Kia ora koutou

Welcome to Delia, who has joined our Tūpari class, and Arlo, who has joined Awaawa. We are excited to have you join our Omihi whānau. Also a warm welcome to Judah who will be joining Paemoana.

Michael, Arlo, Mrs Lucas, Delia, Liza and Vuk

Welcome to Elizabeth Maddren who is joining us for 5 weeks while Georgie is overseas. Elizabeth is one of our regular relievers, so it’s lovely to have her join us full time for the first half of the term. She knows our tamariki very well.

It’s nice to be back after 9 months of maternity leave, and I look forward to catching up with you at drop offs or pick ups. We had some lovely family time away in our caravan. Delilah and Ada did very well adjusting to life on the road.

This term I start the Lead Principal role for our Tipu Māia kāhui ako. This will be a new learning curve and challenge for me as a leader, and I will work it throughout the week at Omihi. There are times when I will need to be out of school, but as Penny is also an Across School Lead in our kāhui, we will aim to have a lot of our meetings at Omihi. This is also a great opportunity for our school. It means we gain extra staffing, which helps us to continue with our 3 classes.

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

School Notices

Principal award winners
Congratulations to Zac, Leo, Thomas and Logan who received Principal awards in term 2. They get to go to Fossil Point for a hot chocolate to celebrate.

Trail ride
Our Yamaha Omihi School Trail ride is on Saturday 4th November (postponement 5th November). This is our major fundraiser of the year, which helps us to keep 3 classes, so we need as many families as possible on board to help us. Please put that in your diary and we will be in touch nearer the time with jobs to sign up for.

Ski free days
A reminder that our ‘ski free days’ are Friday 28th July and Friday 4th August. You are welcome to take your children skiing on these days and they won’t be recorded as absent.

Closing gate
A reminder that for health and safety reasons we have the school gates closed at all times. When you are coming through the school gates, can you please make sure the gate closes behind you.

North Canterbury Kapa Haka Celebration - Thursday 17th August
Please see below for information about the upcoming North Canterbury Kapa Haka Festival. We are performing in the afternoon, and need to be at Ohoka School by 12.15pm. Tickets are available via our school office. Please email Bryleigh at office@omihi.school.nz to order by the 4th August.

Dates for this term:
28th July & 4th August - Ski free days
17th August - Kapahaka Festival
18th August - Senior assembly
4th & 5th September - 3 Way Learning Conferences
5th September - Tūpari visit to Bloomfields Preschool and library
6th September - Preschooler morning and Year 5-8 Top Team Challenge
12th September - Life Education
15th September - Junior assembly
20th September - Grandparents Day

Community Notices

House wanted
A school family is after a house in the local area. If you have anything for rent, please contact Melanie on 027 418 4740.

Pharmacies minor health condition service
This winter, between Monday 12 June and Saturday 30 September, participating community pharmacies in Canterbury will provide a Minor Health Conditions Service for children aged under 14 years, Māori and Pacific people, and community service card holders.

The service allows pharmacists to have a clinical consultation and provide advice as well as medication for a select set of minor ailments at no cost to the patient.

It also includes whānau members with similar symptoms. For example, if the pharmacist determines your child needs treatment for scabies and they have older brothers or sisters, or you yourself also have symptoms, they may provide advice and medication for all of you.

The following health conditions are included in the Minor Health Conditions Service:

• Acute diarrhoea, Dehydration, Eye inflammation and infections, Scabies, Headlice, Pain and fever, Eczema/Dermatitis, Minor skin infections

If your condition needs further support, the pharmacist can tell you the best place to go for your condition to get further help.

Google Family Link app
Google Family Link is a free app that enables parents to set restrictions such as Wi-Fi and time limits on their child's phone usage. It's a useful tool for managing and monitoring your child's phone activities. You can download it to Apple or Android devices.

Kia ora koutou,

Peter Pan production rehearsal in full swing!

On Tuesday and Wednesday last week Georgie and I were lucky enough to attend the CPPA leadership conference. Dr Natalie Flynn and Nigel Latta were keynote speakers for the day. We discussed the increasing prevalence of social and mental challenges, the impact of these and strategies we can use to influence positive change.

Key takeaways for us would be teaching our children the importance of hope and looking for beauty in small moments. We learnt about simple things we can do to manage stress and develop resilience. We also listened to Tina Lomax speak about trauma informed teaching, which was a very impactful experience.

Ngā mihi
Penny Vincent
Acting Principal/Tumuaki

School Notices

Production
Tickets are still available to purchase. Please email Bryleigh at office@omihi.school.nz or come into the office to purchase. Tickets are $12.50. For children under 12 they are $5 and under 5’s are free. (The ticket price is just to cover the cost of hiring lighting and sound).

On the day of the production, we have two performances. One matinee at 11am and one afternoon show at 5pm. You can purchase tickets to either show, or both if you wish. For the evening performance, children need to be at the hall between 4:15-4:30pm. If you would like to take your child home between the matinee and evening show, you are welcome to. Between 3:00-4:15pm after school on Wednesday teachers will not be available to supervise children. 

Playhouse Theatre
We are looking forward to welcoming the Playhouse Theatre back to Omihi on Thursday this week to perform ‘Treasure Island’ for our students.

Cross Country
Congratulations to Hugo, Michael, Taylor, Kaisa and Jack who qualified for Canterbury Cross Country.

Lunchonline
This week it is Sushi. Head to this link if you would like to place an order.

