Newsletter – Week 6, Term 3, 2022 – Botany Downs Primary School

Kia ora koutou BDS whānau, Week 6, Term 3, 2022

Last week on Wednesday and Thursday nights, Mrs Jeffs and her dance group performed at the Dance Festival at Somerville Intermediate. Thank you very much Mrs Jeffs for your awesome dance choreography and to our BDS dancers who performed extremely well and made us all very proud. Mrs Hughson and Mrs Hartnoll were also a great support on the night, thank you.

During Week 5 our students attended the first day of the HPPA Girls Interschool Soccer at William Green, our Travelwise students worked alongside Auckland Transport with SDAS to monitor car speed and our School Community supported Daffodil Day led by our House Leaders. Thank you Mr Huskinson for coaching our soccer girls and Mrs Holmes with her Travelwise team. We also have some great photos below of the HPPA Cross Country during Week 4 from Mr D’Ambrosio.

All the best to our Gymnastics team this week at the HPPA competition and I look forward to seeing the Year 5 parents at our Camp Meeting tonight.

We are pleased to let you know that the School Board Subcommittee of Kerry Budd, Jess Storey and myself, have worked with John Russell Menswear and we will now have the option of long trousers for our students in 2023.

Today I had a very timely visit from Noah and Cooper who had completed a request letter supported by a survey and graphs from their classes for the very idea of trousers for BDS students that the School Board had been working on. Great timing boys and very impressive mahi.

Ngā mihi nui,
Vicki Parkins, Principal (vickip@botanydowns.school.nz)

Coming up @ BDS…

TONIGHT – Yr 5 Camp parent meeting in Room 17, 6pm
Tues 6 Sept – Yr 3 Stardome trip
Fri 9 Sept – No Uniform Day: House Colours
Tues 13 Sept – Yr 2 Stardome trip
Wed 14 Sept – Yr 1 Stardome trip: Rms 5, 5a, 8 & 9
Thurs 15 Sept – Yr 1 Stardome trip: Rms 7 & 10
Fri 16 Sept – Yr 4 Stardome trip
Wed 21 Sept – BOT meeting, 6.30pm
Thurs 22 Sept – Arts Evening, 5.00-7.30pm

SCHOOL NEWS

Botany BEST and Values Awards

Botany BEST:
Juniors Yrs 0-3 (Given out at next week’s assembly)
Bailando Rongo, Jia Zhang, Jeremiah John, Rowena Luo, Rosanna Siew, Varya Govender, Lucas Chen, Julie Zhu, Shangyuan Cao, Sophia Cheah, Mikaela Nagoorsamy, Rehoboth John, Wynand Bloem & Joedeci Brierley Tagatoatama.

Seniors Yrs 4-6 (Given out at this week’s assembly)
Ryder Lindgreen, Chloe He, William Lu, May Shawani, Annie Li, Averie Chin, Mila Carr, Rishaan Kumar, Shoryaveer Saharan & Samreet Thind.

Values – Consideration:
Juniors Yrs 0-3 (Given out at next week’s assembly)
Nature Parsons, Julius Ming Peterson, Adalyn Cox, Dante Eason, Minji Kim, Inaeanui Moeauri, Taye Yon, Hunter Bentley, Chloe Jack, Jurgens Lewis, Leon Lo, Isaac Angove, Logan Baker & Lisa Huang.

Seniors Yrs 4-6 (Given out at this week’s assembly)
Shikiya Cormack, Zaria Cormack, Indy Clifton, Jennifer Xu, Benjamin Wynyard, Austin Hei, JD La Grange, Mia Swartz, Abigail Harrison & Felix Cao.

** please note: this week’s assembly is for Seniors (Yrs 4-6).
The assembly item will be from Room 27.

Botany Downs School Values – Cooperation

Cooperation is our value of focus for the rest of Term 3 from weeks 6 to 10. Students who demonstrate cooperation may be seen working well as part of a team or group, being helpful and following school rules to keep everyone safe and happy.

Teachers will be providing learning opportunities in class to reinforce this school value. Each class selects a student who displays this value to be our weekly values bookmark winners.

