Dear Parents and Caregivers
Welcome to Elianna Ergas (Rm3)
Max Longley (Rm3), Finlay Steel (Rm23), Freya Steel (Rm9), Sabine Woolloff
(Rm1) Isobel Cleland (Rm8), Oliver Cleland (Rm8) and Louis Cleland (Rm5) who
have all joined Muritai School recently.
With the national celebrations last week around Anzac Day we were able to get some excellent learning around Anzac Day and its meaning for us today. We had a very powerful assembly on Friday at the Memorial Gates where as, a school, we acknowledged our 'field of remembrance'. The children were so respectful. We were able to find out about the soldiers who were named on the crosses we received in class and this just added to the sense of occasion. With the wonderful light show at the National War Museum and the magnificent presentation at Te Papa there is some rich context for understanding the meaning of celebrating 100 years of the Gallipoli landing.
Our children then followed this up on Anzac day with confident performances of our kapa haka roopu, school choir and the Eastbourne Children's choir. We were so proud of our year 5-8 children who participated in the essay competition between the Eastbourne schools with a clean sweep at year 7-8 and a second place at year 5-6. Feed-back from the judges was that overall the children's entries was of an extremely high standard. So the final results look like this -
Rachel Vass - 1st Year 7-8
Helena Cvitanovich - 2nd Year 7-8
Sophia Cave - 3rd Year 7-8
Finlay Clark - 2nd Year 5-6
Rachel's winning essay is at the conclusion of this newsletter.
Going forward we have two things running to help our wider community. Each year we do a coat and shoe drive to pass some of our excess clothing to those who are less fortunate. This year Carol Algar is running this and all donations can go to room 12.
Our thoughts are with the people
of Nepal as they cope with the aftermath of the earthquake last week so our charity
group has set up a 'Wacky Hair Day' for next Tuesday and gold coin donations
will be passed onto the Red Cross Nepal Appeal.
A reminder about teacher only day this term on Tuesday 2 June at Queen’s Birthday weekend. This is week 7 of this term. Staff will be at school moderating assessments for the school reports to be issued at the end of term and families will be able to have an additional day onto the long weekend if they choose. The school will be closed on that day. Please note this does not mean that we are doing less days at school as our school dates equate to the 192 school days that we legally have to cover for 2015. We also have a teacher only day on Tuesday 27 October which is the Tuesday after Labour Day.
We received a lovely donation this week - the complete set of Jill Harris's books for our senior section of our school library. This donation from the Eastbourne Book Group was in memory of Jill who passed away earlier this year. Jill was a local Eastbourne resident and author.
Junior School Curriculum Information Evenings
Parents
are cordially invited to a series of workshops about how children learn to
read, write, spell and do mathematics during their first two years at school
and also to find out how your child's learning can be supported at home in
these areas.
Workshop
1 - Wednesday 6 May - Reading
Workshop
2 - Wednesday 13 May - Mathematics
Workshop
3 - Wednesday 30 May - Writing, Handwriting and Spelling
Workshops
are held in Room 3 at school from 7pm to 8pm. Please contact Maureen
Buckley, Deputy Principal on 04 562-8409 or buckley@muritai.school.nz for
further details.
Wacky Hair Day
On Tuesday the 5th of May the
charity group is organising a wacky hair day to fundraise for the devastating
Nepal earthquake. Children can dress their hair as wacky as possible and bring
a donation for Nepal. Money raised will go to the Red Cross Nepal Appeal.
Scholastic book orders
Scholastic has been under-going a
number of changes to try and provide better services and as part of this you
will see on the form the option to place your order online. We understand
that being able to order online may be something that you wish to
use, but for now we would ask you to continue to fill out the
form and return to school as usual while they are
trialling this system. We had some minor issues with online ordering
last time this was offered and we would like to ensure the system is working as
it should before we offer it as an option again.
Please return all orders by
Wednesday the 27th of May to the office. Payment by credit card or cheque made
out to Scholastic NZ. Thank you.
