Monday, 18th October 2021

Kia ora koutou

The sandpit is one of Paemoana’s favourite places to play!

The sandpit is one of Paemoana’s favourite places to play!

We had such a lovely finish to our term 3 with our ‘Positive Education Week’. It was great to learn some more ways to practice mindfulness, celebrate our character strengths and learn more about the 5 fingers of kindness. There is so much happening at the moment with Covid 19, so it is lovely to see our tamariki learning how to focus on their own wellbeing and learning how to strengthen their own physical, emotional and social wellness.

I was in and out of school with the building works going on these holidays, but Delilah and I still managed to have some lovely playdates with her friends. George, Delilah and I had a few days in Akaroa last week, which was nice to recharge. I hope that you managed to have some family time, and we are looking forward to having our tamariki back and hearing their holiday stories.

Ngā mihi
Maree Lucas
Tumuaki/Principal
principal@omihi.school.nz

School Notices

Welcome
Welcome to Joella Haglund (Miss Jo) who will be a student teacher in Paemoana for the next 5 weeks. Welcome to Stanley who is starting his school visits this week in Paemoana.

Principal Award Winners
Congratulations to our recent Principal Award winners….Billy and Lily! They will enjoy a trip to Fossil Point later this term for a hot chocolate.

Classes for 2022
We have confirmed our classes for 2022. We are very excited to have our three wonderful teachers back again and continue with our very small class sizes each morning. In the afternoons the classes will be in two groups - Year 0-4 (Mrs Vincent/Miss Smith) and Year 5-8 (Miss Mickleson).

Paemoana - Year 0-2, Mrs Vincent (8 children)
Awaawa - Year 3-5, Miss Smith (12 children)
Tūpari - Year 6-8, Miss Mickleson (12 children)

Tipu Maiā Kāhui Ako (Community of Learners)
In 2022 we are really excited to be fully invested in our kāhui, with the 13 schools to learn alongside - Greta Valley, Hanmer Springs, Waipara, Waikari, Rotherham, Waiau, Amuri Area School, Akaroa Area School, Oxford Area School, Cheviot Area School, Hurunui Area School, Rangiora New Life.

Congratulations to Penny, who is now one of the Across School Leads for our Kāhui. She will be working alongside two other teachers from Amuri Area School on a Friday and for two afternoons a week. Sally and Georgie are our Within School Leads. They will have some release time throughout the term to work on their focus area for our school. Sally - Positive Education and Georgie - Cultural Responsiveness. I am also continuing as a Support Principal to the Kāhui.

Character Strengths
Character Strengths is a big focus for us as part of our Positive Education Curriculum. Everybody has character strengths and we help our students to identify them and utilise them. Students and staff complete the VIA Character Strength Survey online to find out where their strengths lie. Each newsletter we are going to showcase one of our students or staff, what their character strengths are, and how they help them. Leni, Year 8 - ‘My top character strengths are love, love of learning and forgiveness. It’s good to be able to forgive, as you can make lots of friends if you are able to forgive. I love to learn new things, you can go so much further in life if you are able to love learning. It’s good to show love to others. We are all different and we need to love everyone for who they are.’

Working bee

School was a hive of activity during the holidays. The solar panels look AMAZING! We are just waiting for Contact Energy to come and do the last part of work so we can start utilising them. We now have a new roof on the office block and toilets, and the outdoor learning area is looking great. The landscaping and learning area should be finished mid term. We are hoping to have a working bee mid term to help spread some mulch and do some of the planting. If you are available on Monday 8th November during the day, please let me know. Or if that day doesn’t suit and you could do some work the weekend before, let me know.

Swimming Pool
In order to have our swimming pool up and running we need it to be tested twice daily. In larger schools this would be the role of a caretaker. We are looking for someone, or a couple of people who are happy to pop in before and after school to test the pool. Thalia very kindly did this for us last summer, but with her new bubba on the way we need someone to train up to take over. Please contact me if you are interested.

Sun hats
Omihi sun hats must be worn every day in term 4.

