Next weeks Big Breakfast (Wed 9th Dec) has a Christmas theme. Extra special breaky food will be available for a gold coin donation. Children are welcome to perform during Big Breaky and Christmas prizes will be available. Menu; French toast, smoothies, spaghetti, scrambled egg, toast and cereal. Mmmmm!! All welcome.

Oct 15 Oct 22 Oct 29 Nov 5 Nov 12 Nov 19 Nov 26

Dec 3

Fri 4 Dec – Year 6 visit to Waihi College
Fri 4 Dec – Parent helpers morning Tea.
Fri 4 – Scholastic Issue no. 8 closes.
Mon 7 Dec -  Senior trip
Tues 8 Dec – Junior trip
Tues 8 Dec – Parent information evening at College
Tues 8 Dec – BOT meeting 5.30pm
Wed 9 Dec – WBOP Athletics
Wed 9 Dec – Big Breakfast at East School
Wed 9 Dec – Practice @ Memorial Hall
Thurs 10 Dec – Stars in yours Eyes Evening
Fri 11 Dec – Gymnastics day at college
Sat 12 Dec -  Santa parade
Mon 14 Dec – Year books home
Mon 14 Dec – Year 6 Amazing Race
Tues 15 Dec – Prize giving 11am
Tues 15 Dec – Kool kids afternoon
Wed 16 Dec-  Last day of school
Tues 2 Feb 2010 – Teacher only day
Wed 3 Feb 2010 – First day of school 2010

Thanks to David Jones who has kindly offered the use of his truck for our Christmas parade float on Saturday 12th December. We are going with a Santa/reindeer theme. All children welcome. We will decorate the truck at 10.30 on the 12th and leave school at 11.45am.

Come and see your child/children SHINE on Thursday 10th December at the Memorial Hall. Doors open 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Gold coin donation at the door. There will be 3 raffles for sale on the night. Costumes may be required. A strobe light is needed for this event. If you can help please contact Emily or Steve Magyar.

This week’s Habits of Mind continues to be Learning Forever.

Remaining open to Continuous Learning. Successful people

learn all the time for all their lives. Not just at school.

Kia ora

Congratulations to Carol who spotted our intentional mistake in last weeks newsletter (start date 3rd January instead of 3rd February). A chocolate fish will be sent home to Carol. It is great to see people reading the newsletter. I must say staff did notice it too. I won’t use that trick again, there was nearly a riot in the staff room! There is another mistake in this weeks newsletter– can you spot it? A chocolate fish is up for grabs again.

Thank you for being understanding during our computer/server issue last week. All office files were not available to staff, no emails or printing from laptops. Talk about turning my hair grey. Luckily the problems have all been solved.  Maybe it was work over load!! Technician’s comment “three external back up drives to deal with just such a problem isn’t luck, it’s planning for every forseeable situation, which is what saved our bacon this time”. Our server suffered hard drive failure not only to one hard disk but to both which our IT company has never seen happen in practice before. Their back up system for all the data on the server means we have three external hard drives backing up data over three days sequentially – this data back up system meant once the hardware was replaced the data was restored as quickly as possible by the server technicians. So ‘big ups’ for the technical guys fixing the problem so fast.

This week Constable Doris visited all rooms as a general reminder of how we show respect for each other and the community. It is a very important message, especially when children have time on their hands over the Christmas break. Behaviour has been a bit ratty this week. Together we can turn the negative into a positive.

Next week we require transport to our Stars in Your Eyes practices at the Memorial Hall. On Wednesday classes will go up individually from 9.30am starting with Room 5 and going up in age. On Thursday we have full dress rehearsal for the whole school from noon till 3pm. Transport from 11.40am on Thursday would be appreciated.

My thanks to Kookie, Clarke and Paul for coaching our mini ball teams this year. We had a great competition. Check out our donations for the 2010 Gala. Leona, Anne Marie and Denise are doing an awesome job. Each class will also be running a stall on the day. It is going to be amazing.

Congratulations to Travis Morton who placed 5th in New Zealand at the Primary schools surf champs.

Ka kite ano
Emily

We went down to the Waihi Skate Bowl as one of the activities on ‘Wheelie Day’ Cool Kids Afternoon. Thanks Mrs Steele and Mr McGougan for transporting and being with us at the bowl. Here are some slides of the action.

We also got some video footage using the ‘Flip Viewer’ so here it is.

Room 3 and Room 2 East School children have visited Union Hill in the last two weeks, this has been done under the guidance of Greg Jenks and other NZ Bird and Forest members to see how the control of pests such as possums and rats is going in this area. The children have been involved in setting up and monitoring pest tracking tunnels as well as checking and replenishing bait stations on Union Hill. Here are some photos from Room 3’s trip to Union Hill in week 7 of term 4 2009.

Thanks Todd for taking us out to the Waihi Beach Skate Bowl here is movie of the action, the movie was edited by Regan, Kalem, Mitchell, Beau and Travis.