Kia ora koutou

I feel so grateful to be in a profession where every 10 weeks we are able to have a break. Even though teachers and myself still work through some of the holidays, we encourage our staff to take time out and have a good break so they come back refreshed. These holidays my family went to Rarotonga, and what a treat it was to have some sunshine, warmth and relaxation. Delilah especially loved playing with all the dogs she met along the way.

Logan, Fergus, Andy and Hamish happy to see each other again after the holidays.

It was lovely to see all of our tamariki again this morning, and hear about their holiday stories - whether they enjoyed family time, played some new games or went away somewhere. They also seem refreshed, and we hope to continue to keep the winter bugs away from school. Thank you for your support in asking students to wear masks while indoors.

We look forward to seeing you this term at our assemblies, movie night, ski trips, camp, 3 way learning conferences, preschooler morning, or just popping into the classes to say hello.

Ngā mihi

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

School Notices

Strategic Initiative Update
Positive Education - Sally Mickleson
Our school first endeavoured on our Positive Education journey in 2019. Since then, Maree and I have attended Positive Education conferences, engaged in professional development courses and facilitated discussion groups in this domain at our school, and across our kāhui ako. As a school, this year we have further progressed our Pos Ed journey by implementing the Positive Education Enhanced Curriculum created by Geelong Grammar School (Melbourne) into our kura. 

So what is Positive Education? 
Geelong Grammar School defines Pos Ed as;  “Positive Education brings together the science of positive psychology with best-practice teaching and learning to encourage and support schools and individuals within their communities to flourish.”  And  “Positive Education teaches skills and knowledge to help prevent illbeing and promote wellbeing within the context of living a good life.” (Geelong Grammar School, 2022) 

Every Friday our tamariki engage in explicit Positive Education lessons. It has been wonderful to see our tamariki soaking up the key messages in these lessons, and applying the skills and virtues they have learned into their daily school lives.

Principal Awards
Congratulations to our latest Principal Award Winners……Fergus and Andy!

Yamaha Omihi School Trailride
We are excited to announce that we have a new major fundraiser this year - the Yamaha Omihi School Trailride. It is on Sunday 30th October on a number of farms at the end of Reeces Road. Thanks to Todd McBreen and James Blanchard who will be running the event on the day, and to Yamaha for sponsoring this event. Nearer the time we will be asking for volunteers to run the BBQ on the day, and to help with the registration. We need one person to lead the organisation of the BBQ. If you are happy to do this, please let me know. Tickets will go online on the 1st September. Please help us to spread the word!

Movie Night
The Year 8’s are organising a movie night on Friday 5th August at 6pm. There will be a movie for Year 0-4 in Paemoana and one for Year 5-8 in Awaawa. Children are asked to bring their own water bottle, an empty coffee cup (for the popcorn) and there will be popcorn and corn chips to purchase for $1 each. We ask parents to please bring a plate to share with adults and we will meet in Tūpari. A 30min update on our strategic plan first, then a chance to catch up with each other. Parents and children Year 4 and up - we ask that you please wear a mask.

Year 5-8 Camp (14-16 September)
Camp invoices were sent out at the end of last term. Please can these be paid prior to us going on camp. Feel free to come and talk to me if you would like to look at payment options or need some support.

Ski trips (17th and 24th August)
The ski trip forms will be going home this week. As it is parent’s responsibility to take your own children up to the ski field, you are very welcome to bring your whole whānau with you - preschoolers and children who attend other schools. It’s a great family day out!

Sexuality Education
Here is a link to the parent’s guide so you can see the lessons that each year group will be doing over the next few weeks and can continue conversations at home. Paemoana will follow the Year 1-2 guide, Awaawa will follow Year 3-4, and Tūpari will follow Year 5/6. Sally will be in touch with the Year 7/8 parents regarding their content. Please feel free to touch base with your child’s teacher to find out more.

