Naumai e te whanau o te kura Muritai
Tena koutou katoa
Dear Parents / Caregivers
Welcome to our new students Jac Hayes and Sebastian Bodden to Room 3 and welcome back Oscar Zuijderwijk to Muritai.
This week we sent out the donation and activity fee notices to families. The school donation employs extra teaching staff to support our learning environment and our activity fee pays for the additional costs of events which we engage to provide extra support to curriculum. The technology fee for year 7-8 is a contribution towards the materials used to construct the projects. Please note the school donation is eligible for a 33% tax rebate, while the activity fee and Y7-8 technology fee are not.
While there has been much public debate recently about education in NZ being free, Muritai operates within the scope of what is allowed and the Board are consistent in their application of this policy. Communities have moved on from past times and generally want a little more for their children than a ‘free education’ provides.
While we would like to offer more and more things for our school, we do pretty well with what we have and I note that we operate Muritai with 33% of the funds available to integrated or private schools.
Please feel free to talk to us about any issue you may have with this information.
SCHOOL SWIMMING
We finished our swim programme yesterday with the last of our 3 swim festivals with the year 5-8 swimming sports at Huia Pool. Deane McKay organised this event superbly and we managed to get through all events in a very tight time frame. The kids swam very well and there was fierce competition with many of the events extremely close, making it very challenging for our judges. I was at the recording desk and I was so impressed with the quality sportsmanship between the athletes - genuinely happy for others that had succeeded in the ‘battle’ of competition. Great stuff. Most of our place getters will go through to the Y4-8 zone swim sports in week 8 on Wednesday 23 March.
Congratulations to our Y5-8 school champions for 2016:
Year 5 George Baird and Rosa Blair
Year 6 Ted Woolley and Alexandra Irvine / Pania Rolfe (1st =)
Year 7 Ben Murphy and Grace Manson / Millie Watkins (1st =)
Year 8 Tom Griffiths and Abigail Brownsword
On Monday the junior school had their fun swim festival at an extremely hot Eastbourne pool. The festival saw our youngest children show how confident they are in the water participating in a number of event that showcased their versatility and growth. The team had prepared and organised a lovely event for the children to be part of. We are so lucky to have the Eastbourne Pool at our doorstep as our ‘school’ pool!
Thank you so much to the wonderful turnout of parents and other friends and family members who supported children in their efforts. The year 7 and 8 students really supported the event by helping with the organising of equipment.
Hot Dogs, Term 2 & 3
The Home and School Committee would like to offer hot dogs again for Muritai students every Wednesday during Terms 2 and 3. This is a hugely popular fundraiser and all proceeds go directly back to the school for the purchase of extra resources. In order for us to offer this fundraiser, we require a parent to act as co-ordinator who can organise the volunteer roster and weekly food purchases. There are detailed instructions available for all required tasks including suppliers’ details. It is not a huge time commitment to act as hot dog co-ordinator so if you are able to help us with this role, please contact Hannah Watkins at Hanniwatkins@gmail.com or speak to Jo / Carole in the office.
NEW HOUSE BANNERS
Last week all the Senior School students set to work researching their houses and using their findings as the starting point to design new house flags for each house!
The House Captains then judged these, thinking about how well students across the school would identify with them, how well they reflected the houses and, of course their artistic merit!
The next task is for the Art Ambassadors to create our new house banners from these fantastic winning designs....
Congratulations to....
Francisca Zaballa Holly Churchman
Lea Pummer Mia Lowe
BOARD ELECTIONS
This year we will be holding Board of Trustee elections. Muritai has been blessed for many years with strong governance from our parents who bring a multitude of skills and talents to the Board table. This leadership has been endorsed regularly by the Education Review Office and Ministry of Education. This year some trustees will be standing down and so Muritai School will be seeking new trustees to guide the school through the next three years. The election will be in May and the new Board will take office in June. If you are interested you are most welcome to make contact with current Board members - Stu Stock, Olivia Paterson, Nick Brownsword, Philip Fisher, Craig Griffiths, Julie Parker, or myself, Andrew Bird in the school office. Contact details are in the Board section of the website.
NZ School Trustees Association have produced a simple video guide on being a trustee… http://resources.nzsta.org.nz/videos/becomeatrustee/html5video.html
SCHOLASTIC BOOK CLUB
Thank you for supporting our first issue of lucky book club, which has enabled us to get several new books for our school library. We have received an update from Scholastic letting us know, that due to some technical issues they are currently experiencing there may be delays on the delivery of books. Scholastic apologise for any inconvenience and will endeavour to get orders out as soon as possible.
RIPPA RUGBY
On Tuesday 8th March 34 of our Year 3 and 4 students were split into two teams, the Muritai Mavericks and the Muritai Marlins for a Rippa Rugby Tournament at Petone Rec.
