Kia ora koutou

It’s lovely to be back at Omihi School for the second part of Maree’s sabbatical leave. It’s so nice coming back and knowing the school and the familiar faces of the children - I can nearly remember all their names!

Students at the National Young Leaders Day

We do wish Maree and her family well as they travel to the USA and Ireland. While it will be a wonderful experience and fantastic for them to see family in Ireland, it could be challenging at times with a very young family. We hope they all travel well!

We are fortunate to have the Playhouse Theatre Production coming to Omihi this Friday. They will be presenting “The Reluctant Dragon’ show for us. Waipara and Waikari Schools are joining us as well.

The Year 8 students went to the National Young Leaders Day last Friday at the Christchurch Town Hall. They listened to speakers such as William Pike (a kiwi explorer), Brooke Neal (a former NZ hockey player) and Te Kahukura Boynton (a 20 yr old entrepreneur). It’s always a great day out listening to inspiring speakers and travelling down in the School van. I was lucky enough to see them at the end of the day after I had a catch up meeting with Maree. Some comments from the students included involved:

“ It was……….. fun, inspiring, cool, encouraging, loud !!! The games were cool but we had to sit for a long time'!’

Thanks to the students who came to share their writing linked to their inquiry work with me this morning….. “The part of my body that I like the best….”

All the best to all the students who will participate in the Small Schools Cross Country tomorrow.

Ngā mihi

Adrienne Simpson

Acting Principal / Tumuaki

School Notices

Cross Country 
The small schools cross country is on tomorrow. Please ensure you pick up your child from school by 11.30am
Here are all of the details of the day, including a map. Children can go straight home afterwards. We ask that parents pick their children up and take them to the cross country, plus we will have some space on the school bus. Please contact Kelly if your child needs a ride on the school bus. 

Matariki Celebrations
On the 2nd of July we would like to invite our whānau to join us for a Matariki Celebration morning at school. From 9-10.30am we will run rotations that we would love you to join us for in classrooms. At 10.30am we will have a shared kai for morning tea. Please could everyone bring a small plate of food to share for this and we hope you can make it along for the morning.

Public holiday
A reminder that school will be closed for Matariki on Friday 28th June.

Whole School Assembly
We welcome our community to our whole school assembly this Friday 14th June at 2pm in Kahiwi.

Reports
In the last week of term you will be receiving report comments (whole school) and also updated graphs (Tūpari and Awaawa) to show progress. Please contact your child’s teacher if these don’t come through.

Community Notices

Kia ora koutou

Welcome back Kate and Elizabeth! It’s lovely to have Kate and Elizabeth back teaching in Paemoana on a regular basis. I loved seeing the love and kindness our students had for Georgie on her last day with us. They made her a very unique and touching card, and had a fun dance party with her at the end of the day.

Carlos, Andy, Zac and Logan getting ready for a quidditch match.

One highlight for me last week was seeing Tūpari working on their Harry Potter STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) investigations. The passion they had for their learning was obvious in the excitement for creating their very own quidditch match. Another highlight was welcoming our preschoolers into school. It’s wonderful to see the tuakana-teina (older and younger) relationships forming, and how our students look out for our preschoolers.

Part of my sabbatical has been focused on the Dare to Lead course, which is based on Brené Brown’s research. I took so much away from the course, not only for myself as a leader, but also for our staff, and students. We will be discussing segments at our staff professional learning days, and are all going to be reading the Dare to Lead book together next year, plus looking at how we can integrate this into our day to day programmes. I’d love to share some of the key takeaways that I had, so in my newsletters I will add a ‘Dare to Lead’ section, and a link if you want to find out more from Brené’s resources. Here are 3 of my takeaways that could be applicable in so many areas of our school, and life in general:

• Who we are is how we lead

• Courage is contagious 

• There are 40 types of emotions. Understanding these can be crucial to help leaders
  

The final part of my sabbatical starts in week 7 (June 10th), so you will see Adrienne back in during this time. I look forward to seeing you all again week 3, term 3.

Ngā mihi
Maree Lucas
Tumuaki/Principal
principal@omihi.school.nz

School Notices

Year 1-8 Small Schools Cross Country
The small schools cross country is on Tuesday 11th June (pp 13th June). This is where we join with Waipara and Broomfield School and it will be held where Onepunga meets Holleth Hills Road (about 2.5 km from Broomfield School) There will be lots of signage. Please no dogs on the property. Here are all of the details of the day, including a map. Children can go straight home afterwards. We ask that parents pick their children up and take them to the cross country, plus we will have some space on the school bus. Please let Kelly know if your child needs to go on the bus.