Winter
Coat, Curtain and Shoe Drive.
We are
again looking for donations of quality used winter coats and shoes and also
curtains.
When
sorting out your winter woolies for the coming season please bag up the clean
items and bring them along to school with any pairs of small shoes, and we
would be glad to take them off your hands and pass them on.
We are
also collecting curtains this year which will be donated to Earthlink in
Wingate. They are involved in passing them on to low income homes who need
added winter insulation. So if you have recently renovated and wondering
what to do with your old curtains, please bring those along to school as well.
Donations
can be bought to either Room 12 in the main school or to Room 21 in the
intermediate.
Thanks for your support
Muritai Enviro School and Charity Group
Entertainment Books
Muritai
School is pleased to offering parents the opportunity to purchase the 2015/2016
Wellington and Manawatu Entertainment Memberships again this year to help us
raise funds towards our fundraising.
You can choose from the popular
Entertainment Books or the Entertainment Digital Membership which puts the
value of the Entertainment Book into your iPhone or Android smartphone. For only $60, you will be helping our
fundraising with $12 from every membership sold contributing to our
fundraising. A copy of the Entertainment
Book will be sent home with your child on 4 May. If you do not wish to receive a book, please
send an email to michelle.fisher@xtra.co.nz
stating “I do not wish to receive a Book” in the subject line. To purchase securely online or to order an
Entertainment Digital Membership, visit www.entbook.co.nz/10409n4
Rachel Vass's winning essay..
Lest We
Forget
There is
an old song called “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” By Eric Bogle and one
of the verses goes like this:
“And so
now every April, I sit on me porch, and I watch the parades pass before me.
And I see
my old comrades, how proudly they march, reliving old dreams of past glories
And the
old men march slowly, old bones stiff and sore. They're tired old heroes from a
forgotten war.
And the
young people ask, what are they marching for? And I ask myself the same
question.”
Like the
young people in the song I have often wondered about the significance of Anzac
Day and why people march on April 25th. I already knew some details about
Gallipoli but this essay was an ideal opportunity to find out more about what I
was marching for when I marched with the Eastbourne scouts on Anzac Day. In my
essay I will go over three main points, why the soldiers were at Gallipoli,
what happened on April 25 1915 and how and why we treat this day with such
respect.
The First
World War was mainly caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria-Hungary by a Bosnian Serb nationalist on June 28 1914. In retaliation,
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and bombed Belgrade on July 28 1914. In
seven days, a retaliatory strike by Austria-Hungary on Serbia, supposedly over
the assassination, had escalated into a full scale war with Austria-Hungary,
Germany and the Ottoman Empire (Central Powers) on one side against Serbia,
Russia, France, Belgium and Britain (Allies) on the other.
When the
British Empire declared war that meant that all its colonies did too including
Australia and New Zealand. The governments of these two countries had promised
Britain a lot of men so they advertised joining the army as a way to travel the
world and see the sights. Many young men signed up. Some of these men sailed to
Egypt to train for five months. While they were there they became
known as the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps or the ANZACs for short.
Soon the Anzacs were headed off to a place in Turkey called Gallipoli.
The
ANZACs and the some of the other Soldiers of the Allied forces were at
Gallipoli because of a plan to open the Dardanelles Strait to the Allies so
they could attack Constantinople (now Istanbul) the capital of Germany’s Ally,
the Ottoman Empire and force a surrender. What the Allies did not know was that
the soldiers may be there for a while longer than expected…
On the
25th in April at around 2am Captain Faik, one of the many Ottoman soldiers
positioned on lookout in the Dardanelle region, saw the silhouettes of ships in
the distance. He couldn't make out much detail about the ships but he alerted
his commander to their presence. Unaware that they had been spotted, at 3am the
Anzacs started disembarking from their battleships on to landing boats which
were towed by steamboats. As the moon dipped below the horizon, the soldiers
knew that they had just 90 minutes to land under the cover of darkness.