Omihi Library
We are so lucky to have our Omihi Library linked with the Hurunui Library. This means that you can order books online at Hurunui to pick up at Omihi, and issue and return books in both libraries. Our librarian, Yo Turnball, is here every Monday from 2.30pm and we welcome parents and our community to come in from 3pm-3.30pm if you would like to get books out. We have an adults section, and some great books for preschoolers.

Thank you
A big thank you to Jan and Mark, our posties, who continue to deliver our newsletter for us!

Other dates for term 3:
Whole school - speeches/poetry - week 1-3
Year 3-8 ASB Getwise Financial literacy workshops - Tuesday 9th August
Year 5-8 Cantamaths teams go to Ohoka - Wednesday 10th August
Year 5-8 Assembly - Friday 19th August, 2pm
3 Way Learning Conferences - 29/30th August
Preschooler morning - Wednesday 31st August, 9-10.30am
Year 5-8 Top Team Challenge at Amberley Domain - Wednesday 7th September
Life Education - Tuesday 20th September
Year 0-4 Assembly - Friday 23rd September, 2pm

2022 School Board Parent Elections (all info on the newsletter section of our website)
Nominations are open for the election of four parent representatives to the school board. Your nomination form has been emailed to you, or please contact Bryleigh, the returning officer, if you wish to get a copy - office@omihi.school.nz. You can use this form to nominate yourself or someone else in your community.

Nominating yourself or someone else - If you are on the voting roll and eligible to vote, you can nominate yourself. Please remember to sign both parts of the form. If you are nominating someone else, complete the nomination form and make sure it includes all the required contact details and signatures. You can post, hand deliver or email your nomination form/s to the returning officer: Bryleigh Kingston-Rodgers, Omihi School, 990 Omihi Road, RD3, Amberley 7483, office@omihi.school.nz. Nominations close at noon on 3 August 2022.

Community Notices

Kia ora koutou,

Nominations are open for the election of four parent representatives to the board of trustees.

All eligible voters have been emailed a nomination form and a notice calling for nominations – you can use this form to nominate yourself or someone in your community.

If you need hardcopies of the nomination forms, please contact the school office during school hours.

Nominations close at noon on 3 August 2022. You may provide a signed candidate statement and photograph with your nomination.

The electoral roll is held at the school and can be viewed during normal school hours.

As nominations are received, there will be a list of candidates’ names kept at the school up until election day, which you can view.  

Voting closes at 4pm on 7 September 2022.

Ngā mihi nui
Bryleigh Kingston-Rodgers
Returning Officer

Kia ora koutou

Cadence, Ava, Jonty and Jack

I hope you had a lovely Matariki weekend with your whānau. We loved celebrating Matariki with our tamariki on Thursday and would like to thank Leighana for coming in and helping us to make fry bread. We look forward to sharing our learning with you at our end of term assembly.

This is my last newsletter for the term and I just wanted to say how wonderful it has been to have our parents and wider whānau back in our school this term. It’s been lovely to make connections again and touch base on school trips, at assemblies, whānau picnic, preschooler morning and before and after school. We really value the importance of working alongside whānau for the best results for our tamariki, and Covid has made that difficult over the past couple of years, so it is lovely to start getting back to normality as much as we can.

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

School Notices

Character Strengths
Jonty (Year 6) - My top 3 character strengths are kindness, bravery and humour. Kindness helps me be kind to my friends and everyone at school. Bravery helps me stick up for others and try things if I have never done them before, I just give it a go. Humour helps me to cheer people up if they are sad by telling them a funny joke.

ERO - Education Review Office
We have been working with ERO over the past 18 months. Their model has changed, where they now work alongside the school (BOT and staff) over 3 years and are continuously reviewing with us. It is a really positive experience and we are excited to share with you our current reports (on our website) that they have produced. Through looking at our data and strategic plan, our focus is on writing, and they were impressed with what is happening in the school already and our strategic goals around this area over the next 3 years.

