What do you get when you add beautiful weather + lots of incredible native birds + a whole Junior School showing ERIC’s values ???
A FANTASTIC DAY AT RAINBOW SPRINGS!

We had an amazing time on our visits to Rainbow Springs in Rotorua on Monday and Tuesday. We saw (and heard) lots of native birds, rainbow and brown trout, a tuatara and even a sheep who liked to be stroked! The bus trip was pretty neat, the children were awesome representatives of our school and the teachers and parent helpers were pretty tired by the end of the day!

We would like to thank all the parents who made the trip possible and especially our helpers on the day.
We would also like to acknowledge and send a great big THANK YOU to the following people – without you our special day simply could not have taken place. Our deepest gratitude and thanks to:
Rotary
POTS
The Good Life Op Shop
And Murray for giving up his time to drive a bus

What a fantastic introduction to our Inquiry learning this term. We are on our way to finding answers for our big question “What relationship should we have with our native birds?” Enjoy looking at some photos of our day:

Tammy: “The kiwi was my favourite because I haven’t seen one before.”

Samantha: “I like the kiwi because they come out at night”

Maikyren: “I like the wood pigeon (kereru) because it can fly through the trees”

Jack wrote: I felt as happy as a kiwi eating worms.

Jaedyn wrote: I saw the kakariki and I felt surprised.

Kirndeep wrote: All the birds were interesting to look at. The morepork was very sleepy and quiet.

Ariana wrote: We saw a kea. She killed the male. The man told us we must stay away because she could bite us.

Chantelle wrote: All the kea went ‘ahh’ but Howie had a really gentle ‘ahh’ so I liked him more than Jenny.

Kairone wrote: The parrot sounded like a noisy baby.

Eli wrote: My tummy rumbled with excitement!

It was a long way to Rotorua but we enjoyed the ride

The beautiful kaka

Lots of us took a leaf out of the morepork's book and had a wee snooze on the trip home

Kereru

We even saw a moa!

The weka were a bit shy - they came to say hello after the children moved on

Jenny the kea was a bit grumpy and she let us know - loudly

A big welcome back to Term 3 and an especially warm welcome to our new families and Mrs Menhinick and the children in Room 7.

What a fabulous end to Term 2 with our Matariki kite flying extravaganza – watch this space for a short video of the fun we had flying our kites.

This term is very exciting. We start the term with Keeping Ourselves Safe. Constable Doris will be in school and take each class for some lessons. Our Inquiry for the term is around the environmental responsibilities we each have with particular regard to our native birds. Our BIG question for this is “What relationship should we have with our native birds?”. We will start this Inquiry with a trip to Rainbow Springs in Rotorua – please look out for a letter with details coming home in the first week of term. The Junior classes will all be participating in a gymnastics programme as part of our Physical Education programme. The school-wide value for the term is Integrity and the Key Competency focus is Thinking.

For those children who are due for National Standards reports this term, these will come home on September 22nd with Learning Journeys  Tuesday and Wednesday the following week.

Please remember to check newsletters for further information and updates.

We are all looking forward to a term of lots of exciting learning!