Playhouse Theatre
The whole school will be attending ‘The Reluctant Dragon’, performed by the Playhouse Theatre at Omihi Hall on Friday 14th June.

Whole School Assembly
We welcome you to our whole school assembly on Friday 14th June at 2pm in Kahiwi.

National Young Leaders Day
There are a group of seniors attending the National Young Leaders Day on Wednesday 5th June in Christchurch. They will be going in by bus, so there will be no Omihi bus run on that day.

Attendance
As part of the government’s attendance action plan they are now collecting attendance data from schools on a weekly basis. From the beginning of 2025, they will be collecting it from schools on a daily basis. There is a new interactive dashboard that has been launched where you can see a national average on any given day. The website is https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/daily-attendance.

Attendance continues to be a focus at our school as well, and we encourage you to check these guidelines if you’re not sure whether to send your child or not. Each term we send out letters to notify you if your child had less than 90% attendance in the previous term. These letters will be coming out this week for term 1 attendance. Parents and caregivers are required to have their children attend school, and to develop habits of regular attendance, and it is the school’s responsibility to follow this up.

Positive Education update from Georgie:
Through explicit teaching of positive education lessons, we have been seeing tamariki utilising different strategies they have learnt to try to solve situations themselves. We will always be there to support children when they need it, but it has been pleasing to see so many children utilising what they have been taught both in the classroom and playground. As a school it is really important that we try to utilise the special environment that our kura is in. Studies have revealed that spending time outdoors leads to a notable decrease in cortisol, the stress hormone, and reduces feelings of anxiety. We provide the children with opportunities to spend time outside as much as possible, and from this we see higher levels of focus during learning time. 

Lost Property
We have 2 very new merino jerseys in the office which are unnamed. If you think these are your childs please come and collect them from the office. There is a student missing a merino jersey, which is clearly named. We kindly ask that you check your child’s merinos to make sure they haven’t picked it up by mistake.

School Docs - term 2 review
Please review the following policies at http://omihi.schooldocs.co.nz.
Username: omihi. Password: glenmark

• Employer Responsibility 

• Appointment procedure

• Equal Employment Opportunities

• Teacher Relief Cover

• Safety Checking

• Police Vetting

• Classroom Release Time

Matariki Public Holiday
A reminder that school will be closed on Friday 28th June for Matariki.

Life Education
The Life Education bus will be visiting us on Wednesday 3rd July.

Community Notices

Kia ora koutou

It’s lovely to be back at school after a few weeks off for the first part of my sabbatical. A big thanks to Adrienne Simpson for stepping into the Acting Principal role while I was away.

Alice, with her big sister Emma on her first visit.

Welcome to Alice who has started her visits in Paemoana. It was so special to see how well her big sister looked after her for the morning.

Last week we had Helen Walls taking professional learning with teachers from across the 13 schools from our kāhui. Part of this was modelling in our classes with our students. It was so nice to have such great feedback from the teachers around our students - how they showed our school values, were focused on our learning and showed such lovely manners to all of our guests.

This Thursday is Support Staff Day. A big thanks to our wonderful support staff who are so dedicated to our school - Trudy, Sharryn, Emma, Fi and Yo. We will be holding a morning tea for these wonderful ladies to thank them.

Next week is Georgie’s last week at Omihi for this year. We wish her well for her travels and look forward to seeing her in 2025. It will be lovely to welcome Kate Dodd and Elizabeth Maddren back into Paemoana while Georgie is away.

Ngā mihi
Maree Lucas
Tumuaki/Principal

School Notices

Preschooler morning
We welcome all of our preschoolers on Wednesday 22nd May from 9.00-10.30am. Please bring your child’s morning tea and drink bottle. Georgie and Kate will be running the morning.

Year 1-8 Small Schools Cross Country
The small schools cross country is on Tuesday 11th June. This is where we join with Waipara and Broomfield School and it will be held where Onepunga meets Holleth Hills Road (about 2.5 km from Broomfield School) There will be lots of signage. Please no dogs on the property. Here are all of the details of the day, including a map. Children can go straight home afterwards. We ask that parents pick their children up and take them to the cross country, plus we will have some space on the school bus.

Technology
A reminder that the Year 7/8 technology bus leaves school at 9am on a Monday morning. We don’t have a year 7/8 programme at school on that morning, as children are expected to be at technology. This is part of our school curriculum.

Sickness
There has been a vomiting bug going around. If your child is sick, please keep them home for 48 hours after they have stopped vomiting.

