It is with great regret that I need to inform you that the Walking School Bus that meets every Tuesday and Thursday outside 8 Alec Craig Way, will not be continuing for 2012 - due to my commitment and responsibility in transporting our autistic son to Red Beach Special Care Motoura Unit by 8.45am each morning.
I am very much hoping that someone else would like to take over from my role as Co-Ordinator not only for this Bus Stop, but for the Gulf Harbour School Walking School Bus project in the future.
If you would like to find out more about this role, please contact me anytime, Gaylene Chambers, rangchambers@xtra.co.nz Phone 424 8032 or 027 615 0783.
The walking school bus is a safe way for your children to get to school without the hassle of carparking or traffic congestion, plus they are getting exercise too.
The Hibiscus Coast Writers (HCW) would like to congratulate all the Year 5 & 6 children who participated in the annual writing competition aimed at Hibiscus Coast primary schools. 43 children submitted over 100 pieces of writing. 20 Gulf Harbour School students are amongst the 35 successful authors whose work was selected for HCW’s 2011 publication, ‘Kids in Print’. This is available for purchase from the HCW for $10. Contact Tanya Gouws on writers@xtra.co.nz. Info available on HCW website www.hibiscuscoastwriters.weebly.comhttp://hibiscuscoastwriters.weebly.com/.
The category winners were:-
Overall winner : Alexandra Wood - Gulf Harbour School
Fiction winner : Angus Wilson - Kingsway Primary School
Non-Fiction winner : Estelle Davidson - Whangaparaoa Primary School
Poetry winner : Wendy-Joy Richardson - Red Beach School
Illustration winner : Isabella Miller - Kingsway Primary School
HCW would like to convey their thanks to parents and teachers for their support in nurturing and encouraging these young writers and artists. There will be a 2012 writing / illustration competition aimed once again at the Year 5 & 6’s. Details of this should be available mid to late Term 2.
Gulf Harbour Village Markets every Sunday between 10.00am - 2.00pm in the Gulf Harbour Town Square. Many new stalls this week including fresh produce, eggs, cheese, gourmet breads, mediterranean foods, mussel fritters, bacon butties, arts and crafts and so much more with over 50 stalls. Santa will be back this week due to the high demand between 10.00 & 11.00am in his grotto offering free photos.
Our new website has featured in an important educational magazine called 'Interface'. It is one that looks at current digital thinking in schools. Check it out!
Thank you to all the parents and helpers that made our days down at Manly Beach so enjoyable! We had so much fun learning to sail and kayak, as well as the sand sculptures and beach play that we took part in too.
We couldn’t have done it without you!
On Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd December we went down to one of our local beaches Big Manly for a waterwise focus of sailing and kayaking. I did sailing first and when my partner and me got out in the optimist (type of boat) we realised that we were pretty good at sailing!
We tacked our way up to the buoy in the distance more than ten times! Ittook us a while but we persevered. My favourite part of sailing was using the tiller (which is like a steering wheel in a car), because I was really good at it. I nearly got hit by the boom as it was pretty gusty out there, I just had to make sure my partner warned me before taking.. It was so much fun!
Sailing can be quiet hard as it matters if the wind is strong or not. Both days had times where it was rather strong, and we had to make sure we sailed into the wind as it helped us not to capsize. Capsizing is when you tip the boat over and generally you fall out. Although if you get stuck there is always a pocket of air to breathe from.
It was such a fun two days, and was awesome doing this so close to home at one of our local beaches. I’ll definitely be wanting to do again sometime soon.
Here's a Video that Jamie from Room 16 made about learning your times tables. He starts off with a grid showing you the answers to multiplication problems from 1 x 1 to 10 x 10 He than examines how you can learn a lot of the tables with certain rules. In the end there arn't that many difficult problems to learn. Check it out. Go Jamie!
On Friday we dressed up in blue to support Diabetes awareness week. We brought a gold coin donation. Nick gave a fantastic speech at the school assembly. Room 27 did a fantastic job organising the event and $383 was raised for the cause. Go Room 27!!!!
We are proud to announce that Gulf Harbour School has became a TravelWise School. Thank you to the parents who came and watched our launch on the 4th of November.
From Auckland Transport we had Matthew Rednall, (Manager Community Transport), Jacki Dawson, (North Team Leader, Community Transport) and Bridget Farmiloe (our TravelWise community Transport Coordinator).
We also had Bernie Watt our school Police Education Officer and Maxx the Pukeko.
Gaylene Chambers our Walking School Bus Co-ordination gave a delightful talk about the walking school bus and some things that have worked well, such as bring a friend week.
