FROM THE PRINCIPAL

NAUMAI, HAERE MAI, WELCOME

What another fantastic week we have had! We had a wonderful Mihi Whakatau today with our Kahu students leading this superbly. We officially welcomed thirty two students and their whānau to our school including Leela Verhaeghe, Charlotte Ashe, Tess Thomas, Harvey Tubbs and Josh Fanning who have just joined Room 3. 

We have also had an amazing turnout from parents and the wider community to our Art Exhibition. Over the past ten weeks all students have been involved in a science based inquiry around Planet Earth and Beyond where they have investigated and pursued a wide range of activities where students have learnt about the Earth’s subsystems - geoshpere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere and that they are interdependent and all are important. Students then had to create a piece of art themed around this which went on display at the Art Exhibition. Thank you everyone for supporting this event and for the positive feedback. The children were certainly very proud to share their learning with you.

The collaborative art on the canvases for the silent auction were also amazing and all so different. Thank you to those people who put bids in - if you were the highest bidder you will be contacted to come into the office to pay and collect it. 

FROM THE TEAMS

Team Kororā were very excited to go on their first trip away from school in two years. They had an amazing day at Space Place and the Cable Car. Thank you to those parents who gave up their time to accompany them. They were also excited to finally be returning to visits to East Harbour Kindergarten and being hosts to the Barnardos and Kindergarten children here at school.

Kereru Team presented a wonderful assembly of their amazing learning.  We are looking forward to Tūī team presenting at next week’s assembly. Parents of students in Tūī are warmly invited to join us for this. 

SAFETY WORK

You may have noticed that there are some different locking systems on our gates along with a new fence built between Muritai Road and Oroua Street to keep our students safe from the busy roads. 

DAFFODIL DAY 

Thank you for supporting our Year 7 and 8 Charity Ambassadors by purchasing a yellow ribbon for Daffodil Day. We received $352 in donations from children and parents.  Thank you to everyone who donated.

ONESIE / PYJAMA DAY

Next Friday September 9th the Charity Ambassadors have organised a Onesie/Pyjama day with proceeds going to the SPCA. Your child can dress up in their onesie or pyjamas and wear them at school for the day. They can either bring a gold coin donation or bring along food or toys for the animals to play with or small blankets. There will be a box in the office foyer for the items to be placed in.

DRESS UP AS YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK CHARACTER 

Sue Fieldes has worked at Muritai School for the past twenty five years and will be continuing to do so. (She is not leaving!) We want to celebrate the years of service she has already done in classrooms, in the office and latterly in the library. Sue has a wealth of knowledge and experience that we all benefit from so we want to acknowledge that. We will be having the dress up day on Friday September 23rd. 

PEER MEDIATION 

Our Year 6 students have an opportunity to become Peer Mediators and work alongside students in the playground. They develop their leadership and listening skills and support students in the playground each lunchtime. Leo Reed is one of our Peer Mediators and this week he has spent his lunchtime organising a game for over thirty students.

125th CELEBRATION

Planning is well underway for our 125th Celebration in 2023. Our next meeting will be on 

Thursday September 15th at 4 pm and you are invited to join us if you would like to be part of this committee. We will be meeting in the school staffroom. 

SCHOOL AT FIVE INFORMATION EVENING 

Next week on Thursday September 8th we are having a ‘Starting School at Five’ parent information evening for parents of preschool children in our school staffroom at 7.30 p.m. 

If you know of anyone who has a child in our area who will be attending Muritai soon, please do not hesitate to contact Felicity Lovell on flovell@muritai.school.nz to let us know if you are coming.

THANK YOU 

A huge thank you to Jane Hector for purchasing a new microwave for us to use with our students. It is greatly appreciated and will certainly be well used.

HOME AND SCHOOL NEWS

Last day for sun hat orders is Monday September 5th. All children will need a brimmed hat from the beginning of Term 4 so get your orders in now!

LOOKING AHEAD TO TERM 4  

There will be a Teacher Only Day on Friday 21st October adjoining Labour Weekend so mark your diaries for a four day weekend. 

LOOKING AHEAD TO 2023

Thank you to those parents who have let us know that your child will be leaving Muritai at the end of the year. If you haven’t done so please do let us know. 

If you know of anyone moving into our area who would like to enrol their child, can you please ask them to email either me buckley@muritai.school.nz or Jo bentley@muritai.school.nz to let us know as soon as possible as we are about to begin planning for classes and staffing.

CLASSES IN 2023

We are fast approaching our final term of 2022, and will be beginning our preparation for next year including our classes and teaching team. Although we are unable to offer a teacher selection option to our parents, we do encourage you to contact me at principal@muritai.school.nz if there is something you would like us to know or consider in class placements.  All our students have a voice in our process as well and are able to select some students they work well alongside to be in their class. We begin class placement drafts early in Term 4, the deadline for any input from parents is Friday October 21st - the end of the first week back.  

Have a wonderful weekend with your family and friends. 

Ngā mihi kia koutou,

Maureen Buckley 

Acting Principal

buckley@muritai.school.nz 

FROM THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Elections

Thank you to everyone who put their names forward for the Board of Trustees.  Voting is open and concludes on Friday 23 September at 4pm.  Please ensure you get your vote into the box in the office before the cut-off or in the post prior.  We will be announcing the new Board members shortly after, with their first Board meeting being on Wednesday 2 November.  

Mask Mandate

The Muritai School BOT would like to express our gratitude to everyone for helping to keep our staff and students safe by wearing their masks.  We have noticed a significant decrease in sickness in both students and staff since we have mandatory mask wearing which we are really pleased about.  So thanks again for all of your efforts, it’s much appreciated.  

