Welcome back to Term 3! On the first day of every term of the year, we have our whole school Powhiri. It is important for us to acknowledge and welcome our new staff and whanau to our kura. Before we meet, we practise our waiata and himene to sing. Powhiri starts with the karanga. Once everyone is seated Matua Reg talks on our behalf to welcome the manuhiri (visitors). Then Mr Lloyd speaks on behalf of the manuhiri and the manuhiri sing a waiata. Once finished, a few people on behalf of the manuhiri come and shake hands or hongi with our leadership team. Here are a few images and videos from our powhiri. Karawhiua!

Kia ora e te whanau. For the last two weeks our kura has been learning about and celebrating Matariki. This morning at 6.15am our school had a Hautapu. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, we assembled outside our hall. With the firepit burning and lights that glowed in the dark, our ceremony begun. Matua Reg opened our ceremony with a korero and karakia. Whaea Saane read out the names of loved ones who had passed in the last year. Whaea J, Miss Cash and Whaea Danielle spoke in Māori about the whetū o Matariki. Once we had a karakia by Mr Lloyd to bless the kai, we all ate. Shout out to Whaea Peni and her amazing husband and whanau who made hangi packs, fried bread, pumpkin soup and other yummy kai for us to eat and enjoy together.

After morning tea, our whole school gathered under the white cloud and our amazing junior and Senior Kapa Haka roopu presented items for us: poi, Waiata-ā-ringa and the boys performed a haka. Have watch here of our videos and leave us a comment.

It was a cold start to the morning but the Weymouth boys were ready to go! The draw had changed so when we arrived our first game was at 10am against Rowandale. We won 5-4 (tries). Our second game wasn’t for another hour so there was a lot of time to relax. To fill in the time, we played 21, bang, eye spy and just sat and talked. In the second game we played Wiri Central and won 5-1 (tries). Our last game of the pool was against Manurewa West. We won 7-3 (tries). Because we won all our games, we finished first in our pool and played in the finals for 1st and 2nd. We played and lost in the final 7-10 (tries) to St Anne’s Catholic School.

We are extremely proud of all our boys. Three quarters of the team had never played rugby league before so this was a great result for us. Shout out to Mrs Johnson for helping to organise everything for us on the day. To Marcel Faaofo for being our trainer and to all our whanau that came out to support us. Malo aupito!

Here’s the team: 

R14: Dillon, Vei, Joshua

R15: Zec, Sarkis, Joshua

R20: Maddox

R22: Jaxon

R23: George, Hanzhalah, Isileli, Kingi, Preston and Teri

Today was a whole school Sports Day. It was a lot of fun despite the weather. It was run by Counties Manukau Sports with the help of students from Waimahia Intermediate and James Cook High School. Room 23’s activities were: basketball, football, touch rugby, volleyball and capture the flag. Shout out to Mrs Johnson for organising a fun day for us!

Across Aōtearoa today, is Pink Shirt Day. Click here for more. Our school has a huge focus on Kindness and Inclusiveness. In Room 23 we learned about being an Upstander and not a Bystander. Check us out in our Pink clothes!

We were also very lucky because we had some Warriors come to visit our school. Shout out to Mrs Hodge and Lincoln for organising this for our school. We had so much fun and we hope that they come back again soon. Up da Wahs!

Yesterday our team drove over to Homai School to have a friendly match in rugby. The boys were very excited and have been training hard for the last two weeks. Shout out to Homai for hosting us. Our boys were very lucky because after the match, they were given a sausage sizzle, fizzy drink and an icecream. We’re very grateful. It was a tough game and we learned a lot about teamwork. Our rugby tournament is next week on Tuesday and we are looking forward to it! Go Weymouth!

Our buddy class aka Tuakana Teina aka big brother, little brother, big sister, little sister is Room 8. They spent the day with us on Friday. Leading up to this, Room 23 read a book to a learner in Room 8. The next day the students in Room 8 came and ate lunch with us. On Friday we read a story called “How Kiwi saved the forest” and completed some tasks with our buddies. We played Octopus and other games outside. The last part of the day we watched “The Wild Robot”. It was an amazing day for everyone. We love our friends in Room 8. Check out some photos from our time together.