Kia ora koutou, talofa lava and warm greetings to our Weymouth Community, Parents, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, Cousins and our beautiful Tamariki.

We have done so much learning since our last Newsletter two weeks ago. It is wonderful to see smiling faces every day, especially when I am at the front gate in the morning. I love getting waves and hugs from all our children and families. We have started up the Principals Awards and I absolutely love going to classes and presenting these to your children. 

On Thursday and Friday I am in Wellington. I am on the Executive committee for Auckland Primary Principals Association and we have some very important meetings with Ministers to share our thinking around education in Auckland. 

Our Kahui Ako met this week also and we have some exciting new ‘achievement challenges’ we are developing for the next 2 years. We also have a team of teachers across our schools preparing a video presentation to share on how amazing our schools are and how we love being in Te Korowai Kåkahu o Manurewa - our Kåhui Ako. 

SCHOOL STARTS AT 9AM - it would be so helpful if you could get your children to school on time ready for learning at 9am. It is a great skill for children to learn about the importance of ‘time management and organisation’ at such a young age. We set them up for a successful future. In one year your child will spend 1000 hours only at school. 1 day off means 1000-5=995 hours. So if your child is late or has more than one day off, you can see the effect it has on their learning. 

Our teachers prepare their classrooms and at 8.30am we open the classrooms for children to come and get themselves ready for the day. We would appreciate your help in this matter. 

WATER FUN DAY

To our amazing whanau who supported our Water Fun Day. What a beautiful day everyone had by all. Children, teachers and, I am sure, all the families who came were exhausted but a happy exhausted!
 To Mrs Johnson and her minions - faafetai tele lava for a super organised day.

TREAD LIGHTLY CARAVAN - We are excited to have the ‘tread lightly caravan’ on site to teach all our children about the importance of ‘water’ and what goes down our drains. 

WORKSHOPS IN THE MĀRA- we are so lucky to have Whaea Deirdre working in the Mara three days a week. This week, she worked with the Moana team and they made potato and leek soup from the vegetables in our garden. A huge thank you to our Weymouth Angels who supported Whaea Deirdre to run the workshops throughout the day. We are very lucky to have this beautiful outdoor classroom. 

 

THURSDAY 16 MARCH

On Wednesday 1st March the House Captains and the Kaitiaki travelled by bus to City Impact Church (Oteha) for the GRIP Student Leaders Conference. Once we arrived, we were seated in the auditorium and the conference began with host Andy talking to us. After introductions, the first activity was to “find someone who..” Thumbs up Close Up task. All children were given booklets and they had to find someone who could do certain things. For example, find someone who can whistle with their fingers. Rules were only one person per task and you couldn’t get another student from your school to fill it in. The first one to finish won a prize. All children had to stand up and go around and find children from different schools to fill out their square in the booklets. Our children did really well.

We learned lots about Leadership. One of the Workshops focused on: How to be an “others” first leader. The presenters talked about how easy it is to think of ourselves first but a good leader also thinks of others first. These are known as the ‘4H tips’ and are: hearing other’s opinions, helping with the little things, fostering happiness, and demonstrating humility. It ended with a reflective question about which H tip do we need to improve the most.

Another Workshop was about: The People a Leader Can Impact the Most. It focused on people who look up to you, being aware of people left out by others, and people who are like minded. The children were challenged and had to think about which group they could impact the most.

The final workshop was about: Ideas that Impact Everybody. This focused on ideas that helped to impact everyone. Some of the children thought about what we already do here at school like Jumping for June to help raise money for the Heart Foundation. They also had to think of other ideas that include everyone. It was really good to see our children thinking about what we could do here at our Kura.

One of the challenges set on stage was to say the alphabet backwards as fast as you can. Big ups to Ethan Goundar who was brave and took on the challenge. He did really well alongside other children and gave it his best shot. A big high five to Raisha Sharma who took part in a role play on stage too. She showed courage on stage and played her part and spoke really well.

A big thank you to Whaea Saane and our Leadership team for allowing us to go along to this Conference. We had so much fun and took away so many ideas.

Water Fun Day!

Splash! Squirt! Throw! Last Friday we had Water Fun Day. Early in the morning we played under the Cloud. We all had our own little water gun, we had paddling pools, and we had water balloons. There was a sprinkler and a parachute and a hose. We put the water balloons on top of the parachute and launched them up as high as we could. They went flying everywhere and they went splat on the concrete. One landed on Wilson-John’s head and he laughed. One landed on Jay-Cub too. We were hitting the water balloons with the bat and they exploded when we hit them. We played egg and spoon race but the egg was a water balloon. We had a fruit break in the sun to warm up.

After morning tea we went to the swimming pool and we had to sit with our Houses. Te Tonga went first and they had to sort all the balls in the right places and Mr Lloyd timed them. Te Uru went second, Te Whiti went third and Te Raki went last. And Te Raki the blue House won. Then we played another game and we had to get the diving toys the fastest. Te Tonga went first again and they were the winners at the end for that game. After that we played a game where we had to pull our buddy across the pool with the flutter board. Last, we put every single Papa team kid in the pool and we made a swirling whirlpool! The water was so strong and it was dragging us, and it was fun! The water was going around and around so fast.