Dental Van
A reminder the dental van will be at school this Wednesday and Thursday.

Report comments
The health comment will be sent home later this week via Hero.

School photos - Tuesday 19th October
These will be taking place tomorrow at 9am. Please ensure children are in correct uniform. We will be in touch when they are ready for you to order.

Masks on buses
We have been advised by the Ministry of Education that children 12 years and older are now required to wear face coverings on buses. So children on our school bus and the technology bus 12 years and older now need to be wearing a mask. These need to be provided by families. Children under 12 years are not required, but are encouraged to wear a mask, so we will leave that up to your discretion.

Road safety
After school the pick up area is getting increasingly busy. This term we are going to trial the first bus to leave from the school driveway. So the bus children will go out the side gate. The second bus will leave at the front of the school as normal.

  • If you are parking on the school side of the road, please don't park in front of the gate, ensure there is enough space for children to be able to see the road clearly.

  • If you are parking in the hall carpark, children need to be crossed over by an adult, they can not cross themselves.

Community Notices

The Hurunui Theatre Group production of "Spamalot" is postponed until April/May next year due to a number of factors resulting from the COVID lockdown. Tickets already purchased are refundable at the outlet purchased, or transferable to the new dates when set. Thank you.

The North Canterbury Basketball's Girls Got Game Programme is a collaboration with Basketball New Zealand and Sport Canterbury's Tū Manawa Fund. It aims to engage young girls in basketball and encourage them to continue being active and enjoy basketball with their friends. Run by the best female coaches and Wildcats in NC, its major advantage over mixed programmes is its focus on girls.

Current Girls Got Game Programs Available:

Girls Got Game Weekly Skills Session - Register here

Run on Wednesday evenings for 8 weeks in term 4 (October 25th to December 13th), in parallel with our hoops and stars programme.

Like holiday camps, this is run with Wildcats and other top players and coaches in the region to get the best out of our young girls.

Girls Got Game Camp

North Canterbury Basketball provides holiday camps run by Canterbury Wildcats and the best players/coaches in the region during terms 1, 2, 3 and 4 Holidays. NC girls will experience basketball based fun where they will learn and develop their skills with the opportunity to play plenty of games and take part in fun competitions under the eyes of the best female players and coaches in the region. All days will include skills sessions, games 3X3 and 5V5, all coached by local Rams, Wildcats and other NCBA senior coaches and players.

Girls Got Game Camp - Next camp dates to Be Announced by November 30th 

For questions please email committee@northcanterbury.basketball

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Omihi School Office
Monday, 20th September 2021

Tēna Koutou

Year 6-8 Speech winners for 2021.

Year 6-8 Speech winners for 2021.

This week Year 5-8 are heading off to Wainui for school camp. Miss Mickleson is leading the camp, and with Miss Smith’s help they have done a wonderful job of organising it. So much thought, time and planning goes into a school camp, so I would like to thank Sally and Georgie for this.

Camp is about building relationships, trust, resilience and stepping outside your comfort zone. It is a chance for our tamariki to push themselves and try new things. It can be nerve wracking being away from their family and we know some children feel a bit anxious about this, but it is so wonderful to see them challenge themselves and thrive in the activities. They always come away feeling so proud….and tired!

A big thanks to Aaron, Nathan, Jane and Carl for coming with us. We look forward to sharing photos with you of our three days.

Ngā mihi

Maree Lucas
Tumuaki/Principal
principal@omihi.school.nz

School Notices

Principal Award Winners
Congratulations to our latest Principal Award winners - Acacia Stevens-Pugh and Macy Finlayson. They will be heading to Fossil Point for a hot chocolate at the start of term 4.

Omihi School Online Auction
We would love your support with our auction now that our other fundraisers have had to be cancelled. You can go to the Omihi School Facebook page and the album is pinned to the top of the page, or click on this link. The auction finishes on Friday 24th September at 8pm. Please share it on Facebook for us and get your bids in. We also have a Fisher and Paykel cooktop on Trade me that was donated to us.

