Rain or Shine, We Had a Blast: Waikowhai Primary’s 2023 Family Fun Day

Kia ora koutou,

We hope you all had an amazing experience at our recent Family Fun Day. Despite the changeable weather, we saw so much courage and determination from all of our whānau, who made the most of every activity and had an awesome time.

The inflatable obstacle courses and the Slip ‘n’ Slide were definitely a hit. We saw so many smiling faces as ākonga raced each other and tried to beat their best times. It was fantastic to see everyone cheering each other on and having fun together.

And how about that new bike track? We were blown away by how well our ākonga handled it, riding like true professionals. We hope you all got a chance to try it out and explore the twists and turns. Who knows, maybe we have some future BMX champions in our midst!

Of course, we can’t forget about the sausages and the home-baked treats at our cake stall. A big thank you to all the whānau who contributed their baking talents and time on the barbecue.

We’re so proud of you all for making the most of the day and having fun, despite the challenging weather. It just goes to show that we’re a resilient and determined community that can make the most of any situation. We hope everyone went home exhausted but happy, with lots of great memories.

We can’t wait to do it all again next year. Ka mau te wehi, Waikowhai.

Te Waka Ako 2023

Nau mai Hoki mai ki Te Waka Ako 2023

We start 2023 with a few changes.
We welcome Miss Kneller into Manukau with Year 4 & 5 students. Mrs Jones is in Waitematā again with Year 5 & 6 akonga. Mr Riceman and Ms McGrath are team teaching in Hauraki to start the year while Ms Sands is off on her hikoi adventure exploring Te Waipounamu.

Our learning journey for this year has started off with a hiss and a roar. We are well into our Pāngarau Inquiry where we have been exploring subtraction and place value. We have been learning about writing narratives in Tuhituhi. Swimming in the school pool has been amazing over the beginning of the term while we have been building our swimming and safety in the water skills.

Our Inquiry kaupapa is Tūakiri – Identity. We are looking forward to exploring and learning more about who we are and who we want to be.

We are looking forward to sharing all our learning for this year with you.
Please leave us a comment!

Beginning our year with the ‘Kawa of Care’

Kia Ora, welcome to the first post for the Te Waka Ako syndicate this year. We have had an exciting start to the Term and have been very busy across different learning areas. This year we are a syndicate of three classes, with students across Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6.  We all have access to Chromebooks to support our learning and the beginning of the year is a great time to remind ourselves of the important ways we can look after our devices.  To start this process, we worked in collaborative groups to sort statements, deciding which ideas are relevant ways to look after our Chromebook.

Once we had these ideas organised, our challenge was to create a DLO (Digital Learning Object) poster to remind our classmates and ourselves of the ways we can look after our precious devices. The examples from Hauraki class are shared below in a slideshow that Hauraki shared with the Waikowhai School community during their first assembly of the year. Have a look at what we think. Can you think of any other ways to be Cybersmart and follow the Kawa of Care?  Please leave us a positive, thoughtful and helpful comment! We would love your feedback.

Our Term 3 Showcase Evening for Parents.

This is a quick post about the Showcase Evening we ran for all our parents in Week 10 of Term 3. We had an awesome term of learning and creating. In Inquiry and Reading we learnt about New Zealand disasters both natural and caused by human er

ror. In Maths we worked hard in the areas of measurement and multiplication/division. In Writing we looked at description. For each of these areas we created work that we could share with our parents as a display when they came to visit on the night of our showcase. 

Each family bought some ‘nibbles’ dinner to share and everyone really enjoyed having food while they walked around checking out their own child’s work and other students’ work.  Students had created a range of items to show their learning. There were models, newspapers, paintings, collage artworks, scrolls, stop motion digital work, websites and more.  Check out some of went down with these photos.