Kia ora Waitetuna whanau,
The Skyline garage work will be starting now before the end of the school term. You will notice that the fencing is up.
Stationery lists 2021 - For new families OfficeMax offer an online ordering of stationery, leaflets will be in your childs school bag today. Stationery lists for all classes will be online with officeMax from Monday 7th December.
Headphones Stationery lists will be available through Office max for purchasing. There are headphones on the list. These are an essential classroom item. We have included a range of options as the noise cancelling option with mike is not cheap but if your child has a learning difficulty then this option is certainly something that students can get a lot of effective use out of. The more affordable options will do the job but not as efficiently in some cases. You are welcome to discuss these options with your child's teacher too.
Waitetuna Way this week goes to - Emma Moss: For Respect (Whakaute) For our school environment, and for each other by actively listening.
Changing banks - Please note that our school banking is changing from Westpac to ASB. If you are able to change your internet bank details by the end of the school year that would be much appreciated. New Bank account details will be made available next week. We are not closing our Westpac account until into term 1 just in case. We have been reassured that this should be a relatively smooth process. A reminder - Final Prizegiving Assembly - Monday 14th December - 5.30pm. We look forward to seeing whanau at this event. Please bring a plate of food that we can share together after the final assembly.
Pornography - On Monday I went to a workshop which outlined the latest statistics on porn and young people in New Zealand and ways to support our young people to navigate this. The unfortunate stats around this are - our 14-17year olds in New Zealand - 75% of NZ boys have seen porn in this age group and 56% of girls. 71% see porn for the first time by accident. Porn literacy is important. There are programmes being implemented in high schools but this is sometimes too late, so parents being informed about this to support their children is essential. The light project website https://thelightproject.co.nz/ is a great place, written for New Zealanders to gain insight on supporting their children to have conversations around porn. As parents we need to know what is porn, that it is easily accessible now. We need to be prepared. Kids need to know what porn is and be educated. One way is teaching young people to A.C.T - using this acronym -
A = Avert their eyes C = Call it what it is - it is Porn, I saw Porn. T = Tell someone As parents, we have to be unshockable. So kids will tell us and they can talk about it and know they won't get told off.
The Pool is open. Pool keys are on sale. A pool key is available for immediate family to use from Dec through to the close of summer season in April - including the school holidays, after school and weekends. With increasing costs associated with the pool upkeep the Board agreed that an increase of $10 was needed. Pool keys will be $80 this season (5 months swimming) and this includes a $10 refund on return of your key.
Reminders
Matua X in - Enviro education - 7, 8, 9th December
End of Year prize-giving - 5.30pm - Monday 14th December
Last day - 16 December - finish at 2pm
Have a wonderful weekend. Kia Ora, Amanda Nasilasila
Together we are growing the seeds of success Na tō manaaki, na tōku manaaki, ka puāwai mai nga kākano