Wa whanau + Junior Assembly

It was great to see everybody again today - we missed you while we were away! Mrs Wilson and I learned a lot on our course though and have some great ideas now, especially for welcoming our friends from the Heathcote Valley preschool. It also looks like you all had a fabulous time while we were gone!

Today was a great day with all our awesome Friday activities. This fortnight we had Wa Whanau time where we get together with our big buddies in our whanau groups. It is fantastic seeing everybody get to know their buddies a little better. We also practised getting into our karakia circle - to help us find a spot and to track down our buddy we are going to stand in an area with the rest of our whanau group - wherever you stood today is where you should go back to on Monday morning :)

We also had our Junior Assembly today over in Kowhai's learning space. It is always a fun chance to get together with our syndicate to sing some songs and celebrate our learning. Congratulations to Lily, Costa, Sasha and Kayla who received certificates today :)

We hope you all have a fabulous weekend - don't forget your togs on Monday!

Fun with Statistics

For maths this afternoon we started learning about statistics. We started by trying to sort ourselves into different groups! We split into boys and girls and looked at different ways to group each other, like our clothes, our hair colour or our shoes.

After that we tried making a graph together. We looked at our eyes to find out how many people in the class had each colour. It turned out brown had the most! Check out our wonderful graph on the wall :)

A reminder that tomorrow and Thursday both Mrs Wilson and Ms Lennon will be away at a course. Mrs S and Mrs Garlick will be in the Pikopiko team. That will also mean there will be no blog post for the next two days :) We look forward to seeing you all on Thursday evening for our Meet the Teacher session.

Also tomorrow it is supposed to be nice and hot. The Kowhai team might get out the sprinklers in the afternoon and have invited us to join in. So tomorrow - or any day when it is nice and hot - feel free to pop togs and a towel into your child's bag and we might sometimes have some water play in the afternoons.

Whiteboard Work

We had a great day in the Pikopiko team today. We split into our new reading groups and did some fabulous reading - well done everybody! Share your book with your family tonight.

After lunch we split into two groups to do some phonics and handwriting practice on our whiteboards. We practised the letter c and a and the team with Ms Lennon also learnt about the sound 'th'. Awesome work everybody!

Fun Friday

After our pretend Friday last week we had the real thing today! Fridays are full of fun activities. This morning we had our first session of the new Junior Kapahaka with Matua Hari. This was great fun, we sang songs, did the school haka and played games. We will get to do this every Friday from now on :)

This was followed by Jump Jam which is always lots of fun :) What a musical morning!

Today was also our first Tall Learner Assembly of the year. A big congratulations to Henry, Jasmine and Sian who were the Pikopiko Tall Learners this fortnight :) Well done!

Pikopiko Parent Update

We have had a brilliant start to the year and have been having lots of fun in the Pikopiko team. Today's blog is a few important updates about what's happening.

You will have seen your child has brought home a reading book every day this week. We started our reading by breaking into 2 large groups and doing a shared story all together. Next week reading groups will be formally up and running. Please make sure your child has their reading folder every day and remember to comment and sign their notebooks after reading together at home.

You should have received a notice about the juniors going swimming in week 4. Thank you to all those who have returned the slip. Please return this asap so we can organise our transport. Come and get an extra notice if you need one.

Next week on Thursday the 19th is the school's Meet the Teacher evening. We look forward to seeing you all at 5.30pm in the Pikopiko learning space, then we'd love you to stay for the school BBQ afterwards at 6pm under the oak tree. Bring along something for tea and have a sausage from the BBQ.

Also next week on Wednesday the 18th and Thursday the 19th both Sophie and Joc will be out of school on a Transition to School workshop. Sarah Sjoberg Loose and Jill Garlick will be in the Pikopiko team for those two days. They will both be visiting ahead of time to learn our routines and programme.

Finally, a wee local community notice! There are some spaces available for new Pippins, please see the attached contact info if you are interested as it would be great to have a few more girls from the class :)

Pippins, girls 5 &6 yrs

Tuesdays 4.30-5.30pm, Heathcote Church Hall

Trevena, Ashleh and Rachel - Pippin Leaders

Heathcote Pippins

Ph  337 0516

Cell  021 686 135 (Trevena)

https://www.girlguidingnz.org.nz/

Preschool Visit

Today we had some special visitors come to the Pikopiko team! A group of children came to see us from the preschool - they will be starting with us in Pikopiko very soon. A big welcome to any of our preschool friends who might be reading the blog! 

We had a great morning. We started with some singing and dancing, then sat together to look at this blog and have a healthy snack. After that is was writing time, so we wrote our stories while our preschool friends did some beautiful pictures. We all got to play together at morning tea before coming back inside to share some stories.

Thank you so much for coming! We will regularly have the preschool come to see us so that children who are going to be starting at school soon can get to know our team and our learning space :)

Sitting beautifully on the mat:

Working hard on writing and drawing:

Stories after morning tea:

Ready for a book!

Up to the School Garden

This year there are some senior children from the Enviro Club who have taken charge of our school garden. Every afternoon straight after lunch they will be up there and some children from each team can go up and help look after the garden. There will be lots of jobs to do, like weeding, planting, digging and watering.

Not everybody in Pikopiko had seen our garden before so we decided to head up together today. The senior girls showed us around - it is looking a little overgrown at the moment! There were even some strawberries from last year that some people got to taste. Three friends stayed back today to help and we will choose a different three people every day to have a turn at helping.

Please make sure to look in your child's reading folder today as there is a very important notice regarding swimming lessons in Week 4. We will require parent transport to Pioneer Pool. If you missed out on a notice please come and see us for a spare.