After lunch we had more water fun day. We went in our houses again and we had to go around lots of activities the teachers set up for us. We played drip drip drop like duck duck goose and we had water in the sponges. We did a relay race with buckets of water but the buckets had holes in them so it was a hard game. We got squirted with the hose. Then we went to do an obstacle course and we went zooming down the water slides.

It was such a tiring day, but it was so much fun. We liked getting soaked. It was exciting.

By Atunaisa, Nathaniel, Kimiora and Selanau (Room 8)

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Our wonderful Principal (Whaea Saane) hosted her first NZPPA fono at WPS. She is the President of Pasifika Principals and had 25 Principals attend the fono. They were blown away by our absolutely beautiful school setting and the feel - they felt it. They were working hard on their Leadership Program for Principals and moving into working alongside 'aspiring Principals' and mentoring 'first time Principals' with a cultural lens. They discussed many challenges and opportunities facing our Pasifika families and are beginning to be more visible across NZ as they are experts in supporting our families. They have almost 100 Pasifika principals across NZ and run a professional development program for Principals that have Pasifika in their schools. So far 120 Principals across the country have engaged in this work. They have found it extremely rewarding and valuable.

Trip to Polyfest!

Today we had an exciting trip to Polyfest. What is it you say? For short it is PolyFest and it is a Polynesian Festival. Polynesia is the makeup of a lot of islands like Samoa, Tonga, Niue, Cook Islands and more. The best thing about today was playing Samoan cricket. The game is called Kilikiti and it is great. So I was the third person to strike the bat on the ball. During my turn I smashed the ball high 3 times, no one could believe it. We played in a small space so we didn’t do the runs. But I bet I would’ve made at least 4 runs because the ball flew so high and far. I think I made the biggest hits. I was very happy with myself, especially because I thought I wasn’t good at cricket. I was proud. Now I think I might try and join a cricket team. It was a really fun trip and the place was so big. It was an exciting one for me.

By Spencer Halaholo

Polyfest 2023 with the Maunga Team

Today we had the pleasure of going to Polyfest. Polyfest is short for Polynesian Festival. It is a festival held every year to celebrate the polynesian culture. The best thing about today was playing a tongan game called “Heu”. I must say I also loved learning to play “kilikiti”, a Samoan game like cricket. I was having the best day, I even played some drums with Mau at the Niuean stage. He taught us a cool sequence that we could all drum together using buckets and drumsticks - we sounded like professionals. There were even firefighters and they showed us how to put out a house fire with a chopping board and a damp cloth.

By Joseph Tuivai

ASB Financial Literacy Session

Last week on Thursday we had our session with Marlon. It was about financial literacy. We were also learning how to get wise with money.

First, Marlon introduced himself. He was the silliest teacher I’ve ever met. He said we would play a game of “Shark Tank”. When he said that, I thought he meant we would actually see sharks but BOY I was wrong! He drew a character on the board and her name was Tallulah. She loved soccer and she wanted to be on the “Pippas” team. The enemy team was called the “Christophers” (Marlon just used names from our class to make up the team names).

Tallulah wanted to help the Pippas win because the Christophers were winning. She baked energy cupcakes. That gave the Pippas energy and it helped them to win. Tallulah was gaining $1 for every cupcake she sold.

Next, Marlon told us to get into groups so I was with Pippa, Anaysha and Charli. We had to form a clear goal. We decided to save up for a bunny rabbit. It was going to be $70-$80. Then we had to think about how we were going to earn our money. We thought of: Garage Sale or doing chores. There aren’t too many ways to earn money when you can’t get a job. We chose to do chores. We worked out that we could earn $10 for 1 week of chores so it would take us 7-8 weeks of doing chores to earn and save for our bunny rabbit.

I like how Marlon made an acrostic poem to help us remember our “GetWise” lessons. C - Clear Goal, A - Actions, S - Savings, H - How long. At the end of our lessons we all got 20 points. He said “Ciao” and left our class. They were the funniest sessions I’ve ever had.

By Eve Martin, Room 23

GetWi$e with Money

Last week we had our ASB Financial literacy sessions. Our teacher was Marlon. He is super funny and cool. I loved the ASB Financial literacy lessons because Marlon played games to help us learn.

First he taught us about spending money and how we could save up money for the things we want. He taught us through a game called “Cash Goals”. Tallulah was a girl who wanted to buy headphones but before she could make this happen, she needed to know how much they cost. She needed to save $80.

We got into teams to play the game. In my team were Osea, Joseph, Yousif and Eve. We started playing and Marlon made us write out the word CASH down our page. He explained that C stands for Clear, A is for Actions, S is for Savings and H is for how long, as in How long it will take to save to reach your goal.

If I wanted a custom skateboard that cost $100 and I am able to earn $10 a week for doing chores, it would take me 10 weeks if I make sure not to spend any money. I could try to sell old stuff for $5 so it won’t take as long to save.

In our second session, Marlon had us in groups again. We each had one paper and one pen per group. We had to write on the paper three money signs ($). The first $ stood for “Strengths” and the second $ was “Solve for strengths”. We each recorded two things we like to do. Yousif likes to ride his bike and play basketball. I like to skateboard and ride my bike. Joseph likes to dance and play soccer. Osea likes to run and play soccer and Eve likes to read and play basketball. We all had an amazing session with Marlon and I want him to come back again.

By Pippa Davies