3 Way Learning Conferences
These were postponed during lockdown and we are struggling to find set days to book them in, plus we know parents are busy. So instead of booking in set days, we are going to leave it as an optional 3WLC and let you organise a time with your child’s teacher if you would like to catch up about your child's progress. If we are still in level 2, you will need to sign in and use the Covid scanner. Report comments will all be coming out in term 4.

Character Strengths
Character Strengths is a big focus for us as part of our Positive Education Curriculum. Everybody has character strengths and we help our students to identify them and utilise them. Students and staff complete the VIA Character Strength Survey online to find out where their strengths lie. Each newsletter we are going to showcase one of our students or staff, what their character strengths are, and how they help them. Macy, Year 6 - My top character strengths are kindness, love and teamwork. These help me to make friends and to engage in conversations with others.

Te Wiki o te Reo Māori
We loved celebrating te reo last week. Our tamariki are definitely getting more confident when using te reo, as are our staff. We are challenging ourselves to continue to learn new kupu (words) and phrases. Ask your tamariki what they can say to you in te reo….

Speech Competition
We were so proud of all of our tamariki last week. Each and every one of them stood up and either performed a poem or presented a speech. It was so lovely to see their progress from last year. It blew me away seeing the confidence in some of our children who previously have been very shy when presenting speeches. In our Year 6-8 competition we would like to congratulate Jeremy for coming 1st, Daisy 2nd, Macy and Acacia 3rd equal.

Upcoming work at school
Today we were really grateful to have Pone Taite (Kaumatua) and Melanie Taite-Pitama (Tuahiwi Education Team Member) bless our new multipurpose space for us. The name gifted to our building is Kahiwi (mountain). It goes perfectly with our other buildings - Paemoana (sea), Awaawa (valley), Tūpari (mountain cliff). These capture our local environment. It was a wonderful learning experience for our tamariki to be a part of this.

The furniture has been delayed due to Covid, but hopefully that should start arriving early next term, so we can start using Kahiwi. We are excited to move our library in there, plus start using it for assemblies, music, break out spaces, groups of students working with adults, BOT meetings and much more! It truly will be an asset to our kura.

In the October holidays there are also a few other jobs happening - a new roof going on the office and the children’s toilet block, a new master key system being installed in all of the school buildings and gates, stage two of our playground and outdoor learning space will be started…..and thanks to a very kind member of our community and the money we raised from our virtual walk - we are having solar panels installed on the classroom roof! This is another step towards our sustainability goal and we are excited with the learning that will be able to surround this as well. We look forward to when everything is completed and we can invite you all in for our official opening in term 4.

Dates for 2022
Start date: Thursday 3rd February. Finish date: Wednesday 14th December

Pet Day
Thanks to Kurt who is going to take over Agri Sports from Leighton next year. We are still looking for someone to organise pet day. It doesn’t have to be a farmer. It would be great to have someone that could work with Julie this year, and then do it on their own next year. Please let me know if you are interested.

Swimming Pool
We are looking for someone to help us run the pool. In order to keep the pool going, it needs to be tested each day, including throughout the holidays. We could set up a roster if we can’t just get one person to do it. If you are interested, please let me know. There is training available if you haven’t looked after swimming pools before.

Sushi
Thanks to Dave.E for picking this up for us on Wednesday this week.

Upcoming Dates:
Term 3:

Camp (Year 5-8) - 22-24 September
Positive Education Week - week 10 (celebrating 5 fingers of kindness, resilience, character strengths and mindfulness)
Term 4:
Dental van - 20/21 October
School photos - Thursday 21st October
Student teacher Joella Haglund joins Paemoana - start of term 4
Labour Day - Monday 25th October
Athletics (Year 1-3) at Waikari School - Tuesday 26th October
Agri Sports/Pet Day - Wednesday 3rd November
Athletics (Year 4-8) - at Waipara School - Thursday 4th November
Assembly (Year 0-4) - Friday 5th November, 2pm
Teacher only day - Thursday 11th November
Assembly (Year 5-8) - Friday 26th November, 2pm
Grandparents Day - Tuesday 30th November
Kapahaka Festival (Year 4-8) - Thursday 2nd December

Community Notices

The Hurunui Theatre Group production of "Spamalot" is on hold and will be rescheduled to to a date that suits all parties and conditions. Tickets already purchased will be transferable to any of the new dates, or refundable, with online bookings to be re-selected.

