Website: https://parents.education.govt.nz/primary-school/learning-and-development-at-home/ideas-to-help-with-reading-writing-and-maths/
• Maths at home: https://nzmaths.co.nz/maths-our-house
  
• Writing prompts and ideas: https://app.pobble.com/auth/
  
• Mindfulness: https://www.smilingmind.com.au/
• Early letter formation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=609NcinTkGI

Hero gives you (parents) the opportunity to send through your child's absence with a click of a button. This is a quick, efficient way and gives our staff a notification and message of the reason your child is away.

This is the way we would like you to let us know if your child won't be here. If there is additional information that the school needs to know, please contact Sheryn directly.

Just a friendly reminder to help us with the end of the day organisation, please ensure you let us know if your child/ren will not be on the bus in the afternoons.

Unless we have heard otherwise, or you put on your sheet at the beginning of the term, we will assume that your child is on.

You need to contact Sheryn (Mon - Thurs) or Kelsie (Fri) before 2 pm with any changes.

We would love to have a better understanding of who will potentially come to Kererū School in the (near or distant) future. This is to ensure that you, as parents, receive information such as transition visits and school information before your child's start date.

We would love to hear from you if your child is between 1 and 4 years old. To make sure we have you on our 'potential enrolments' list.

Please email office@kereru.school.nz or follow the link to our enrolment section on our website to find out more information.

If your child is unwell, please keep them at home to prevent the spread of the illness.

Gastro

• "People with gastro should not go to work, school and early childhood centres until they have been well (symptom free) for 48 hours. There will be viruses in your poos for several weeks after you become well. You should continue to wash and dry your hands thoroughly after you have been to the toilet."
• Here is the link for a brochure: https://www.rph.org.nz/public-health-topics/early-childhood-centres/current-illnesses/gastroenteritis/gastro-brochure.pdf

Covid-19

• If you or someone in your whānau tests positive for Covid-19, please let Kelsie know ASAP and then follow the MOH guidelines: https://covid19.govt.nz/testing-and-isolation/if-you-have-covid-19/