From The Principal's Desk

Dear parents and caregivers

Wow! How wonderful it was to gather together as a community at our school disco on Friday. It was fabulous to see so many families re-connecting, interacting and supporting our school and students. Thanks to the PTA for your organisation of this event, even the weather was well planned!

Over the past few weeks I have been so proud of our students and our school, we are an awesome team of people.

Last week the Kids for Kids concert was a great night to share the talented voices of our students. Our own Lachlan Ulaula-Ieremia sang a solo in front of about 1500 people at the Vodafone Events Centre and did us proud. As did the rest of the year 5 choir.

Our year 6 students unfortunately missed out on the APPA choir Town Hall experience this year. However, a few local schools gathered together at Farm Cove Intermediate and performed to a more intimate audience in their school hall. This was a lovely opportunity to hear their talented voices.

At this time of year the Howick and Pakuranga Principal Association (HPPA) of which I am on the executive team, host a luncheon for all the retired principals. A mini version of our Rock Mellons performed and brought smiles to all the retired Principals faces (including Mrs Brown and Mr Foy!) and ... there was plenty of toe tapping going on.

I would like to acknowledge one person with whom these events would not be possible and that is Mrs Janine Wymer. She does a fantastic job with all our choirs and musical groups. She will also be organising the choir for this Friday at the Stockade Hill lights amidst the organisation for end of year assemblies and production ... super woman!

We won the Eastern School year 6 speech competition - Xavier Hazel won with his speech "Why Video Games are So Addictive". We hope to share this with you in our next newsletter. His presentation and delivery was exemplary.

Mellons Bay School is so well represented!

This was also true at our school athletics - thanks to all the parents who turned up to help and to cheer/support and also to the brave parents who volunteered to run. Unfortunately they were outrun by the boys team, as was our staff team! There is always next year! We look forward to the interschool athletics on Friday 20th at Mt Smart.

In regard to sports, thanks to all the year 2 parents who have organised your child's PE uniforms for year 3. The uniform shop will be open for its last day in 2020 on Monday 30 November.

We held a BYOD afternoon and offered an evening for our year 3 students in 2021. If you have any queries or wonderings please go to our school website.

https://sites.google.com/mellonsbay.school.nz/byod-mbs/home

We are required to consult on our Health and PE curriculum every two years and did this last year. You may have seen the mention of the new Relationship and Sexuality Education guide (RSE) in the media around September this year. We have now received this document and will need to look at what we already have in place and what we need to cover. We will consult with you on this next year. We have been advised by the MOE that "$32.8 million has been set aside for up to 40 new Curriculum Leads to help deliver a high quality Health and Physical Education curriculum. This includes support for new Mental Health Guidelines in schools, currently being developed, as well as this new resource. The first Leads will be in place in regional Ministry of Education offices in Term 2, 2021 to provide on-the-ground assistance to schools and they will also be able to support schools with their community consultation."

We were lucky to have a visitor to our school in his Batmobile. This was a special day for Sam with the Make a Wish Foundation. A day to remember!

I came across a quote that I thought was pertinent to building our resilience:

"Bruce Wayne: I wanted to save Gotham. I failed.

Alfred Pennyworth: Why do we fall sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up."

Krista Turrall held a Bake Sale for the year 5/6's with her own baking and raised $106, she will donate this to Starship Children's Hospital.

Our own PTA Bake Sale raised $1,487.00 which is a fantastic effort.

Our outdoor COLA is awaiting council approval and we will let you know when we can begin construction, as we are all awaiting this fantastic feature.

The weather is warming up and the weeks are creeping by. We look forward to further celebrations of learning this year, the pool will be open soon and teachers are busy writing reports, planning end of year assemblies and acknowledging your child's progress and achievement.

We are also preparing classes and organisation for 2021. We would like to let you know well in advance that we will be having a Teacher Only Day on Wednesday 7th April 2021, which will extend our Easter Break, in case you are going anywhere (within NZ!)

Ngā mihi nui

ColleenMargison

Principal/Tumuaki

Learning to Navigate our Changing World

News Bites

Kindo is here!!

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