Parent Teacher Interviews

From today you are able to start making bookings online for our upcoming Parent Teacher Interviews. To make a time, please go to https://www.schoolinterviews.co.nz/code - the event code is 5C6PM.

Parents of Room 18 children will need to make a time with Tracy and those with Room 19 children will need to make a time with Monique. If you are unsure which teacher to make an interview with, just ask us or ask your child. If your child has a tote tray down Mrs Campbell's end of Kohara then those children are Room 18 so please make your interview time with Tracy, and those that have their tote trays down Mrs O'Sullivan's end are Room 19 so your interview time will need to be with Monique. Most of the children are now pretty good at knowing whether they are Room 18 or 19 :)

You can also book an interview by phoning the school office on (03) 352 9028 between 8.30am and 3.30pm or you can also make a booking in person at the school office during those hours.

Kohara Family Picnic Dinner/Swim

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday night (11th Feb) for a family picnic dinner and swim starting at 5.30pm outside Kohara. Bring along something to eat for your family, get to know some other Kohara families and then at 6.15pm we will meet inside Kohara for a brief explanation of how Kohara works. Then the children are welcome to use the pool until 7pm if they would like.

Hope to see you all there :)

New Brighton Beach Trip

What a fabulous day at the beach with our big buddies from Kahukura. We spent the morning collecting driftwood which we used later in the day to start creating our waka. A neat way to celebrate Waitangi day and get to know our Rakaia River team. Then after we had collected our supplies of driftwood, the groups were challenged to create a boat themed sand sculpture. What a huge array of different kinds of boats and we loved the creative touches and details the groups added. Thanks to our big buddies for taking such great care of our Kohara children and to all our parent helpers.

Class Caterpillars

There was much excitement last week as we watched our caterpillars start to hang upside down in a J shape. By the time we came back from morning tea they had each made a chrysalis! What speedy caterpillars!

 

Week 2 (9-12 Feb)

Wow week 2 already! It has been lovely meeting the Kohara families and getting to know a little bit more about the children. We had a fabulous first week together and hopefully your children are feeling more settled now and have found Kohara a happy place to be.

Beach Trip

A huge thank you to our wonderful parent helpers who came along on our trip last week to New Brighton. We couldn't have gone without you, so many thanks to you all. It was a great way to also get to know the year 5/6 children from Kahukura who are in our Rakaia River team with us. 

Tuesday Meet Up

Please encourage your child to be seated in the hall by 8.50am. This year the children can sit anywhere but if they are feeling a bit anxious please just look for us and we can seat them near to us or with some of their classmates. Parents are most welcome to stay for Meet Up each week so feel free to grab a seat and enjoy being part of it all. 

Swimming

Kohara will be swimming on Wednesday and Friday this week so please ensure children have their togs at school on these days. 

Sunhats

Great to see most of our children have a navy wide brimmed hat at school. The children can leave these on their bag hooks when not in use. 

Library

Our library day is Friday. Please bring library bags along this week. There are labelled containers at both ends of Kohara for the children to put their named library bags in. 

Reading

We will be starting to see the children for instructional reading this week so you can expect to see a reading book each night (Mon - Thurs) and a poem on Friday. Don't worry if the books are too easy or too hard in these first few weeks as we get to know the children. Just enjoy reading together and talking about the book. Reading books stay in your child's reading folder for the week and they get returned to the reading container in Kohara each Monday. Feel free to re-read favourites during the week as you wish. 

Whanau Picnic Tea/Swim

We look forward to seeing you all on Thursday night (11Feb) for a picnic dinner from 5.30pm and a short tour and explanation of how Kohara works from 6.15pm. The pool will be open after that if your child would like a swim. 

Have a great week :)

Beach Trip

We will make the final decision on our trip after 8am. At this stage we are hoping it will be clear enough to still go. Please make sure your child had a jersey and jacket with them. 

Our First Day

What a fantastic day we had with our new Kohara children today. We are loving getting to know them, meeting the whanau and putting faces to names! We had a busy day exploring some of the activities in Kohara, sorting our stationery, and learning about how things work in our new room.

Here are a few photos from Day 1 for you to enjoy.

Follow Our Blog by Email

Many thanks to Emily (Lucie's Mum) for her great suggestion about adding a link to follow our blog by email. That way you will get our blog updates via email each time we update our class blog. Sounds like the perfect thing for busy parents!!

To follow us by email, look for the link on the right hand side of the blog, enter your email and follow the instructions from there.

Thanks for checking out our blog :)

Beach Trip on Friday

Please check school bags for the notice about our trip to New Brighton this Friday 5 February. We do require 10 parent helpers for this to go ahead so if you are available, we'd love your help. Please return these asap.

Kohara Teachers

We are looking forward to getting to know your children and helping them have a happy and successful year full of fun and learning. Kohara is all about celebrating things you are passionate or enthusiastic about, and we believe this underpins the learning that happens in our class.