FROM THE SCHOOL

Artist visiting kahu 

Kahu team were very lucky to have Jutta Chisolm come to speak to us and share her talents. Jutta grew up in Eastbourne, attended Muritai School and her two grown sons also attended Muritai School. She has been researching for many years about the difficult Turkic art form Ebru, which is a type of marbling born in central Asia. 

Jutta Chisolm came in to show us what Ebru marbling is, first she went over the 3 big questions she asks herself before creating an artwork. Artwork needs emotion so she asks herself what she wants the artwork to represent, then she asks herself what she wants to do the artwork on, and lastly she asks herself what tools to use. If she wants a cleaner result she might use a pen but if she wants a messier result she might use oil paints. 

She demonstrated how to mix pigments, and showed us how vibrant pure pigment is. She showed us all the materials she used and how she used them in her artwork. She started her art: first she poured in the liquid that will hold the pigment up once put on, it’s kind of like thick water, then she started splattering the pigment in the thick water. We watched as she made a beautiful pattern, she used blocks of wood with nails sticking out and made patterns in the water and pigment. Once looking nice she dipped in her shell. She made her shells by making clay ones and turning them into moulds by putting plaster around it and letting it dry, then she poured wax in to test, and they came out great! 

The art ambassadors got to experiment with her paints and other things she brought along. Overall we all enjoyed her presentation and learnt a lot of techniques as well as learning about some history.

Mia Sclater - Kahu Head Art Ambassador

Mathswell Competition Year 7 and 8 

On Tuesday the 30th of August, 6 Year 7 and 8 students traveled to HIBS for the 2022 Wellington Mathswell competition. The first part of the competition was problem solving, where a team of 3 would be given a problem and they had to solve it, they were only allowed 2 guesses per problem and if it got too hard they could pass. There were a total of 13 questions to be answered in 15 minutes. 

The second part of the competition was multi choice questions where another team of 3 had 10 minutes to answer 15 questions, 6 of those questions had to be answered within the first 5 minutes. 

There were 2 rounds of each part with the original problem solving team doing the second multi choice round and vice versa There were 40 teams from schools all over Wellington participating and having fun! The Muritai team, made up of 3 Year 7s - Ferghus, Izzy and Miriam and 3 Year 8s - Cameron, Coco and Sabine did very well, collectively scoring 43 out of 50 and finishing the competition in 14th place!

By Cameron Johns

Muritai School Hip Hop dancers

There are many of our Muritai school students who currently attend Pump Dance here in Eastbourne and recently competed in the New Zealand Schools Hip Hop Regional championship which was held here in Wellington. All the dancers did really well and it was great to see so many Muritai students dancing their hearts out.

A big shout out to the following girls who made it through to the Hip Hop Nationals as a crew which will be held here in Wellington in September:  Saffi Hatcliffe, Charlotte Claridge, Olive Day, Eirinn Houston, Lucy Sherwin and Lily Manson.  Lucy and Eirinn have also made it through to Nationals in their Duo dance. Great work dancers!!

Congratulations

Congratulations to Cooper Keenan, Harper Calder and Charlie Halford who have all won a place with Hutt Valley rep basketball teams.  Well done!

Scholastic Lucky Book Club

Issue six of the Scholastic Lucky Book Club, for 2022, is now available. Orders will be closing at Noon on Monday the 12th September. Your order can be done on the following website https://my bookclub.scholastic.co.nz/Parent/Login.aspx. 

The whole school order is processed on the closing date and it usually takes approximately a week for orders to be delivered.

We greatly appreciate your support as the school is able to gain rewards through purchases you make which enables us to add books to our school library collection.

School Dates for 2023

Our Term dates for 2023 have been set as below:

Term 1 Wednesday 1 February to Thursday 6 April

Term 2 Monday 24 April to Friday 30 June

Term 3 Monday 17 July to Friday 22 September

Term 4 Monday 9 October to Friday 15 December

 

Pukutākaro

Muritai School will be hosting the Hutt City Council’s Active in the Hutt team Pukutākaro programme.  Pukutākaro is a programme designed to grow the amount of active play that our tamariki enjoy outside of classroom hours.  It is free and consists of a van full of ‘big ticket’ sports equipment and other ‘wow’ items that our young people might typically not get the opportunity to play with.  The programme will be set up at school on Monday 5 September through to Thursday 15 September for use during the lunch times. It will be lots of fun! They will also be here after school on those dates for parents to join in with a range of fun play activities with their children.

School Band

Muritai's band 'Lords Of Confusion' are playing in the Bandquest competition this coming Saturday - September 3rd. They are sounding so good!!!!!!  It would be great to have some support for them so if you are a music lover please feel free to come and be in the audience .

The show is being held at Sacred Heart , Laings Rd , Lower Hutt. It starts at 6.30pm and is expected to finish at 9.00pm. Tickets will be sold at the door from 6.00pm - $20.00 per adult , $10 for schools students and unders 6’s free (cash and EFTPOS available).Family and friends are encouraged to join and show support.

The band members are - Finlaeic Forder- bass guitar, Bodhi Kane - guitar, Rory Maxwell Lamb - kets, Jagger Lissette - drums, Eliose Mathewson - vocals, Dilyan Kusnadi - vocals, Elliott Halman - vocals.

Best of luck guys!

Cheers to Charles Hazlewood and Ruth Hooke for coaching

DIARY DATES:

TERM DATES 2022:

Term 1  2 February to 14 April

Term 2  2 May to 8 July

Term 3  25 July to 30 September

Term 4  17 October to 15 December

Teacher Only Day - Friday 21 October