Onshore, Captain Faik also saw the moon go down.He reported his loss of vision
to his superiors and then ordered all of the shore platoons to be ready. As the
Anzac steamboats approached, the wind caused the steamboats to shift slightly
to the north. The towlines of the 9th and 10th battalions crossed over and the
landing formation was lost. Metres in from shore the landing boats cast off
from the steamboats to row the rest of the way in to shore. As the steamboats
were doing this one of the boats funnels let out a few sparks. .A beacon was
lit on land, illuminating the scene.
The Turks
were now aware of the location and scale of the attack and immediately started
firing bullets. There were also some shells firing from some long distance guns
situated at Kabatepe . Within minutes some soldiers were already dead, slumped
in their boats or dragged wounded to the sea bed. Some soldiers in the back of
the boats had jumped out and were struggling and drowning because of the weight
of their packs.. Those of the soldiers who made it to shore were lost and
confused. All previous orders to reunite with the original groups were
scratched with soldiers being encouraged to drop their packs and just run up
the hill. This order was hard to follow as because of the wind shift they were
in a different location than anticipated. Instead of the gentle slopes of the
planned location (a beach now called Brighton beach) there were steep hill
faces that were very difficult to climb.
After the
original gunfire the soldiers made a bit of headway inland as they greatly
outnumbered the amount of men in the first and second trenches they came
across. They passed the first ridge and then surged forward to the second. The
Turks were retreating and had lost a lot of gunpower and desperately needed
backup. However the later landings were still being fired on and not many
soldiers made it to where those who'd landed first had got to. All the men from
the different battalions were disorganised and lost. At this point the Turkish
backup had started to arrive and the Anzacs had stopped advancing and were
starting to retreat as the Ottoman counter attack began. An evacuation was
requested by the men onshore but was denied sentencing the Ottoman Turks and
the Anzacs to eight more months of futile, needless fighting.
By the end of the first day’’s fighting the Anzac troops began to scrape shallow trenches to protect themselves from enemy fire. At first they thought that they would only be in these trenches a few days but it soon became clear that any advance would be slow and difficult so the new orders were to deepen and expand the trenches. Throughout the Gallipoli campaign these trenches only moved a few Kilometres inland. The soldiers were only able to see the waters of the Dardanelles strait once during this time, at the battle of Chunuk Bair (6-10th August 1915).
Those courageous soldiers not only battled the Turks but they also battled the extreme weather conditions and many diseases such as dysentery which were caused by unhygienic conditions in the trenches. In the trenches not even fresh water was a given as it had to be shipped in. In fact the youngest soldier to die at Gallipoli, Private James Charles (Jim) Martin who died at just age 14 died from a disease he had caught, not from the fighting.
In December of 1915, as winter set in, it was clear that neither side was winning. An evacuation was called by the Allies and on December 15th 1915 the evacuation had begun. By early January all the soldiers were gone leaving behind only the bones of the dead. The total deaths for the Anzacs was about 3000 New Zealanders and 8500 Australians.
As we know there have been movies ,books, songs, plays and poems written about the Anzac landings and soldiers who were at Gallipoli. The reason it is so well remembered is the world’s acknowledgment of bravery, valour, courage and commitment of the soldiers who fought tirelessly in the Gallipoli campaign. Even King George V (The king at the time of WW1) said “The Australian and NZ troops have indeed proved themselves worthy sons of the Empire..”
Even
though these were words of high praise, it is felt by many that the
Anzac Landings and the Gallipoli Campaign were actually the time
when New Zealand established its own identity as a nation. As
a result, for the first time people gained a sense of what it meant to be
a New Zealander and not British, and this adds to Anzacs Day deep
importance to us.
To
commemorate the bravery of the Anzacs, every year since 1916 on April 25th the
Australians and New Zealanders have a public holiday called Anzac Day. This day
has changed over the years but the principle has stayed the same. There is
typically a parade on Anzac Day where people march to remember the dead, the
pain and suffering caused by war and the bravery of the Anzacs.
