Waitemata @ Waikowhai Primary School

Welcome back to an action packed Term 4!!! We have already started off the Term with a bang by joining the Squawk Squad Rangers. Here are some picture of us looking for birds in our bush area using our homemade binoculars. We spotted lots of Piwakawaka, Mynas, sparrows and a TUI! We have also planted our Little Gardens into bigger planters on our fabulous back deck. Mrs Jones and Miss Daly managed to keep them alive over the holidays (just) and now they are happily growing in the colourful planter boxes. We are really excited to see the sunflowers grow really tall.

Day 3 and Mokoroa are coming 3rd! Thats out of 40,000 students. Well done Mokoroa!

Te Ana Ako (Kaiwhare and Mokoroa) have joined the Squawk Squad Rangers as part of Conservation Week. We are helping to raise money for traps so we can help become predator free by 2050. Along the way we are learning all about our native birds and why we need to help them. Here is the Day 2 video. Mokoroa are coming 10th out of 400 schools!!!

What a great term of Taekwondo we have had. We were very lucky to have Ma'am come and teach us Taekwondo skills. Here are some shots of our improved techniques.

Here are a few pics of our super cool day at Ecomatters. We learnt how to make a paper planter and planted edible plants. We sorted rubbish and learned more about where our rubbish goes. We also got to play team building games and play on the equipment at Olympic Park. Thanks to the parents who came, it was a great day of learning outside the classroom.

We are in our old/new building! It's soooo exciting. We have so many spaces to work in now AND we can work with Mokoroa. The long wait has been worth it. We love our new class 😀

Today is Miss Jensen's last day ☹️ we have loved having her in our class and we wish her well on her journey at University. We hope she comes back to visit. Tying in with our recycle and reuse theme Miss Jensen asked her friends and family for books to give to all of the students in Kaiwhare. What a great idea! Thank you Miss Jensen

Our kicking champion.... Zoe!!

Congratulations to Jacob for being our citizen of the week in week 2! He has been working so hard. Jacob won 15minutes free time on an iPad from the prize draw 😀

Week 2 was action packed! We had a fabulous visiting author, student led conferences and book week ending in a character parade. Here are a few photos of our crazy, wonderful school. Kaiwhare! Miss Daly (Black Widow) and Miss Jensen (Minnie Mouse) Miss McGrath (Carrot) Ms Sands (Potatohead) Avengers and Nick Fury The wonderful crazy staff of Waikowhai Here are three of our adjective poems written by Jaimie Harris, Zoe Symon and Tiffany Lai

Term 3!!! Welcome back to Kaiwhare's blog. This is shaping up to be a busy term. We are moving into our new classroom with Room 6 (Mokoroa) hopefully in week 4. We have lots of new faces in our class, welcome to.... Ferila our lovely new teacher aide, Paola, Tiffany and Aarav (new students) and Demetrius, Aamena, Ethan, Disaree and Mahan from Room 11.

Room 10 is in Room 7! (Does that make us 17 or 10/7?) We have moved out of our classroom and into our temporary room while renovations are happening. Very excited to be in a new space.

For strand maths we are looking at Statistics this term. We are having so much fun doing skateboarding we decided to find out what sport middle school would like to play next term. Here is Ama's graph showing our results. Soccer looks to be the favourite!

Our Ishaan had a very exciting day last Friday. He was part of a group of children who have, or have had,  heart conditions. They met to share their stories and press the button to light up the sky tower with a red beating light. Here is the link to the NZ Herald story where Ishaan and his Mum and Dad are interviewed. Sky Tower lights up for heart kids

The big opening of our new senior classrooms. Te Waka Ako - The Canoe of Learning. A great performance by our Kapahaka group and our local MP to cut the ribbon.

SKATEBOARDING!!! Our Kiwisport lessons this term are all about skateboarding. In week 2 week we had our first lesson, we learned all about the safety gear, what it's for and how to put it on properly. This week we get to go on the boards! Big talk about safety gear Rael ready to put her helmet on ...she might need to take off her cat ears headband first! Logan, Tyson and Rael all suited up Achievements outside of the classroom This week Jaimie brought in her player of the day trophy for playing soccer on the weekend. Way to go Jaimie! Attenbeau We received another video from Miss Daly's nephew Beau. This time he was setting rat traps with his Dad. He informed us that rats are the main predators of native birds eggs on Great Barrier Island. The traps they use are only for rats. Cats and dogs can't fit in the boxes so they wont get hurt by mistake. We are looking forward to his next instalment to see if they were successful. Beau is ...

Welcome back everyone to Term 2. We have all had exciting holidays and are rested and ready for an exciting term. This morning Miss Daly got a message from her nephew that a sick dolphin was down at their beach Okupu on Great Barrier Island. Beau (aged 4) had found it when he was going for a walk with his Grandad. They tried to get it to swim back out but it was not very happy, it had a lot of scratches on it. Beau's Dad thinks it has been attacked by a shark. We decided to Skype Beau and ask him some questions about the dolphin. It was a great skype session, Beau had lots to tell us about the dolphin and is going to keep us informed on if it survives or not. They rang DOC and the dolphin is in their care now so fingers crossed it makes it. Here are some photos. Thanks for the great interview Beau!

The student with the most dojo points this week was......Ishaan! He won 'Teacher for ten minutes' from the prize box. Here he is being Mr Greenwood.

It is ANZAC Day during the holidays We had a special assembly where we remembered the fallen soldiers and those who fought so bravely for our freedom. We laid poppies on our memorial in the hall. We made poppies to take home and plant in our gardens or windows or take to our local dawn parade.