Amberley Tennis Club have a registered Professional for coaching and are the furthest club North offering team entry into the North Canterbury Tennis competitions. Subject to grants, heavily subsidised coaching to children has been available for some years now which has led to a revival in the sport locally, with some great players coming through. Hopefully we can do this again this 2021-2022 year. Social hit and registration: Please come along for a hit and a catch up Saturday 25th September and we can put you into a team or sort out coaching for the season. Juniors from 10am and Adults from 1pm.

We request that everyone complies with the government’s contact tracing policy and signs in on the day. We will limit the attendance to 100 persons for the outdoor event and will be following the L2 protocols as required. Please bring your masks for any spectators/parents.

Competition players: We are looking for numbers this year to make up some short teams in all the grades. We are particularly interested if there’s any A graders out there wanting to play some great competition tennis and put Amberley on the map again this year. We are always looking for the more mature players (35YO) for President competition grade 1 & 2 (doubles only) players to make up the teams even if you only wish to play casually. It often helps. 


Simon Bennetto 03 314-8338,

Kate Dodd 021-509-955  

Kylie Chapman 021-816-564



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Vegan Expo Christchurch
Haere-Roa (UCSA, 90 Ilam Rd)
10am – 4pm
Sunday, November 7, 2020

Enjoy great vegan food, watch top veggie chefs display their cooking secrets, learn about plant-based living and enjoy celebrating cruelty-free, pro-planet lives with Christchurch’s vegetarian and vegan community. Whether you are vegetarian or not, you will love the variety of foods and entertainment on offer, which includes a special kid’s zone, bouncy castle and activities.

Eftpos and plenty of free parking will be available.

Kids free (12 and under), adults $5 if bought online now (veganexpo.co.nz/christchurch) or $6 on the door.  

More info: veganexpo.org.nz/christchurch
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/veganexpochristchurch
Instagram: www.instagram.com/veganexpochristchurch 


Please note: The Expo will only go ahead if we are in Covid-19 alert level 1. If the event has to be cancelled, refunds will be issued to anyone who has purchased tickets. 

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Omihi School Office
Monday, 23rd August 2021
Delilah is loving having her Mum and Dad out on the farm.  We are grateful for beautiful days like today.

Delilah is loving having her Mum and Dad out on the farm. We are grateful for beautiful days like today.

Kia ora whānau

Thanks for all of your support over the past few days. We have done this before and are able to slot back into home learning again. Your child’s teacher has sent out their home learning this morning. Please keep in touch with them if you need any support or would like any further learning. If there is anyway we can help, we are here for you.

We have some disappointing news that goes with us being back in lockdown - we are cancelling our Spring Ball. This is the second year we have had to cancel our major fundraiser and it’s not a decision we take lightly. But with the uncertain times ahead we can’t take the risk of it being cancelled last minute if we are still in level 2. We have items ready for a silent auction and a raffle, so we will still put these together for an online fundraiser. Thank you to everyone that has helped so far and those that have donated. At the NZ Principal’s Conference I was at a couple of weeks ago, Sir Ian Taylor talked about focusing on the ‘opportunities’ rather than the ‘challenges’. So let’s try and do that and be creative about our fundraising opportunities in the future.

On a positive note, at our BOT meeting last week we made the decision to continue with 3 classrooms next year. Even though we haven’t had fundraisers this year, we had some BOT funds put aside to go into the new building, but as we were under budget, we haven’t had to do this, so we are putting it into our teaching staff. I’m really excited to announce we have the same, amazing, dedicated team next year:

Tūpari - Sally Mickleson
Awaawa - Georgie Smith
Paemoana - Penny Vincent

Ngā mihi
Maree Lucas
Tumuaki/Principal

School Notices

Welcome to our Omihi whānau
Welcome to Annie and Scarlett who have started full time in Paemoana.

