Kia ora! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday break and are ready for a great year of learning. There are lots of activities coming up this term: Swim safety, Waitangi Day, testing, celebrating Diversity Day, Tread Lightly, Easter and a whole lot of other things going on here at school. Watch this space for more!
What a year it has been! This term was a busy one with trips, testing, reports, Year 6 Legacy Art project and a trip to the theatre to watch High School Musical. We also had our school Prizegiving and Year 6 Graduation to farewell all the children moving on to Intermediate next year. The teachers and staff are so proud of all the Year 6 children and wish them all the best in 2024. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and a wonderful festive holiday!
Here are a few photos from the last week and a bit.
Earlier this term the Year 6 children (Rangi Team) had a previsit with Robyn and Charlie who are educators from Rotoroa Island. In week 6, Room 17 went on to the island on Monday and Rooms 18, 19 and 20 went on Tuesday. We had to be at school by 7am and were on the bus at 7.10am heading towards Auckland City wharf terminal. Part of our learning was around biosecurity and how to keep our natural reserves like Rotoroa Island safe. Everyone had to clean our shoes and Rosie the biosecurity dog came to check that there were no pests or insects in our bags.
The ferry trip took an hour and a half and we got to observe lots of surrounding islands on the way. Once there Robyn and her team divided us up into groups and off we went. We all got to see and experience the same parts of the island, just at different times. We saw parts of the old township that used to occupy the island. Rotoroa Island is owned by the Salvation Army and a long time ago it used to be a rehabilitation centre for people that were addicted to drugs and alcohol.
During the tour we got to see lots of native birds around. A rarity was a sighting of the Takahe. We also walked past a wetlands and a Pāteke (brown teal duck) swam across the pond. These were both special occasions because it doesn’t happen often. We walked up a hill and from the top we could see Waiheke Island and even the Coromandel in the distance.
All classes met up on the beach called Ladies Bay for lunch. From their we split off into groups and the activities were: exploring and looking closely at all living things on the rocks, using magnifying glasses to look closely at bugs in the bush and on the shoreline and the last task was drawing on the sand.
Rotoroa Island is a beautiful place and our children were very lucky to have gone there. Check out some of our videos below:
This term our school took part in the Counties Manukau Games at Bruce Pulman Park in Papakura. It was a three day tournament with many sports happening. This year our school entered 5 different sports: Kiwi Tag, Touch Rugby, Mixed Netball, Volleyball and Baseketball teams (boys and girls). Our team all did an amazing job coming away with lots of wins. Our mixed netball team came 1st and were undefeated. Here are some photos and videos from the day:
This year our school celebrated Diwali with a closing assembly. Lots of children from right across the school were brave and presented items on the stage. We also had lots of family come and share in our learning too. Here are some items of what children shared.
Talofa, Malo ē lelei & welcome to our movie “Sione and the La”.
At our kura we are very fortunate to be surrounded by beautiful beaches and landscape. At the beach featured in this movie, you can see the Auckland airport from here and other parts of our amazing community too. We wanted to share with you all our very own maara (garden). In our garden we have lots of fruits and vegetables growing in garden beds, a beehive (that our bees produce honey in) and animals too. Our pigs are named Pretzel and Kaupakapaka and they are our eating machines at school that our tamariki help to feed. We also have six chickens that lay eggs and our tamariki can collect them.
Have you heard of Maui and the Sun? Well, here’s our version with a twist of Weymouth Primary School on it. We hope you like it!
Miss Moon from Massey University has been our student teacher for the past 7 weeks. She came to meet us before she started and we couldn’t wait for her to start. Miss Moon did some amazing learning lessons with us like: making jibbets and badges, organising fun Art activities (mosaic and colour wheel), took us for P.E games and gave out treats to everyone when we completed tasks and worked really hard.
We’d just like to say thank you Miss Moon. We wish you all the best with your teaching career!
Malo ni! This week is Tokelau Language Week. Here is a poster that I created to share my learning.
Fakalofa lahi atu! It was Niue Language Week and this year’s theme for Faahi Tapu he Vagahau Niue – Niue Language Week is Fakatūleva e Vagahau Niue mo e Tau Aga Fakamotu ma e Tau Atuhau, which means – Sustain Niue Language and Culture for Future Generations.
Here’s what our school did to celebrate. We had daily announcements over the public address system (loud speaker) and sang the National anthem. You can see everything here on our Niue Language Week site created by Miss Lavakula who is also of Niue descent. Each team had to practice a Niue item to share at our closing assembly on Friday. Thank you to Mrs Andrea Tele’a and Mrs Sandy Langitupu who both shared their sites with resources too. This is the Rangi team practising our item ‘Papa teliga e’ to share on Friday assembly. You can find the link to the song here.
On Wednesday, some of our Niue students went to watch the speech competition for primary children at Favona Primary School. We’re very thankful to Lyn Lolokini Pavihi and Mack Ikitule who organised the day. We learned a lot by being there and hope that next year, we’ll have some children who would like to participate.
On Friday afternoon we had our whole school sharing assembly. A big thank you to all our leadership for allowing us to share, the staff for supporting the language week by getting their children to share. A big fakaaue lahi to all our parents and families who also support their children too. The winners from our challenges were announced. We had children design a Niue Toa (warrior), create a Foufou (flower head piece) and children speaking in Niue. Please find some examples from challenges and the assembly below.
We hope you all had a wonderful break! We sure did. Our first week back started off with a powhiri to welcome new students and their families and new staff to Weymouth Primary School.
This week is also Fijian Language Week. We had the flag raising to honour this special week.
Our senior school were very fortunate to have an Olympic Ambassador Richie Patterson come and talk to us about his journey and achievements. We learned so much from him about success isn’t just about winning, it’s also about the failures you go through and being resilient.
Our whole school got to take part in a mock Kids Voting opportunity. We have been learning about the elections, the political parties and their policies. Here are some of our photos. We had an amazing first week and we hope you did too!
