Newsletter – Week 6, Term 2, 2022 – Botany Downs Primary School

Kia ora koutou BDS whānau, Week 6, Term 2, 2022

We hope you all had a relaxing long weekend and enjoyed your family time.

The Teacher Only Day on Friday was very productive and we would like to thank you for completing the survey we sent out. We will be continuing to develop our Local Curriculum during term time and encourage you to answer further surveys that we send to you. They will be short and are very helpful for us to develop our Local Curriculum based on input from our community.

Next week, Week 7 on the 17 June, we will be returning to our school assembly time on Fridays at 9.10 am. Our assemblies under the canopy have worked well but it is now too cold for our tamariki to be seated outside. Our assemblies will alternate with Year 0-3 one week followed by Years 4-6 the next week. We have organised this so the same number of tamariki will be receiving certificates over the term. The school hall is too small for us to all gather together under our Orange COVID protocols. You can find out which are the odd and even weeks by the title of our newsletters. e.g. Newsletter Term Two Week 6 is this week, so it would be an even week.

School assemblies for the foreseeable future will be:

odd weeks Years 0-3

even weeks Years 4-6

Our newsletters will continue to have the names of our tamariki who will receive certificates at assembly in the same week as the newsletter. This week certificates will be given out in classes as we were not able to have our Monday school assembly.

We are looking forward to welcoming you back to our school assemblies. Please continue to wear a mask. Thank you.

Our property projects will be requiring a lot of activity over the coming weeks. The turf under the canopies will be laid and our four classrooms (Rooms 20-23) will be moved onto the field to make room for our six new two storey block of classrooms. We have strict guidelines for movement of the trucks to ensure our tamariki are safe and the work can progress during these exciting times.

Have a great short week.

Ngā mihi nui,

Vicki Parkins Principal vickip@botanydowns.school.nz

Coming up @ BDS…

Wed 15 June – Photolife photo day
Fri 24 June – Matariki Holiday (public holiday)
Mon 27 June – Teacher Only Day
Week 10 – BOOK WEEK
Wed 6 July – Parent/teacher interviews, 3.20-5.10pm
Thurs 7 July – Parent/teacher interviews, 3.20-7.40pm
Fri 8 July – Book Character Parade / Last Day of Term

SCHOOL NEWS

Botany BEST & Values

Botany BEST: Zerahiah Turner, Anisa Tamihana, Max Fu, Harper Timms, Natalie- Mae Tokai, Aidan Malez Ocampos, Eli Adams, Andrew Liang, Zinique Du Plessis, Rosie Chin, Flynn Hodgson, Damian Roberts, Theo Ramiah, Tere White, Victor Zhang, Yuri Kang, Mira Jain, Mila Carr, Gurparveen Singh, Cameron Burgess & Theo Chuah.

Values: Bailando Rongo, Umar Shaheer, Sebastian Zuo, Evan Guo, Harlen Hadrup, Ela Uguz, Kayla Martins-Fouche, Eric Li, Cooper Ellis, Stevie Lawrenson, Cameron Ellis, Levi Xue, Chloe He, Leo Xie, Lexi Storey, Avneet Kaur, Duncan Luo, Kevin Wu, Phillipa Ormrod & Aris Ezra Fesolai.

Welcome to BDS!

Welcome to Mrs Tanya Jacobs who will be teaching our newest 5 year olds in Room 5A. This room is now the second half of our school library. Mrs Jacobs has been working as a part time teacher at BDS and we are very fortunate to have her join us as a full time classroom teacher.

Support Staff

This week is Support Staff Appreciation Week. It is a way for our school to celebrate and appreciate our wonderful support staff who work tirelessly behind the scenes in many areas of our school. We thank you all for your service to our students, staff and whānau within our school community.

Important Reminders for the safety of our Tamariki

If your child is sick and not coming to school:

Email absences@botanydowns.school.nz or
Ring the office 09 534 9848 or
Notify us through the school app (kiwischools).