New carpet in classrooms
There is new carpet going down this week in all three classrooms. We will try and keep the disruption to a minimum, and the classes will use Kahiwi while their classroom is out of use.

Lunch Online
Sushi is back and is available every second Wednesday starting this Wednesday 15th May. Please ensure you place your orders before 9pm on Tuesday. Thank you to our wonderful family who has offered to pick this up for us.

Community Notices

North Canterbury Kids Hunt in conjunction with Hunting & Fishing North Canterbury - 23-26 May 2024

Tihiraki North Loburn School is very excited to be hosting this major fundraising event for another year.  Our aim is to get as many kids and families out and about as possible, exploring, and caring for our environment, whilst raising funds and contributing to the success of our fabulous Garden to Table and Paddock to Plate programmes. For more details, participation in the hunting competition, and a chance to win fantastic spot prizes, visit  https://nckidshunt.co.nz/, or connect with us through the North Canterbury Kids Hunt Facebook page.  We look forward to seeing you at our weigh-in on Sunday, 26 May at the Loburn Domain.  Thank you for your support.  The Tihiraki North Loburn team.

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Kia Ora Koutou,

Welcome back to Term 2 at Omihi School. It was lovely to see all the smiling faces back this morning. A special welcome back to Penny Vincent in Awaawa and a big “Thank You” to Kate Dodd who was teaching in the Awaawa space last term. Also a huge congratulations to Bryleigh, Ryan & Maia on the arrival of George on 10th April, 2024. They are all doing well.

Another special welcome to Walter who has had his first day at school today.

Thank you all so much for the warm welcome you have given me as Acting Principal while Maree is on the first part of her Sabbatical. It is a pleasure to be here, getting to know your children and more about the Omihi community. I will certainly look forward to coming back again later in the term.

We attended the ANZAC Service last week and it made me very proud to see Omihi students taking a role in the commemorations. Fergus read the names of the local soldiers who lost their lives in the wars, while Emma and Alice assisted in the wreath laying ceremony. (We missed the photo opportunity on Thursday so staged a photo this morning!)

As teachers, we are always learning, whether it is up skilling ourselves in Te Reo or learning how best to deliver the curriculum to your children. As part of our professional development this year we are hosting 18 Year 1-4 teachers from across our Kahui Ako next Thursday to watch demonstrations and learn from Dr Helen Walls, a professional learning facilitator specialising in the teaching of Literacy & Writing from Massey University. She will be focusing on the teaching of Writing and Spelling.

This term our Curriculum focus is Health and for the first 4 weeks of the term, the teachers are working with the children on ‘Keeping Ourselves Safe’.

Ngā Mihi

Adrienne Simpson

Tumuaki / Acting Principal

Omihi School.

Congratulations Bryleigh, Ryan & Maia on the safe arrival of George

Walter & Harry

School Notices

‘No Uniform’ Day
On the last day of term we had a ‘No Uniform’ day to raise funds for the Special Friends Sports Trust. Students were asked to dress in their favourite sports attire, and they did incredible! We are excited to say that we raised $60.20c which is a fantastic effort for our school.
Check out some of the creative dress ups.

Uniform
We are offering another option for school jumpers.  We will still have the merino, and now also a polar fleece option. It will be a navy polar fleece with our school logo, and the cost will be $40. If you would like to order one, please email Trudy .

The sizes will be - size 4-6, 6-8, 8-10, 10-12, 12-14.

Community Notices

Omihi Community Hall
The Omihi Community Hall is exactly what it says - a community hall. Home to the Glenmark rugby team, but also a place for our community to use. We have always tried to create pricing that is reasonable to the community, but also helps cover the costs of the hall. Currently the hall makes a loss, and the committee have had to do fundraising just to cover costs. So we have decided to make a really simple hire fee:
* $30 + GST per hour - corporate, community events, yoga, conferences, etc
* $1500 + GST for weddings (48 hour hire, $30 per hour hire after that)

This way we are hoping that we will have more events, as well as cover costs, but most importantly - bring the community together in this asset that we have. Omihi School look after the bookings of the hall, and all details are on the website - www.omihihall.co.nz.

SAVE THE DATE

Glenmark/Cheviot Rugby Club Day- Saturday 11th of May, Omihi Sports Domain. JAB, Colts, Div 2 & Div 1 games. Exhibition Game- Alnwick RFC (England) vs Glenmark/Cheviot Rhinos. Branded BBQ and Matt Hantler music to follow. More Information to come. 

Cleaner Wanted
Omihi Community Hall is on the look out for a casual cleaner, if you think you could help please email Trudy here