After a visit from Maxx the Pukeko we ended with an appropriate jump jam song "We like to move it, move it!"
As a TraveWise school this means we are commited to working with Auckland Transport to make travel to school safe and sustainable. We will try and get as many people as possible using other modes if transport than the car but we understand that we will still have some cars around our school so we want to make sure it is as safe as possible. We will help our students learn about road safety and we will do lots of fun activities throughout the year to promote safe behaviour and activities such as walking and cycling. We want to make Travelwise part of our school culture and hope that students and parents and the organisations that support Travelwise can all work together.
You most probably are, because we sold 1000 packs in only 5 days!
We are very happy that they have become so popular because we worked hard on them.
It all started when our school had a focus on entrepreneurs in Term 3. We looked at two entrepreneurs: Michael Acton Smith, the creator of Moshi Monsters, and Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon. We were inspired by them to make our own characters, and to sell them on trading cards.
But how could we get students interested in characters since they weren’t on a TV show, or website? That’s when we decided it would be good to base the characters on teachers in the school. That way, students might like to collect teachers that remind them of people that they know.
First we explored the design of existing trading cards, so we know what to include on ours.
Then we started the long procress of designing the characters. We gave questionaiires out to all the teachers and staff asking them things like, “what are your skills” and “what things do you dislike?”. Then we used this information to design the characters.
The first character we designed was based on Mr Barrow. We decided he would be a good dinosaur because then we could call him “Barrowsaurus”. Later, Mr Barrow paid us to make him a dragon! So we added some wings and called him “Barrowsaurus Dragon”.
Sometimes we knew what animal to do a teacher because their name already sounded like an animal. Like Mrs Metcalfe. She has “calf” so we made her a cow and called her “Mrs Pet-calf”.
When we had finished our designs we voted on whose one we liked the best. Mr Wesbonk took the winning design and did a final version of it.
Finally we had designed all 37 characters! Meanwhile, we wrote letters to businesses’ asking them to sponsor our cards. We were lucky enough to raise $400!
Adam Doocey (Karyn Doocey’s husband) offered to print the cards for us cheaply. It was very exciting for us when the 4000 cards arrived. We had fun putting 4 into each pack so that we eventually had 1000 packs.
It was an exciting day when we were finally ready to sell. The money poured in fast, and there were lots of kids queuing up. Even teachers were trading our cards in the staffroom!
There were a few disappointed kids when we sold out. But don’t worry, because we ordered some new cards, and we will be selling them very soon!
Congratulations to Olivia from Room 17 who won the 'Doodle for Google' competition in the Year 1-3 category. It's a national competition and quite an achievement. The overall winner still has to be decided and they will have their design on the Google New Zealand website for a whole day. Olivia will be heading to the Auckland Art Gallery on Thursday for a special day. She wins a laptop for herself and a smart board for the school. Well done Olivia!!!!!
Well done to Sato from Room 29 who also got into the finals for his age group.Thanks to all the people who voted. What talented artists we have at Gulf Harbour School.
Here are some shots of Olivia's great day at Auckland Art Gallery.
A huge congratulations to all the children who contributed to our annual Hibiscus Coast Schools Writing competition - we wish we could publish all of their submissions. Unfortunately, there can only be one overall winner of the Val Shearer Memorial Trophy, and this year we've introduced four additional prize sections, i.e: Poetry, Non-Fiction, Fiction and Illustration. Commended pieces of writing will also receive a copy of our
publication.
C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S and thank you so much for participating, your contributions are greatly appreciated - we sure had a tough task judging them!
Tanya Gouws
Competition Secretary
Hibiscus Coast Writers Group
OVERALL WINNER, and winner of the Val Shearer Memorial Trophy
Alexandra Wood
Gulf Harbour School
Sailing, Cyclone Wilma 2011, A Day in the Life of a … can you guess what I am?
Monique Chambers from room 20- thought that we should have a special day for WSB- "bring a friend- promote day"- so.......invitations were sent out to her whole class, and friends around, and we got 20 altogether last Thursday 1st September!- great way to start the first official day of spring"- prizes were given out and lots of fun was had! We hope this can be done again real soon- Will let you know when!
This was for the Walking School Bus held every Tuesday and Thursday @ # 8 Alec Craig Way, corner of Du'rvell and Alec Craig Way, Caramel coloured house, with black steel fence- look out for flags and signage....Join us one day, and have some fun!- you never know what prize you will get!
The other Walking School Bus is run every Wednesday @ corner of Midshipman and Alec Craig Way (round-about point)- we rely greatly and appreciate the support of our great teachers Miss Wium, Mrs Vrettos and Mrs Southgate for their help!- Thanks ladies you help us make this BUS happen!- WOOP WOOP! Who know's who might come on the WSB- MR PETRIE EVEN- YAY!