Kirsten Thomson, School Values coordinator (kirstent@botanydowns.school.nz)

Year 5 Camp

We are looking forward to our upcoming camp with our Year 5s – it’s not long to go! Parents/caregivers, please remember there is a camp meeting tonight (Tues 30 Aug) at 6.00pm in Room 17. See you there!

Slow Down Around School

Our Travelwise Leaders were out on the footpath on Mirrabooka Avenue last week with our Auckland Transport Co-ordinator. We have some interesting data to share with you about how our community are driving near our main gate…

We recorded the speed of 120 cars between 8.20 – 8.50am
The fastest was 53kph
The average speed was 32kph
12 cars were going faster than the speed limit of 40kph

We also noticed cars stopping on yellow lines, doing 3-point turns and blocking traffic both ways, children getting out of the car on the road side, cars pulling into our neighbours’ driveways to drop off their children.

Thank you to our community members who are driving with care and dropping your children just down the road to walk in – we appreciate it.

We are going to be recording drop off data in the next few weeks at our main gate and the two back gates also.

Thank you for being considerate and safe drivers!

Did you know… you can keep going along Mirrabooka Ave, turn left into Kurnell Drive and arrive back at Botany Road – so there is no need to turn around and block traffic near our school entrance and Road Patrol crossing! THANK YOU!

Kylee Holmes, Road Patrol and Travelwise Co-ordinator (kyleeh@botanydowns.school.nz)

Dance Festival

On Wednesday and Thursday last week our Year 5 and 6 dance group took part in the annual Dance Festival at Somerville Intermediate. The girls were able to ‘pop it, lock it and polka dot it’ to the music of Pink and Harry Styles.

If you would like to see them perform you will get a chance at the Arts evening later this term.

Rachael Jeffs, Dance group coordinator (rachaelj@botanydowns.school.nz)

Daffodil Day

A big thank you to all of our students who donated money for Daffodil Day to support the Cancer Society; together we raised an impressive $530! Every dollar raised for Daffodil Day will go towards cancer care for patients and their whānau, education and awareness programmes, and life-saving cancer research.

Also, a big thank you to our wonderful House Leaders for collecting the money and handing out the Daffodil Day ribbons.

HPPA Interschool Cross-country

On Tuesday 16th August our top cross-country runners competed at the HPPA Interschool Cross-country event. The students ran hard, showcased amazing sportsmanship and represented our school enthusiastically. We were lucky that the sun was out and had great weather for the day. Two notable results were Amelia Klee 6th in the Year 4 Girls and Jesse Elliott 7th in the Year 6 boys. Awesome work runners!

BDS Learning and Fun

Year 5, Room 17 – We were lucky to have Darya’s mum Safoura come to school to share her art expertise with us. She taught us a variety of techniques with acrylic paint to create these realistic waves, and blending with pastels for the whales tail.

Year 3, Room 12 – In Room 12 we have been learning about explanation writing. To tie-in with our inquiry about the Earth and its landforms, we have written explanations about how volcanoes erupt. Room 12 also had fun erupting some volcanoes of our own.

Year 1, Room 7 – We have been learning about the seasons, and we are excited to welcome Spring in a few weeks. Springtime is the time for insects and flowers, and one of the insects we have been reading and writing about is the bumblebee. We learnt that bees are hard workers who collect and make honey as a team, which is very interesting.

Children Turning Five

If your child is turnng five in the next six (6) 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 DP/SENCo – Year 0-3 (joanneh@botanydowns.school.nz)

LIBRARY NEWS

BDS eLibrary…

Check out our eLibrary for these great books… and loads more! Go here to sign in and borrow books: BDS eLibrary

More information and how to login can be found on our school website here: BDS Library

Returning Library Books…

A reminder that the library is still open at lunchtimes for students to return their books, and borrow new books to read. Alternatively, students could also give their library books to their teachers to pass back to the library.

Scholastic Lucky Book Club

Brochures for the lastest issue of the Book Club will be coming home today/tomorrow! Packed with fabulous books for all ages and interests – it is a great way to build your home library and encourage your child’s reading. Purchases also help the school to gain valuable resources.

Orders and payment are preferred online via the Scholastic website – details can be found on the last page of the brochure. Orders close Thursday 8 September.

COMMUNITY NOTICES