Postponements
Our Grandparents Day and Year 0-4 assembly have been postponed. We will inform you of dates when these are confirmed.

3 Way Learning Conferences
These are on Monday 30th and Tuesday 31st August. They will go ahead either in person, or via zoom. Please make a time to meet with your child’s teacher. I have shared the link in the newsletter email.

Speeches
These will be completed at school once we get back to level 2. Unfortunately parents won’t be able to come in to watch, but we will record them all and add to Hero.

Report comments
Your child’s maths comments will be coming out via Hero at the end of this week. If you haven’t managed to log into Hero please get in touch with your class teacher.

Dental Van
The dental van will be at school on Friday 17th September. Please see further details below.

Year 5-8 Camp
I have had questions around camp, it is not something we will make a decision on yet. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will have more of an idea if it can go ahead.

Community Notices

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Omihi School Office
Monday, 9th August 2021

Tena koutou whānau

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Last week I was at the New Zealand Principal’s Conference in Rotorua. It was such a great opportunity to meet a wide range of Principals from all of NZ and hear some really engaging speakers.

One of my favourites was Sir Ian Taylor. He is a 71 year old Māori/Pakeha man who has had an incredibly interesting life, from being a presenter on Playschool to creating an animation company and flying around the world tracking thousands of sporting events.

He talked a lot around Cultural Responsiveness, STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and the importance for our tamariki learning about the history of Aotearoa. You may have seen his company’s work on animations for the top sports games in the world. He has now been part of setting up this innovative website to help us to teach our tamariki about Aotearoa - www.maatauranga.co.nz/. Feel free to check it out with your children.

Ngā mihi
Maree Lucas
Tumuaki/Principal

School Notices

Multipurpose Space
Our new building is just having the final few things completed on it and hopefully when it dries out a bit we will start with the landscaping around it. We will be holding a blessing for the building in the next couple of weeks with our tamariki and our Board of Trustees, led by Pone Taite (Kaumatua) and Melanie Taite-Pitama (Tuahiwi Education Team Member), then we will have an official opening in term 4 where our community will be invited.

Agri Sports/Pet Day
For the last few years Leighton Croft has organised our Agri Sports and Julie Wells has organised the Pet Day. We are looking for new people to help with this year’s event, so they could then take it over next year. Please let me know if you are keen.

Spring Ball
A reminder to please send in a grocery item for our raffle at the Spring Ball. Plus tickets are on sale and we would love to see you there. It is a great opportunity to catch up and have a dance! Or just enjoy the band and yummy food! Tickets are at www.iticket.co.nz.

Ski Trips - 10th and 17th August
I will email everyone and put a message on the school’s Facebook page at 6.30am to let you know if the ski trip is going ahead or not.

ERO - Education Review Office
In two weeks we will be meeting our ERO evaluation partner, which we are really looking forward to. Our last review was in 2017 and we were thrilled with our report. There is a new approach since that last review and our evaluation partner will be with us for a longer period of time now and working alongside us to review our kura. We look forward to keeping you updated along the way.

Community Notices

Resilient Hurunui presents guest speaker John McCaskey talking on "Water - A lifetime of living and farming in drought-prone Waipara". On August 19th at 7.30 p.m, Amberley School, Douglas Road, Amberley. $5 donation appreciated. All Welcome. All Resilient Hurunui talks can be found on YouTube.

Mt Cass Wind Farm
The Mt Cass Wind Farm project team continue to work hard to get the project ready for financial close. If you would like to be kept updated about progress, sign up for the Mt Cass Wind Farm newsletter - https://www.mtcasswindfarm.co.nz/

They will be hosting a series of community meetings around the region closer to construction. These meetings will be an opportunity to meet the project team and hear about what to expect during the construction phase of the project.

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Omihi School Office