Despite the rain and wind we had an enjoyable day playing 4 games of Rippa Rugby against various other schools from the Wellington region. The Muritai Mavericks won all four games. The Muritai Marlins won a game, drew a game and lost a game.
All of us tried our best and definitely want to play Rippa Rugby again!
WEETBIX TRIATHLON - LOWER HUTT - TUESDAY 22 MARCH
The Weetbix Triathlon is fast approaching! The following link has the event timeline information for you (scroll down to the very bottom): http://try.weetbix.co.nz/events/lower-hutt.
There will be a couple of lunchtime training sessions next week, so it would be good if your child could bring their bike and running shoes to school on Monday and Wednesday.
The event timeline (http://try.weetbix.co.nz/events/lower-hutt.) indicates that the kids need to check in and rack their bike between 8am and 9.15am on the morning of the event. This will mean that we will not meet at school prior. I would recommend you go straight to the Hutt Rec (Huia Pool).
JUNIOR SCHOOL BUTTERFLY GARDEN
The changes in the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly continue to captivate the children on a daily basis as they observe the process in our Junior School garden. Thank you very much to Mrs Gabrielle Heath and Mrs Barbara Ryan who took a group of students shopping to purchase new plants for our garden. They will complement the swan plants that the Monarch butterflies like.
‘HOOKED ON BOOKS’ READING PROGRAMME
I am looking for adult volunteers who would be interested in listening to some of our Junior School students read to increase their reading mileage. The adults can be parents or grandparents of children at our school or other adults from within our community. If you would like to do this on a weekly or on alternate weeks for approximately an hour in the afternoon could you please contact me buckley@muritai.school.nz so that I can sort out a roster? I would like to start this programme in two weeks time and also carry it on in term 2.
SCHOOL PHOTOS
Sue Allman will be taking class and individual photos from Monday 14 March to Thursday 17 March with the timetable as follows:
Monday 14 March Rooms 4, 1, 7, 8 and 12
Tuesday 15 March - Room 5, 6, 9, 10 and 13
Wednesday 16 March - Rooms 22, 23, 16 and 14
Thursday 17 March - Rooms 24, 11 and 15
DIARY DATES (staff will contact you with more details about these events)
Mon 14 to Thur 17 Mar - School Photos
Tues 15 Mar Y5-6 - Rippa Rugby team competes
Wed 16 Mar - Starting School at 5 Evening - 7.30pm in Room 3
Fri 18 Mar - Y3-4 to Island Bay Marine centre
Tue 22 Mar - Weetbix Triathlon
Wed 23 Mar - Y4-6 Central Zone swim sports
Thur 24 Mar - School Assembly 1-45
Fri 25 Mar - School Closed Easter break
Tues 29 Mar - School Closed Easter break
Wed 30 -Fri 1 April - Y5-6 on camp to Makahika
Wed 30 Mar Y4-8 - Inter-Zone Swimming
Mon 11/Tue 12 April - Children/ Parent / Teacher meetings.
Thur 14 April - Y7-8 to Parliament; BOT mtg 7.30
Fri 15 April - School assembly 1.45 (Last day of term!)
Mon 2 May - Term 2 begins
TERM DATES FOR 2016
Term 1 = Monday 1 February - Friday 15 April
Term 2 = Monday 2 May - Friday 8 July
Term 3 = Monday 25 July - Friday 23 September
Term 4 = Monday 10 October - Friday 16 December
Please note Easter is in term one this year and so school will be closed for the Easter Break from Friday 25 March to and including Tuesday 29 March.
We have 2 teacher only days this year at Queen’s Birthday and Labour weekend.
Teacher only day one = Tuesday 7 June
Teacher only day two = Tuesday 25 October
COMMUNITY NOTICES
Cake Stall......support the Eastbourne Youth Group on Saturday 2nd April in the village. We are also taking pre-orders by phoning 0276788924
Parenting of Teens Course
· Increase confidence in interactions with teens
· Reduce use of anger with teens
· Increase effectiveness in parenting teens
· Improve quality of relationship with teens
Starts 10 May 2016. 8 weeks, Tuesdays 7-9pm. Venue: Moera Community Centre, Lower Hutt.
ERAT
The residential trapping information evening will be held at the RSA by HWShort park this Tuesday the 15th March (not the 16th) evening at 7pm, there will be various traps to view, guest speakers, Kelvin Hastie (predator free Croften downs) and a speaker from goodnature.co.nz will be there to explain their experiences. There are huge benefits to our community and it is worth noting that house prices are higher where trapping is taking place in Wellington. With the abundance of fruit and seed this Autumn rat numbers are sure to rise, what can you do to protect our back yard?
Please come along for a fun and informative night to see the future of poison free trapping. If can't make it but want to follow our progress on Facebook please like our page ERAT
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