Bula from Fiji!

Bula! Hope you are all having a great holiday. 

Yesterday we visited a village on the coast of Fiji. This is the church that was at the village. It was really interesting and the people were so friendly. 

The Last Day of Term

What a great day! We had a lot of fun team building, watching The Lorax and eating a lot of delicious food. Here is a run down:

We started with our Yaldhurst's Got Talent special Assembly. Below are some photos from the performances.

This is the new Te Pihinga all together in assembly.

The junior finalists.

The winners - well done Taylor, Catie & Julia. 

Then it was outside for team building time.

Lunchtime - wow, there was so much food. Thanks families for providing us with such a range of delicious food. We enjoyed having healthy and treats. Yum, yum!!

Sadly we had to farewell two very special people. Porter and Rivah we will miss you. All the best for your new school and town. 

Finally it was time to go outside for our whole school Jump Rope for Heart. What a fantastic way to end the term. Everyone looked great in their house colours and everyone should be much healthier after all that jumping. Go Yaldhurst!

Jump Rope for Heart on PhotoPeach

Moving Day!!

Wednesday arrived with much excitement. We had been slowly packing for a couple of weeks but today was the day. We were moving to our new classroom ready for the builders to come and turn us into a Modern Learning Environment.

The students were so excited and the noise level went up about 500%. William and Kylie decided that they would move to the library for a day. A wise decision!

First we moved all our desks out with the help of Kauri students. We had to carry them all the way to the school pool changing sheds. The water was pretty gross and Mrs S was there to make sure no one fell in. 

Next it was all hands on deck to move everything out of Totara and Matai, while Rimu brought there things in the back door. Everyone worked soooo hard. Lifting, moving ... what a lot of hard work. 

It took a few hours but everything was moved out, Totara was cleaned and Rimu were almost all in their new classroom. Almost everything was outside while a classroom or two were being emptied and the heavens opened. 

Luckily we have a wonderful school community and everyone rushed to get everything inside before it all got to wet. Yah Yaldhurst!

And then it was finished ... well not really but the move was. Now to finish sorting it all out.

 

Keeping New Zealand Clean

On Friday afternoon last week the whole school headed out to participate in Keeping New Zealand Clean. Totara and Matai headed down the road to the Yaldhurst Domain. We were all excited about helping out and not really sure what we would find. A few of us were hoping that we wouldn't have to pick up anything to gross like dog poo. (Luckily we didn't).

It was a lot of fun and we picked up a LOT of rubbish. It felt really great to have participated in keeping our wonderful community clean.


Keeping Yaldhurst Clean on PhotoPeach

Celebrating William

Every week in Assembly 4 wonderful students get a certificate for their achievements; whether it is something social or academic. This week we had an extra special certificate.

William, who is Autistic, had worked so hard this week. He has been completing his work everyday, he is now learning List 7 of the Essential Lists and he has transitioned from completing one task and having a reward to completing two tasks and receiving an award. These are really big achievements and we wanted to celebrate them.

Because students receive certificates in Assembly we wanted William to also receive his certificate in Assembly. However assembly is very noisy and filled with lots of people, and that makes it hard for William to enjoy it. But Kylie, his teacher aide, and I thought we'd give it a go.

William did a wonderful job of going in. William's mum made it in time to see him receive his certificate and it was a very special moment for him.

Well done William! We are proud of your hard work and the way you came into assembly and received it.

Loud Shirt Day FRIDAY!!

Yaldhurst Model School Speech Finals

On Friday 11th September our school Whare Hui was filled with excited and expectant students. Who was going to surprise us? Who was going to persuade us? Who was going to win?

Each class put forward their best three students (well expect Mr M and Miss B, who couldn't quite count) to share their persuasive speech. Te Kakano students were sharing poems as this was the beginning of their speech journey.

In Totara we had worked hard and listened to everyone's speeches. They were all so good it was a difficult decision but the three chosen had the highest marks.

Well done Jedi, Julia and Eze for all your hard work and effort in writing and practising. You did Totara proud on the day.

You will be able to see each speech on our personal blogs by the end of the week. However we do have the winning performances here to share so check them out.

 Here they are with their winning certificates. From left to right 1st, 2nd & 3rd. Kai pai to you all!

Friendship Skills

We have been looking at Friendship Skills in Totara to help us be better classmates and playground peers. We have looked a range of things a good friend has. These include:

Friendship Skills> Talk - be interesting, keep up with what's going on around you, eg TV, sports, music, shared interests - so that you have something to talk about.> Share the conversation, so that you each get a chance to be listeners and talkers.> Listen to what your friends are saying and ask questions about it.> Praise your friends when they do something well.> Use your manners - say please and thank you. Friends like to be pleasant to each other.> Think of yourself as being a friendly person, look friendly and be friendly - and others will find you friendly.> Be helpful - do things for your friends without keeping a score on who's done the most favours.> Give back things you have used or borrowed from each other.> Be aware of others' feelings - think before you speak. (Sometimes it is a good idea to keep your thoughts to yourself rather than upset people's feelings.)> Handle conflict - by being clear about what you want and how you will compromise. Share your time with other friends.> Be honest about your feelings, eg. "I don't think this is a good idea because..." But don't always try to be the leader - try out other people's ideas.> Try to understand people by thinking about things from their point of view.> Don't argue and get upset if your friend doesn't agree with you about something. That's O.K. They have the right to an opinion too.

We then broke into groups and came up with some skits to demonstrate some of these skills. Check them out.

Winter Fun Day 2015

What a fantastic day was had by our skiers. It was such fun and we all did a lot of learning. Check out the photopeach slide below.


Winter Fun Day 2015 on PhotoPeach

Ice Hockey & The Red Devils

Today we had a special visitor. Dean Tonks from the Red Devils, the Christchurch Ice Hockey Team. He came along to talk to the junior school about Ice Hockey.

The students were really excited about the visit. Two students from Te Kakano in particular. Shjon and Laura are learning how to play Ice Hockey and Dean is their coach.

We listened to Dean talk about what Ice Hockey is about, the things you need to wear and how to balance on the ice. Dean also advised us on the right things to wear on the ice skating rink on Friday. He also offered to come down to the rink on Friday and give us all a hand.

Thanks Shjon and Laura for inviting Dean.

Thanks Dean for coming down. 

YMS in Town

What an incredible day we had going into town today. We all jumped on the bus at 11:30 and headed into town. Everyone was in good spirits and excited about what was going to happen. 

We arrived safely and all hopped off the bus. The wind was very cold but we were quickly moved into the Christchurch City Council building. It was very large and we could hear Aranui School's Kapa Haka group singing their hearts out. They sound fantastic.

After a small amount of waiting quietly (and our students were so good waiting quietly) we headed upstairs to an area we could drop our bags and sit till it was our turn.

Finally 12:30 arrived and we were moved forward for our performance. Here are a few videos of the Seniors. Sadly my phone had too much on it and I couldn't capture the juniors. However other people have taken some footage and I will post them when I receive them. 

What a great performance from everyone. We looked and sounded fantastic. The parents that attended had big smiles and everyone clapped hard at the end.

Well done YMS!

We then headed for a brisk walk to the Botanic Gardens for some kai and a run around. The kids loved the walk and were commenting on all the things happening around the city they saw. 

Blake even found a new friend.

We had a great lunch and run around and then it was pack to pounding the pavement to get to the bus on time. Whew, we made it. Everyone was very tired by the time we got back to school and so we finished with some play and quiet time in class.