Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Newsletter, Term 3, Wk 2



The 3 Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The responsibility and costs of dealing with the growing mountain of packaging waste (such as single use containers) is currently falling onto taxpayers, councils and communities.  The waste from packaging accounts for about one eighth of the rubbish sent to landfills. Each New Zealander throws away 83 kilograms of used packaging every year.
Last Thursday Colleen Brink from Zero Waste New Zealand visited our school to discuss ways to recycle our waste.  The focus in the junior room was educating today for a sustainable tomorrow.  They discussed tips for reducing waste – 1. Use it again.  2. Borrow, hire or share.  3. Sell or donate it.  This is reinforced in the children’s work books.  Colleen also talked about how metals are really important to recycle because it reduces the need to do further mining of things like bauxite and iron ore.  The children have also been making things out of rubbish like bird feeders, boats and a letter box for the classroom etc.

The senior room completed a unit on water conservation studying the water cycle like storm water drains, waste water drains and what happens in treatment plants. Each child in the senior room took a bag home to find out how much water they used in their showers.  They are making a model of the water system and gaining an awareness of how much water they use.

What are we learning about?
There will be information in your child’s homework book about our current studies.  Please check their homework book daily to keep informed about what we are focusing on at school.

Commonwealth Home Play Challenge
We are encouraging the children to participate in the Commonwealth Home Play Challenge which is about nutrition and exercise. Those who participate will not only learn beneficial lifetime habits by taking responsibility for their own well being but there is also a special day in store for those who do participate.
The seniors are in week two with the focus of having a packet free lunch every day this week. It is good to see the children are making an effort to achieve this. The junior’s goal is to take a walk with their whanau and count as many trees as they can as well as aiming to have one vegetable and one fruit in their school lunch box this week.


School Holiday Break In

Dear Parents,
There was an incident in the holidays where a number of boys entered the school buildings and took some items of food and drink.  We the board and the teachers are investigating this thoroughly and a member of the community police is also involved.

Our hope is to provide a strong lesson for the boys' involved, increased awareness of security at the school, and a sense of closure for the school community. We hope to have this resolved so we can let you know in the next newsletter.

Regards
Seba Illingworth
Board of Trustees

Cross Country
We are training every day.  Please send your children to school with appropriate training gear. The cross country run is on Tuesday 12th August at Whenuakite School. We will be assembling at Whenuakite School at 11am.  More information will be sent out next week.

Volleyball
Briar Ward from Sport Energize took the junior room children for Volleyball training today.  They started with learning to keep a balloon in the air.




School Community Officer
We met with Constable Catherine Sell, our new School Community Officer today to report the school holiday break in, and discuss with her the process we are taking.  She was happy with the progress made so far with the schools restorative justice programme.  We will have more information next week.

www.netsafe.org.nz
The online world creates opportunity and a wealth of information but it brings with it a plethora of dangers, tricksters and scams. If you are worried about what your child might be seeing on the internet, check out Netsafe.
Netsafe promotes safe, confident and responsible online activity and through its website provides information that will help provide guidance in almost every aspect of online safety.

Bus Rules
A special newsletter went out yesterday regarding the bus rules.  School policy is your child/ren must have consent if they are going somewhere different to normal. If you did not receive this newsletter and your children catch the bus, please let us know, and we will send one home.


From Penny and the Team

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