Wellbeing Week/Pyjama Day

In the last week of term we are having a wellbeing week at school. This is a week designed to emphasize the importance of looking after ourselves and fostering meaningful connections with one another within school. We encourage the children to experience the joy that comes from making a positive impact on other peoples lives, and how important it is to be grateful for what we have. We are so lucky to have such an amazing environment that we can foster this in. Some of the activities we will be doing are looking at how we can build resilience, random acts of kindness and so on. We are ending the week with a pyjama themed mufti day. We are raising money through a gold coin donation to go towards “The Kindness Collective”, an organisation on a mission to provide warm winter pyjamas to kids all over Aotearoa!  

Community Notices

Yoga at the Omihi Community Hall

Please note yoga with Tristin is now held on Tuesdays, 8.00-9.00am at the Omihi Community Hall (previously Fridays).

Jessica and Kaisa

Kia ora koutou

We welcome Jessica into Tūpari, and her family into our Omihi whānau.

It was lovely to have Greta Valley School join us last week to have a game of touch. We enjoy a bit of steady competition, and also the opportunity to collaborate with our neighbours. We are looking forward to going to Greta to try out their new soccer nets!

We hope to see you at our cross country this week (now on Thursday). We are so proud of how our tamariki have been training and persevering with their running.

Ngā mihi
Penny Vincent
Acting Principal/Tumuaki

School Notices

Year 1-8 Cross Country - Postponed until Thursday 8th June
Our whole school participates in the Small School Cross Country with Broomfield and Waipara School. Broomfield School organise this and this year there is a new location - where Onepunga meets Holleth Hills Road (about 2.5 km from Broomfield School). There will be lots of signage. No Dogs are permitted to be on this property. Year 4-8 children that qualify will then go onto the Kowai Cross Country on the 13th June at the same place. All info, including maps is here.

We ask that you pick your child up from school by 11.30am on the 8th to go to the cross country. Further times are below. We also need one parent to be a marshal. Please let Penny know if you can help. You could share it with another parent to ensure you see your child race.

12.15 pm - Marshal Briefing 
12.20 pm - Students & Parent Briefing
12.30 pm - Races start (Year 1 is the first race, through to the Year 8’s)

Senior Assembly
We welcome our community to our senior assembly on Friday 9th June at 2pm.

Reports
You will be receiving a reading and writing comment this week via Hero. Please check in with your class teacher if you aren’t able to access Hero.

Kia ora koutou

The last few weeks have seen such a great vibe at school. It is hard to believe that this week marks the half-way mark through the term! We are really starting to get our teeth stuck into our production practices now. We will be spending a lot of our afternoons over at the hall beginning to block out scenes.

Tickets will be on sale soon, so please keep an eye out for this. There will be limited numbers. It has been really special to watch each and every child shine in some aspect of the production. We cannot wait to share it with you!

Ngā mihi
Penny Vincent
Acting Principal/Tumuaki

School Notices

Update on our Strategic Initiative from Georgie: (Implement a Culturally Responsive Programme)
Culturally responsive teachers are people who are potential-focused and view diversity as an advantage. Here at Omihi we love having our whānau come in and share their knowledge with our students and community. A resource that we have started to implement to further develop our cultural responsiveness is Niho Taniwha. This is a document written by Melanie Riwai-Couch, who has worked for over two decades in the education sector as a teacher and tumuaki. We are using this resource, alongside The Hikairo Schema, to provide us with an in-depth understanding of effective partnerships under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, issues of sovereignty for iwi, and how to help whānau find and use their voices in education. We look forward to sharing more with you as we go on this journey together.

Omihi School Raffle
Congratulations to our prize winners of our Omihi School raffle! You helped us raise nearly $3000 for our kura.

Please pick up your prize from our office, or email Bryleigh to get it posted to you where possible - office@omihi.school.nz.

Year 0-4 Assembly
We welcome all of our families to our junior assembly on Friday 26th May at 2pm.

Touch Game
We have a touch game against Greta Valley school on Wednesday 31st May at Omihi. It runs from 11am-12pm, and we invite parents to come along and watch. There will be a Year 4-8 game and a Year 1-3 game. We are still looking for refs for each game. Please let Penny know if you can help.

Year 1-8 Cross Country - Tuesday 6th June, Postponement: Thursday 8th June
Our whole school participates in the Small School Cross Country with Broomfield and Waipara School. Broomfield School organise this and this year there is a new location - where Onepunga meets Holleth Hills Road (about 2.5 km from Broomfield School). There will be lots of signage. No Dogs are permitted to be on this property. Year 4-8 children that qualify will then go onto the Kowai Cross Country on the 13th June at the same place. All info, including maps is here. Broomfield will be having a walk through of the location on Friday 2nd June if anybody would like to take their child for that. Please meet at the location at 10.30am.

We ask that you pick your child up from school by 11.30am on the 6th to go to the cross country. Further times are below. We also need one parent to be a marshal. Please let Penny know if you can help. You could share it with another parent to ensure you see your child race.

12.15 pm - Marshal Briefing 
12.20 pm - Students & Parent Briefing
12.30 pm - Races start (Year 1 is the first race, through to the Year 8’s)

King’s birthday weekend
A reminder it is a public holiday on Monday 5th June, so school will be closed.

Community Notices

We’ve got a couple of new additions to our library, Big Wooly Mammoth and Old T-Rex, written and self-published by retired teacher Geoff Gudsell from Nelson. These are great books with beautiful illustrations, and are particularly loved by children aged 3-10.

If you are interested in buying a copy of each of these books for the little ones in your life, please email geoff@arapiki.nz. He has a special offer of $52.00 for both books delivered ($54.00 to rural addresses).