Movie Night
The seniors are organising a whānau movie night on Friday 5th August at 6pm. There will be two movies playing in Paemoana and Awaawa, and we welcome parents to come along to Tūpari. We would like to take 30mins to share our progress on our strategic plan, and then have an opportunity for parents to catch up. There will be popcorn available for children to purchase and we ask families to please bring along a plate to share with the adults.

Relationships and Sexuality Education
For the first few weeks in term 3, our health focus will be Relationships and Sexuality Education. There is information online for you to read so you understand what your child will be learning about. Please have a read through this and let us know if you have any questions or would like to talk further with your child’s teacher.

Junior Assembly
On the last day of term we have our Junior Assembly. This is at 2pm either outside or in the Omihi Hall. We welcome our year 5-8 parents to this as well, as we are performing a whole school dance that we have been learning this term.

Playhouse Theatre 
On Thursday 30th June the Playhouse Theatre is coming to Omihi to portray the story of “The Emperor's New Clothes”.  The cost of this is covered from this term’s activity fee.

Community Notices

Together Hurunui will be launching a wellbeing project over World Wellbeing Week (27 June - 1 July) to highlight five ways we can add to our mental health. The campaign will run online for five days focusing on a challenge/activity each day.

To follow the online campaign over the week visit:

• https://www.facebook.com/hurunuiyouthprogramme

• https://www.instagram.com/hurunuiyouth/

Kia ora koutou

Associate Minister of Education and Minister of Women - Jan Tinetti.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the New Zealand Principal’s Federation Moot in Wellington, as President of the North Canterbury Principal’s Association. What a wonderful opportunity to be able to network with Presidents of Associations from across New Zealand and discuss education today and in the future. We also had the opportunity to hear from Associate Minister of Education and Minister of Women, Jan Tinetti. Jan was a wonderful inspiration and someone I reached out to when I came back to work with Delilah. She was a Principal previously, who also took her child to school with her, so it was great to have a Minister give me support and advice on this as a working Mum. I really enjoyed listening to her speech on Friday, from herself and Minister of Education Chris Hipkins, about our current education system, and having the opportunity to ask them questions.

Last week was ‘Support Staff’ week. An opportunity to thank our wonderful support staff who add so much value to our school. Thank you to Bryleigh (Office Manager), Sharryn (Cleaning fairy), Fi (bus driver), Tracy (bus driver and gardener) and Yo our librarian. We are lucky to have such a dedicated team.

Next week my appraiser, Jacqui Pascoe, is coming into school. Part of her appraisal of me is to talk to our staff, students, parents and our BOT chair. Each year I ask three different families to be a part of this, so thank you if you have done this in the past or you are this year. It’s such a great opportunity for me to receive feedback and continue to grow as a leader.

Ngā mihi

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

School Notices

Strategic initiative: Implement a culturally responsive programme
Update from Georgie, who is leading this initiative:
We have many diverse cultures within our kura. One of our strategic initiatives is to further develop our cultural responsiveness as a school, where all families and cultures feel valued and welcome. One part of this is to implement Te reo Māori and tikanga in our everyday teaching practice, which we are working towards. A major focus for us is working through the Hikairo Schema, which is a guide that allows kaiako (teachers), tamariki and whānau to collaboratively co-construct cultural goals and outcomes that are relevant to our learning contexts, and to explore the cultures within our school. It also allows us to review what is already happening in our kura and how we can add to it. We look forward to gathering voice from whānau as we work through this. Do you know we have seven different cultures within our little school?

Character Strengths
Cadence (Year 6) - My top 3 character strengths are curiosity, appreciation of beauty and excellence, and humour. Curiosity helps me find new things to do, like trying to find an interesting book to read. Appreciation of beauty and excellence helps me appreciate beautiful things in life, like the mountains that surround our school. Humour helps me to make new friends by making them laugh.

