2nd July 2020

Dear Parents/Caregivers & Community,

We made it! Happy last day of what has felt like a very long term. For our pupils, teachers, support staff and parents at home, next week will be a much appreciated holiday break. Thank you all for working so hard to keep school going for our children. Cheers, Christian

Garden Bird Survey. If you are looking for something you and your children can do from the comfort of your home, jump onto this website and conduct a survey of the birds that visit your place. https://gardenbirdsurvey.landcareresearch.co.nz/

Property Updates. ! LR Village/LRS footpath (Western Valley Rd) – this Council project is

progressing well. The front of school is also to be improved as part of the project.

! Environment for Learning – this Board project has many features with some of the first elements being an improved new back gate entrance, plantings, decking, social seating and a rebound wall being prepared for a project manager to get under way in the coming terms.

CLASSROOM REPORTS: Kahikatea & Tōtara (Yr 6-8) – As our “When Art and Technology collides” unit comes to an end, we are reflecting on our learning about pixels and the key (metaphorical) life learning of breaking large problems into small manageable sizes. Our art afternoons have continued to be centred around portraits; moving from Andy Warhol as our artist model for inspiration … to Chuck Close …. to the more abstract, Kimmy Cantrell (refer cover of newsletter). Come and enjoy our creations! Tōtara has been focusing on sound, colour and light in a science unit. We have been looking at how we hear and see and doing some experiments to help us to understand this; using prisms to split white light into the rainbow colours, using flat, concave and convex mirrors, moving focal points, bending objects in water, looking at shadows, “seeing” vibrations using tuning forks, drums and rice. In considering the wide spectrum of our mathematical confidence across all of the classes, our ‘extension’ mathematicians are taking part in a national monthly Problem Challenge (run by the University of Otago)….. and it’s been all about action games (Beep/Buzz, Maths Tag, Obstacle, The Nasty Game, etc) and card games (Target, Pyramid, Close Call, 21) to sneak the basic facts and times tables learning in, amongst the fun and action for our less confident mathematicians…Ruth, Christian, Di & Anna

Matai (Yr 4/5) – We have been focusing on friendships and exploring the qualities that make a good friend. We all agreed that friendships are very important in helping us live healthy, happy lives and we also admitted that we can all work on being better friends sometimes! We decided to make friendship board games to showcase our knowledge and to provide a source of entertainment on rainy winter days! Here are some of the finished products:

We have also been busy getting our project posters finished, our creative

writing pieces published, and our statistics graphs finished in time to display for parent-teacher meetings so they could all be ‘shown off’…Tara Sutherland

Tī Kōuka (Yr 2/3) – It has been awesome to catch up with parents at the parent teacher catch-ups to discuss the amazing progress seen in Ti Kouka learners. We have been learning about all the different 2D shapes and their properties in Maths. As well as this, we have been learning about fractions of a shape, as well as fractions of a set of shapes. In number we have been learning about strategies for addition by remembering all our doubles, sums to 10 and adding on in 10s. In writing we have been using a picture to prompt a narrative story, or simply to describe the picture with descriptive words. Learners have been working hard to expand their ideas in their writing…Sarah Hickey

Kānuka (Yr 1) – We also have been doing geometry in Maths and have been learning about all the different 2D shapes and their properties. This led us into our shape artwork based on the artist, Peit Mondrian. Mondrian Artwork We got the colours and shapes and put them on a cool design.

Above: ‘Lost in the Friend Jungle’ by Hugo & Liam Right: ‘BFF Life’ by Kiera, Tinka and Pearl

We glued them onto black paper. We used triangles, rectangles and squares to make our artwork look like Mondrian’s artwork. Everybody’s artwork turned out differently. We love the way they look!…Tracey & Andi

LITTLE RIVER SCHOOL PRODUCTION We are looking to hold a Production in the last week of Term 3 so please pencil in 22 & 23 September. Children wishing to perform an item, get prepared for your audition over the break. Seniors to come prepared with a script that they can audition with, e.g. to be a judge.

POOL KEYS - If anyone has a school pool key, please return it to school.

Dental Care during the School Holidays The Community Dental Service will be providing dental care for children enrolled with our service during the upcoming school holidays. The clinics will offer treatment and relief of pain sessions by appointment only. To make an appointment please call/email our Contact Centre which operates between the hours of 8am and 4.30pm, Monday to Friday throughout the holidays. The following Dental Clinics will be open during these school holidays:

· Burnside Clinic, 96A Memorial Avenue, Burnside · Hornby Clinic, 2 Hei Hei Road, Hornby · Lincoln Clinic, 35 James Street, Lincoln

The clinics will offer appointments between 8.15am and 4.45pm for school-age and preschool children requiring treatment. If your child has dental pain because of an accident, please contact your dentist in the first instance. To book an appointment please: call 0800 846 983 or mailto:commdental@cdhb.health.nz

FIRST AID COURSE ‘Revalidation’ with Red Cross We are holding an Essential FA course (6 hours) on Thursday 16th July at school. If anyone is interested in joining us, please contact the office mailto:office@littleriver.school.nz. Cost approx. $130 but this may be cheaper, depending on numbers. For further details on what this course covers,https://www.redcross.org.nz/first-aid/all-available-courses/first-aid-revalidation-and-lone-workers-revalidation/

Event Hire FAMILY FEST ENTERTAINMENT – a range of fun activities for the whole family – Thurs 9 & Fri 10 July at Cowles Stadium; 9-1,1.30-5.30pm.

FOUND – wireless headphones picked up outside school a few weeks back. Please enquire at the office.

DATE:2ndJuly2020 IssueNo.Three

LittleRiverSchool

NEWSLETTERtotheCommunity

http://www.littleriver.school.nz

Just a few of the wonderful portraits from our senior artists. Gwen (left) & Belle (right): based on Chuck Close modelling. Below: some Kimmy Cantrell creations.