Wrapping up Term 3

 Wow!

It's hard to believe that we are already coming to the end of another term here in Autahi! We have had lots of new faces join us this term and our classroom is full of new ideas and creative thinking.

We've collated our inquiry from the beginning of the year around water and changes of state. Come and check out the amazing books our lovely Beth has created to celebrate all the questions, investigation, experiments and reflections. These will be on display in the classroom and we welcome you to come in explore our learning...

Our classroom is an evolving space and there are always new displays going up. One of our groups has been exploring counting in 5's...

We celebrate our writers by publishing their stories and displaying their work...

Term 4 is a summer term which means there are a few extra things to remember. Sun hats are required any time we are outdoors. No sun hat means no play or fun in the sun. We are able to leave our sun hats on our hooks in the cloak bay if you would like to leave one at school, otherwise you will need to keep one handy in your child's school bag.

Sunscreen will be in the classroom and will be used anytime we are heading outdoors. Being sun safe is a big part of the health curriculum and important to us all to remember.

Have a restful break and we look forward to seeing you all again in the new Term.

Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori

Kia kaha Te Reo Māori!

Te Reo Māori is a Taonga (treasure). We often talk in class about how special it is to speak this unique language, and how we can play our part in caring for it by learning, speaking and sharing Te Reo.

Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori is a time for celebrating the Māori language. It is also a time for reaffirming our commitment to making Te Reo strong and healthy. 

If you would like to know more, visit www.tewikiotereomaori.co.nz.

Here's a flavour of how we have been celebrating Te Reo in Autahi this week.

We have been practising greeting each other in Te Reo, and introducing ourselves and saying how we are feeling today. Ask your child if they can remember how to tell somebody their name in Te Reo Māori. We are also working on counting and doing our daily calendar in Te Reo. 

We have shared Māori stories, such as 'How Maui Tamed The Sun' and enjoyed working on our Tamanui Te Rā artworks. These will be on display in Autahi next week, if you'd like to pop in for a closer look.

At twelve o'clock on Monday, we joined the whole school - and around one million other people - in Te Wā Tuku Reo Māori, speaking or singing in Te Reo Māori all at the same time.

We are fortune to have an awesome Kapa Haka teacher, Matua Henare, who joins us every Thursday to teach waiata and haka. This week, the whole school met on bottom court to celebrate and sing together. 

This has been a special week. But, of course, Te Reo is for every day, and we will continue to build our knowledge and share our learning with each other.

Learning about character strengths

 This week we welcomed you all to join us in the classroom and take part in our student led workshops. I could tell that the Autahi learners were excited to be the teachers and share some of their learning about character strengths.

Our journey started a few weeks ago when we started to explore the strength of Hope and what it means to have hope. We started to think of things that we hope for ourselves. Things that we really want to happen for ourselves. As you can imagine there were a lot of hopes that they might have ice cream later that day.

Then we expanded our outlook to hopes that are for everyone. One of the common themes was around everyone being able to play together again and seeing family that live far away. Especially in the current climate this is probably something that we all have hope for.

It was great to share this learning by creating hope petals. Flowers are often used as a symbol of hope and was a great way to share our hopes for the future.

It was great to share those hopes with our Rising 5's and again with our Whanau. We hope that you will have a conversation about your own hopes and that we can work together to help achieve them.