Paid Teacher Union Meetings
This week there are a number of paid union meetings for our teachers. We have been able to cover these within, so there won’t be any disruption to our student’s day.

Naked Baker Pie orders
A reminder if you are selling pies that these need to be in by Monday 20th June. After these come in, we will then invoice for the school camp and take off anything you have earned through selling pies.

Reports
Your child’s writing comments will be published via Hero this Friday.

Preschooler morning
We look forward to welcoming back our preschoolers on Wednesday 22nd June from 9.00-10.30am. Parents will be asked to please wear a mask when inside the classroom.

Kowai Cross Country
Congratulations and good luck to Macy, Jack.S, Stan and Taylor who all competed in the Kowai Cross Country, and are now heading to the Canterbury Cross Country. Well done to Thomas and Hugo who ran in the Year 4 race as well, Hugo coming 1st and Thomas 2nd. A great success for Omihi!

Matariki
A reminder that Friday 24th June is a public holiday to acknowledge Matariki. We are looking forward to celebrating Matariki in the next few weeks at school with our tamariki, and sharing our learning with you at our final assembly of the term in week 10.

Ski trips
Each year we have two ski trips at Mt Lyford. This year they are on the 17th and 24th August. Last year, due to the weather, we didn’t get to go on either, so fingers crossed for this year! We usually have the whole ski field to ourself and it is a great whānau day out with all of our teachers as well. The children have lessons in the morning, so parents usually have a ski then, and then they all ski together in the afternoon. It is the responsibility of each family to get their child there or organise for them to go with another family. Mt Lyford offer a bus from part way up the mountain if you don’t want to drive up. If children are with another family, they are that families responsibility for the day. The costs of the ski trip are: $49 for ski or snowboard hire, lesson and ski pass, or $39 with own gear. A day pass for parents is $55 with own gear or $69 including hiring gear. If you know your child will not be a part of these days, can you please let me know.

Tipu Māia update
Since 2016 our school has been part of a bigger cluster of schools called Tipu Māia Kāhui Ako - or a community of learners. The community spans from Akaroa through to Hanmer and includes 13 schools:

• Akaroa Area School, Amuri Area School, Cheviot Area School, Greta Valley School, Hanmer Springs School, Hurunui College, Omihi School, Oxford Area School, Rangiora New Life School, Rotherham School, Waiau School, Waikari School, Waipara School

The network or structure of Tipu Māia includes a Lead Principal, two support Principals, three Across School Leaders (operating across the 13 schools), and 17 Within School Leaders (allocated and operating within a school). In 2022 this includes: Lead Principal: Mike Hart (Principal of Oxford Area School), Support Principals: Maree Lucas (Principal of Omihi School) and Anne Batt (Principal of Greta Valley School), Across School Leaders: Penny Vincent (Omihi School), Gavin Cate (Amuri Area School), and Julia Steel (Amuri Area School).

What is the purpose of Tipu Māia? The purpose of Tipu Māia is to allow the teachers of this school to be able to collaborate / connect with teachers in the other member schools to continue to improve our practice to ensure all of our students are brave, capable, and confident learners.

How does Tipu Māia work? Achievement Challenges are formed and shared across schools who carry out a plan to address those challenges. We are currently establishing challenges around Literacy, Numeracy, Wellbeing and School Culture.

Why does Tipu Māia exist? To break down our geographic isolation by sharing the best teaching practice across the 13 schools. Tipu Māia is well resourced both financially and with people dedicated to work across and within the 13 member schools.

Community Notices

Yoga class

A new yoga class is being held at the Omihi Hall every Friday morning with experienced, well known yoga teacher Tristin Apse, of The Yoga Club. The class is supported by Black Estate, for their staff and will involve strength work and mindfulness, leaving you energised for your Friday morning. All level appropriate. $20 at the door. 50 minute class starting at 8am every Friday. See you there!