Kia ora Koutou

What a wet, miserable day it is today!  Luckily it is still warm and cosy in our classrooms for our Community Evening tonight.  We are very excited about showing off our gorgeous school, but also talking about the exciting things that are happening at Omihi.  We look forward to seeing you tonight at 7pm.

This is the last newsletter for the term and what a busy term it has been!  I feel so lucky and privileged to be Principal at Omihi and have truly loved getting to know our students, staff, parents and community this term.  We have a lot more exciting things planned for term 4, so we will keep you up to date through our fortnightly newsletters, Facebook and Instagram.

Ngā mihi

Maree Lucas
Principal        
P: 03 314 5857  E: principal@omihi.school.nz

 

School Notices

Principal Awards
We give out Principal Awards at each assembly, which happens three times a term.  This term we have had two assemblies so far.  Congratulations to the following students who have received Principal Awards for term 3:

• Allie Lowry
• Lily Banks

John Parsons - Cyber Safety
John Parsons is an Internet Safety and Risk Assessment Consultant.  He runs workshops all over the country.  I have seen him twice and he is brilliant.  He has very relevant information for our students, right from Year 1 - 8 and he has great tips for parents and teachers on how to keep our children safe online.  John is going to be working with Amberley, Broomfield and Leithfield School in term 4, and they have very kindly said we can join them.  Our students and staff will be part of his workshops, plus he is running a parents session which I highly recommend all parents attend.  The parents session will be at Amberley School on Wednesday 22nd November - time TBC.  For more information on John - http://www.johnparsons.nz/.  Our school have recently purchased his book and are happy to loan it to parents if you would like to read it.

Mt Grey Walk
As part of our lead up to camp and getting 'mountain fit', the seniors will be walking up Mt Grey from Lake Janet on Wednesday 27th September at 9am.  Jaz and I would like one parent to accompany us.  Please let me know if you are available.

Waikari School Cultural Festival
While the seniors are walking up Mt Grey, the juniors will be going to the Waikari Cultural Festival at Waikari School on Wednesday 27th September at 11am.  If you are able to take a car to this, please let Jo know.

Personalised Calendars/Diaries/Notepads/Cards
The whole school will be working on a piece of artwork at the beginning of term 4.  This will be used to create personalised calendars, diaries, notepads, cards and mouse pads that parents will be able to purchase.  It is a small fundraiser for the school, but that is not our focus, we thought it might be something that you would all like and appreciate - plus great Christmas presents!  There will be an opportunity in week 3 to order what you would like.

Change of dates
We have had to change our camp dates to a week later: 28 Nov - 1 Dec, which means this clashed with our Grandparents Day.  So Grandparents Day will now be on Tuesday 21st November.  

Kiwisport Sports Day
This is tomorrow at the Waikari Domain for the whole school.  If the weather is terrible, the postponement date is Thursday 21st September.  We will put it on Facebook as soon as we hear.

Omihi School Raffle
Thank you to everyone who has donated to our raffle.  We are starting to get a great prize list together. If you would still like to donate something, please contact me on principal@omihi.school.nz

School Calendar
Keep up to date with what's going on - https://www.omihi.school.nz/calendar/

Community Notices

Safety around Trains

• Always expect trains from either direction and at any time
• If you are in a car, always slow down as you’re approaching a level crossing and be prepared to STOP
• Look out for trains, and obey signs and signals
• Stay off railway tracks. Only cross the railway at approved railway level crossing points

PGG Wrightson
If you shop at PGG Wrightson, please register at the following website to help raise money for Omihi School - http://www.cashforcommunities.co.nz/. Or contact us and we can register for you.

Hurunui Foodbanks

Kia ora Koutou

I really enjoyed the Canterbury Principal's Conference a couple of weeks ago.  Lucy Hone and Steve Francis were the speakers, and both were very inspiring.  Steve talked about work/life balance and strategies to help with these and Lucy focused on Resilience.  Lucy is a prime example of showing a great deal of resilience after the tragedy she had in her life 3 years ago.  Here are some key points I took away:

• A resilient person can focus on what they can change. 
• Too much challenge causes anxiety.  Too much skill and not enough challenge causes boredom.
• The skills of wellbeing, resilience and character can all be taught (and learned).
• People have activity strengths and character strengths
• Identify yours and your child's character strengths on this website by taking the free survey - www.viacharacter.org
• Character strengths are not traits, they are not fixed
• Unwanted & unexpected change is often forced upon us, while we cannot control our life circumstances, we can control our response

• Greater awareness and use of character strengths is associated with:

  • Improved school performance (Quinlan, 2014)

  • Engaged learning, increased happiness

  • Enhanced class climate

  • Greater odds of having higher wellbeing (Hone 2015)

  • Improved physical health

  • Greater goal achievement

The wellbeing of our students and staff is so important to me.  It is critical that we teach our children how to be resilient and how to grow their character strengths.  We will be integrating this more and more into our daily classroom programmes.  If you would like to find out more, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Ngā mihi

Maree Lucas
Principal        
P: 03 314 5857  E: principal@omihi.school.nz

Community Evening
The BOT welcome all school families, children and members of our community to come along to our Community Evening on Monday 18th September at 7pm.  This is an opportunity to have a look around our school, hear about our goals for the future and socialise with the community.  Tea/coffee and cake will be provided, so please RSVP to office@omihi.school.nz or 314 5857 for catering purposes.

Fundraising for 2018
The fundraising committee met last week to work out our fundraising for the next year.  We have some exciting things coming up and have tried to make it as easy as possible for parents and our community to be involved if they want to, without taking up too much of their time.  We know how busy parents are these days.  We are planning on two events a year, so once these are confirmed we will inform you.  In the mean time we are organising a 'Givealittle Raffle'.  This is a chance for people to buy a 'raffle ticket' from all over the world for $10 each.  We will advertise it in our newsletter and Facebook page and ask our families to share the post on their own Facebook.  What we need help with is finding prizes for the raffle.  If you have anything that you would like to donate or know of any businesses that may be able to support us, please get in touch with me - principal@omihi.school.nz by the end of the term.

Speeches and Inquiries
Our seniors are currently working on a speech of their choice and the whole school are working on their own inquiries around Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.  We will be sharing our inquiries and our speech finalists with the community on Wednesday 27th September at 2.00pm.  We welcome you to come in and see our learning.

Three Way Learning Conferences
A reminder to book in for your three way learning conference on the Google Sheet.  Let me know if you need me to send it to you again.

Ski trip
It's our second ski trip tomorrow, I'm looking forward to seeing all of our children extend their learning and skills since our last ski trip.

Old Crockery
We are looking at completing the lizard mosaic in our garden and would like donations of any old crockery.  If you have any please let us know or bring it down to the container at school.

Elections
Omihi School will be a voting place for the coming elections on Saturday 23rd September.