This
Anzac day is the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing. Even one hundred
years after the original landing there are over 40,000 people who wanted
to go to Gallipoli to remember loved ones and honour the significance of
Anzac day. As there were only 10,000 places available, those selected. to
go was managed through a public ballot.
In
Eastbourne there were two pohutukawa trees planted on the 14th of July 1915 to
commemorate the Anzac landing. This was just 10 weeks after the landings when
already the need to remember those killed in the landings was very clear. One
of these trees still survives today and is located on the corner of Rata and
Oroua Streets, Eastbourne. Like in many small towns around New Zealand ,.there
is also a memorial gate located. at Muritai School.
Having
thoroughly researched about the Gallipoli Landings, the Anzacs , and the
Dardanelles campaign for this essay, when I march in the parade on
Anzac Day this year, I will be very certain what I am marching for…
COMMUNITY
NOTICES
The Hutt Valley Sport Stacking Club
The Hutt Valley Sport
Stacking Club nights are on every Thursday during the school term from 4.30pm at Randwick School Hall, 59 Randwick
Road, Moera, Lower Hutt. All sport stackers and those interested in learning
how to sport stack are welcome! Take a friend! For more information please
contact Deidre: dlahwong@gmail.com
Race to
Explore Greater Wellington, with the Metlink City Safari, May 17
This
awesome family adventure sees teams race to visit checkpoints located all over
Wellington. We will tell you exactly where they are - your challenge
is to find the quickest and smartest way to visit the most of these - both by
foot and by all forms of public transport.
You may
be racing to catch the ferry to Day's Bay, the Cable Car to Kelburn, a train to
Tawa, or a bus to Queensgate.
It is all
about strategy with the event designed so that the smartest family team can
beat the most athletic teams. 3 and 6 hour events are available
Details
and registration is at www.citysafari.org.nz. Registration
closes 10 May.
'NITSY PIXIES'
In-Salon
treatments or do at home?
100%
Natural, smells Gorgeous and WORKS!
For
bookings contact Lisa on 0800 nitsypixies (6480797)
For more
info visit www.nitsypixies.co.nz
Mt Lowry Challenge Discount
The Mount Lowry Challenge is
coming up on Sunday 17 May and our Muritai families have been offered a $5
discount to participate in this event. Just use the discount code
‘muritai’ when registering online.
You don’t need to be a top
athlete to compete. It is a competitive enough trail for the seasoned
trail runner, but tame enough for those who want to give the "trail
thing" a try. Mt Lowry Challenge is a fun race for all fitness levels
and all ages, taking place in some of the wonderful bush tracks in our local
area.
There are two race lengths the
11.75km and 22km. Check out our website at www.paardekooper.co.nz/mt-lowry-challenge.html for information including race maps
and route details.
Happy training, and we look
forward to seeing you and your team on Sunday 17 May.
From the team at Mt Lowry
Challenge
'Tippy
Toes' on Tuesdays!
Come and try out a pre school dance class for
2-3 year olds from 2:30-2:50pm at St Alban’s Church hall, Ngaio St. Contact
Hannah Ross ARAD RTS on 021 207 6757 hannah@wellingtonballetstudio.co.nz
Kids' Yoga in Eastbourne!
Kula Kids' Yoga is a creative and
fun yoga class just for kids! We weave story, song and games into the
ancient art of yoga. Classes include the physical poses that develop
strength, balance and flexibility and simple mindfulness activities while we
move from stillness to activity and back. Email Jeanne at kulakidsyoga@yahoo.com to book or for more information, and
like us on facebook. See photos, links and weekly postings
Term 2 Days/Times:
Ages 5-9 Wednesday AND Thursday
3-4 pm - walking taxi available from Muritai upon request Ages 10-13 Thursday
4:15-5:15 pm
$10 per class
51 Oroua Street, Eastbourne, just
down the street from Muritai School!
Jeanne Balding-Weinstock is
certified through Yoga Alliance with specialty training in Kids' Yoga.
She has teaching experience in Early Childhood, and teaching Yoga in private
schools, clubs, and studios in California, US. References available
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