Please let us know if your child will not be at school. If you have not let us know then Mrs Bishop will need to contact you and this can be very time consuming. Thank you.

PhotoLife – Class and Individual/Sibling Photos – Wednesday 15 June

Class and individual/sibling photos will be taken on Wednesday 15 June. Information regarding ordering photos will be emailed out.

SchooI Board Parent Election 2022

Nomination round

Our school will be undertaking a parent election for 3 School Board vacancies. This process will start with the issuing of nomination papers to our caregiver community by Friday 15th July 2022.

We have employed CES to undertake the election process on our behalf. This year with legislative change, our nomination form and full instruction on how to place your nomination into our own School’s Election website will be emailed to you if we have your email address in our database or you will receive it by post if we don’t have your email in our database.

Nomination papers will also be available at the school office. The school will send those on to CES for processing upon receipt from candidates.

Nominations close on Wednesday 3 August at 12 noon. Election day is Wednesday 7 September.

We look forward to your participation in this process.

BDS Learning and Fun

House Leaders – As part of their leadership training, the House Leaders are running lunchtime games for the Years 3-6. With more confidence, we’ll be hosting games for the Years 0-2 as well! Be ready to show your House spirit every Wednesday lunchtime!

Year 2 Room 1 – We have been reading the shared book “Fantail, Fantail” by Margaret Mahy. We used this story as inspiration to create our own piwakawaka fantails. We used paint to make beautiful piwakawaka and kowhai flowers. We looked carefully at photographs of piwakawaka, we talked about the colours of the feathers and the shape of the tail. We tried hard to create realistic looking piwakawaka. We used a blotting technique to paint beautiful blue skies. Our art creations are on display in Room 1.

Year 4, Room 26 – Talofalava! For Samoan Language Week, Room 26 made a siapo. We learned about different patterns and symbols and what they represent e.g. shark teeth, weaving, waves, flowers, and turtles.

Policies and Procedures –
SchoolDocs Term 2 Review

SchoolDocs provides a comprehensive core set of policies and procedures that are tailored to the needs of Botany Downs School. SchoolDocs updates, modifies and creates policies in response to changes in legislation or Ministry guidelines, significant events, reviews/requests from schools and regular reviews.

Our SchoolDocs policies and procedures can be found via the our school website on the link below:

Policies and Procedures – School Documents

For Term 2 the following policies are up for review:

Medicines
ManagingMinor/Moderate Injury
Managing Serious Injury and Illness
Infectious Diseases
Bullying and Online Bullying
Surrender and Retention of Property and Searches

If you would like to participate in reviewing the policies, please click on the link above and follow the instructions.

If you have any questions or queries please contact:

Mark Insley, Deputy Principal, marki@botanydowns.school.nz

Children Turning Five

If your child is turnng five in the next 12 months please ensure you enrol them as soon as possible. Our roll is steadily growing and we need to plan for classes and teachers during the year. Please collect your enrolment pack from the office, or email office@botanydowns.school.nz

Joanne Hughson Deputy Principal Years 0-3 (joanneh@botanydowns.school.nz)

LIBRARY NEWS

Book Week Update – Week 10!

We can’t wait to welcome our special guests for Book Week –

Author Peter Millett will be talking to our Middle and Senior students. He is the author of several picture books, and the popular Johnny Danger spy series, and the new Invincibles series.

Spangle the Storyteller will be entertaining our Juniors with a storytelling session that is sure to bring the magic of books to life!

Friday 8 July – Book Character Dress-up Day! Remember to get your dress-up costume sorted! Check out this blog post for some tips on how to get creative with your costume:
https://childrenslibrarylady.com/save-money-book-character-costume/

** tip: photocopy the book cover of your character, and pin it to your costume to help show who you are!

Scholastic Lucky Book Club

Brochures will be sent home this week; they are full of great books for children of all ages. Thank you for supporting your child’s reading development and enjoyment!

Orders will close on Friday 17 June. Please note: online orders are preferred, thank you.

COMMUNITY NOTICES