Would you like to organise another Walking School Bus in your street?- Let us know- happy to help you set another one up! Its real easy!- GO FOR IT!!!- Let's cut down on the traffic in Gulf Harbour!- and get some exercise together!
Bye for now!
Gaylene ( Walking School Bus Co-ordinator for GHS) randgchambers@xtra.co.nz
Check out what Room 5 and Room 18 have been up to this term - looks like great fun! Room 5 have been testing a variety of recipes to find out what makes the best play dough. Room 18 have been designing healthy food snacks for kids that are easy to prepare and taste absolutely delicious. Last week they made fruit kebabs.
Good luck to our 8 Doodle for Google entries! Entrants range from Year 2 - Year 6.
Keep an eye on our website to see how we go in the National Competition. Overall Winners will be announced by the 19th October. Click here for more details: http://www.google.co.nz/doodle4google/prizes.html
Ex Gulf Harbour School student Nicola Morrison has just placed in top 50 of 'Play It Strange' NZ Secondary Schools Songwriting Competition. She composed and sung a wonderful song called 'Paper Planes' and got to do a professional recording for a CD coming out later in the year. Her song is currently available on iTunes, so go and buy it. Go Nicola!!!
A group of Year 7's and 8's chose cooking as their 5 week elective. 'Brunches' has been the topic and we have had fun following recipes, learning techniques and creating our own dishes. This week we have a chef from Sparx, Little Manly Village to taste our 'Brunch Tortilla' we have designed. Simon Roadley, owner of Sparx, not only gave 3 GHS 'chefs' the awesome opportunity to visit his restaurant kitchen, if he is impressed with it, Simon has generously offered to trial our dish on Sparx menu! Fingers crossed!!!! All our tasters so far have enjoyed it and the 'chefs' definitely have -
here's hoping Sparx likes it too!
What's Cooking in Food Tech!
Recently Year 7/8s have been looking at technological modeling - the brief - " Design a pasta shape that will hold a sauce of medium consistency. We learnt to make our own pasta, models and prototypes and came up with some interesting shapes!
Musical Profits
Profits from this years musical production " A Kids Summer Night's Dream" by our talented Year 7's went some of the way towards the purchase and installation of these fabulous mirrors in Room 8 - Performing Arts. The Drama Elective have made the most of the mirrors, Year 1's are finding them useful in helping them prepare for their production, there are dance/movement classes happening and GleeHS are enjoying the mirrors- working towards their debut later this term.
Music from Junk.
Year 7's have been combining junk instruments with other percussion, working on creating and layering rhythms and have come up with some unique arrangements. Check out this video with our lovely Korean students showing us their rhythmic skills. They all play orchestral instruments too so hopefully we will manage some more videos.
What great excitement for the school today as we welcomed the Japanese Rugby Team. There were flags waving and signatures being signed all over the place. The students got their first real taste of World Cup fever as we lined up outside the lodge to greet the players. It was especially exciting to see All Black legend John Kirwan there, with the team as coach. I'm sure the players appreciated the welcome and we certainly enjoyed the moment. Good luck to the team!
“Yippee!” shouted Room 16. Ms Wesley was finally visiting us! Ms Wesley worked at New Century International Elementary School in America and Room 16 have been communicating with the class most of the year. We have exchanged movies, slideshows, photos, emails, voice threads and more. It has been such fun and we have learnt a lot about each others schools. In term one made them a movie for them about the Christchurch earthquake. (see below)
Did you know Ms Wesley taught here at GHS in the past? She then went to America to teach and came back to New Zealand a couple of weeks ago. She brought letters for our class from New Century School. She also bought American coins and even lollies! (They do not call lollies, lollies in America, they call it candy) The class really liked meeting Ms Wesley. She is so nice! We had lots of questions for her and it was great to meet her. She is off to Dubai to teach now and we wish her well with that. By Mirin
Last week we took part in the Yr 7/8 interschool Mathex competition (Math Problem Solving). It was held at Stella Maris School and was a fun, energetic race to the finish. Congratulations to our Year 8 team who came in first place out of the 18 teams attending. They not only won but did so by a landslide gaining 18 out of possible 20 points - second place came in with a total of 10 points. Our Year 7 team also did well coming in 6th equal - we look forward to seeing what they will be able to achieve next year!
Yr 8 team
- Charlotte Doocey
- Brae Southern
- Jenny Cho
- Mia Davis
Year 7 Team
- Tarushna Dayah
- Erica Simmonds
- Tessa Weston
- Jasmine Tufuga.