So who are we....?







Mrs Tracy Campbell and
Mrs Monique O'Sullivan







Mrs O'Sullivan (Mrs O)
I'm very lucky as I get to wear two hats at Waimairi School - one as a teacher but the other as a fellow Waimairi mum! My two boys both attend Waimairi - Will is in his last year as a year 6 in Kahukura and my youngest, Jack is in Year 3 in Ara Atu. I am also on the PTA committee and have found this a great way to get to know other school parents and have lots of fun and laughter along the way. I also have two chocolate Labradors called Monty and Poppy and a cat called Star. I have been teaching for just over 20 years and have been lucky enough to teach in Oamaru, Ashburton, Dunedin and now back in Christchurch which is my home town. This year I am looking forward to enjoying my new house which we moved into during the holidays and hopefully the pile of boxes waiting to be unpacked will gradually diminish over the coming weeks!

Mrs Campbell
Welcome to the Kohara whanau. I guess I wear two hats too. One as a teacher and one as an ex-parent. All three of my children went to Waimairi (and loved it!) and as you can tell by the grey in my hair are now quite old. Helen and Matt finished University last year to pursue careers in Dentistry and Project Management respectively and Nathan is half way through his degree at Victoria University. I did my teaching degree while my children were at Waimairi and my husband maintains that he has half a degree because of all the making, cutting and inventing he has had to do over the years. I love sport of any kind. My children are all keen sports persons so I understand about standing on the side-line every Saturday morning in the hailing rain! I'm  really looking forward to the year ahead and  getting to know you and your child.

Welcome to 2016

Tena Koutou and welcome to Kohara's blog for 2016. We hope you enjoy looking around our blog and learning all about the wonderful work that the children in Kohara do over the year.

The blog is also our way of communicating with you and sharing weekly events, important information and class notices. Please take a few moments at the start of each week to see what is happening in our room.

Once we get underway with our learning, you will be able to leave us a comment or a message. The children always love hearing these and it is a fabulous way to support the children and encourage their efforts. When leaving us a comment, it will not appear immediately as it needs to come to us to be moderated before it can be published so don't worry if you can't see your comment straight away. To leave a comment, just click on the bottom of the post where it says 'comments' or 'no comments' and follow the prompts from there.

There are also some literacy and numeracy links on the right hand side of the blog. These are links to educational games that support your child's literacy and numeracy learning in Kohara. Enjoy exploring these with your child. (Please note that not all of these links work on an iPad).

We look forward to sharing our year with you!

Maisie and Honour's Performance

We always love being entertained in Kohara and Maisie and Honour did exactly that as they sang and danced for us. Great moves girls!

Aleah's Dog

Aleah made this very cool soft toy for her little baby sister. She had to think carefully about how to add details like eyes that were safe for a little baby. We know that babies put everything in their mouth! Aleah decided the safest way was to sew the details on. What a kind big sister you are Aleah.

Mirai's Cat

Mirai made this very cool cat for his Mum. We think she would have loved it! Look at all the details.

Readers

Sometimes it is nice to just enjoy books with a good friend.

Isla's Drink Bottle

Isla made a neat project designing her very own drink bottle out of recycled materials. She reused a coffee cup and then decorated it to make it look fancier. Then she had to do some problem solving to make it waterproof. She decided coverseal would work well!

When she tested it out she had to make a small change to stop the lid coming off. Now she has a perfect drink bottle and no one else had one like it!

Award Winners

Congratulations to our award nominees who received awards at the beginning of the term for relating to others, thinking, managing self or participating and contributing. We wonder who will be nominated at the end of this term?

Congratulations also to Aaron who won a very special trophy for trying so hard at school in class and at the afternoon programme. We were so proud to see Aaron up on stage getting his special awards!

Farewell to Sue

It was lovely to farewell Sue with our fabulous singing. We think she loved it, even if it did make Sue and the teachers cry! We also gave her a beautiful bouquet of paper flowers that we created.

Ryan's Science Experiment

Ryan decided to be a scientist and have a go at an experiment that he had never tried before. It was to make a bubbling witches brew! He needed vinegar, glitter, dish washing liquid, food colouring, and baking soda.

Look what happened when he combined the ingredients together! Lots of Kohara gathered around to watch. We predicted what might happen and then waited. It was a bit slow to start so we added more vinegar and more baking soda. 

We wondered what made the bubbles appear? What do you think?

Can you think of another experiment that is similar to this? Clue: Lava. 

Dancing Stars

Look at our amazingly talented dancing girls. We were impressed with the amount of practise the girls put into their collaborative project and by how well they persevered and worked together. They did a great job of using the space around them, changing positions so everyone got a chance to be in the front and with the timing of their moves, not easy in such a big group. We enjoyed watching it and look forward to a repeat performance now that Stella is back at school.