Here's Our Staff this Year!

We have a fantastic staff this year and here they are...


We are looking forward to a great year!

Welcome back from Mr Petrie

Welcome back to everyone. We are excited about the new school year. Here is Mr Petrie's new video.

Walking School Bus

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.

Hibiscus Coast Writers

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

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.

Gulf Harbour School's Website features in Interface Magazine!

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!

WATERWISE @ Manly Beach Rooms 25 & 30

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.

By Max

Room 30 

Learning Your Times Tables With Jamie!

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!

Great Blue Day to Support Diabetes on Friday

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!!!!

Click here for the Diabetes website for more information.

Gulf Harbour School Now A Travelwise School!

TRAVELWISE LAUNCH

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.

A big thanks to all those involved.

School Goes Crazy Over Teacher Creature Cards!!

Are you collecting Teacher Creature cards?

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! 

Room 4

Our very own 11.11.11 student!

Our very own 11.11.11 student!

As you are aware this date is a bit of a special one, being one of the last same digit date that we will witness in a long while!

Rustam Akrami celebrates turning 11 today! He celebrated with his friends in Room 30 by having an icecream cake!

What a great choice of cake on a really hot day!

Happy 11.11.11 everyone!

From

Room 30

Taniwha found in Gulf Harbour School!!!

Have you seen the bin area lately?

Well, Rooms 19 to 22 have recently made a huge difference in our school.

Go and have a look...

They created a giant Taniwha mural. It is painted red, orange and yellow

with an island around it. It is simply amasing, fantastic and eye catching.

A big thank you to Stu Duval (parent and local author/artist) for helping us

and making it so wonderful and interesting.

Reported by Room 20

Here are some shoots of the process....

Google Doodle Winner - Olivia!!!!

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.


Click here to see photos...

2011 Hibiscus Coast Writers - Year 5&6 Competition Winners

Hibiscus Coast Writers’

2011 Hibiscus Coast Schools Children’s Writing Competition

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?

FICTION WINNER

Angus Wilson

Kingsway School

Drama on Macadam Street

NON-FICTION WINNER

Estelle Davidson

Whangaparaoa Primary

My J-Rock Performance

POETRY WINNER

Wendy-Joy Richardson

Red Beach School

The Woman in Waiting

WRITING CHOSEN FOR PUBLICATION:-

Gulf Harbour School
Alexandra Wood	(Overall Winner) Sailing Cyclone Wilma 2011 A Day in the Life of a … can you guess what I am?
Jack Markey	Twister
Lucy Hatfield	A Holiday in Heaven The Kiss I Died in Love
Connor Gentry	The Sky so High
Keagan Modlin	Tree Wave I Hate Rugby
Philippa Gouws	Diamante Poem - Rugby A Day in the Life of Me
Giancarlo Moretti	Atomic Bomb
Pierre Duval	A Windy Wellington Poem B-Ball
Oliver Reeves	Happy Father’s Day Dad The Secret of the Colosseum When I was a Famous Movie Star
Bree Stiven	Daffodil
Josie Simmonds	What Makes a Friend Danny & Me Rotorua
Rhiannon Tarr	I Love Fashion
Hannah Maguire	If I Could Ask a Cloud Square Eyes ‘Round the World
Campbell Morrison	Bad Plane Ride
Amy Watson	My Dolphin Experience Spring Flowers
Sophie Doocey	Dragon’s Den
Andrea Nixon	The Talking Dog
Alesi Hertzke	Kids are like Gold
Halle Mitchell	Animal Cruelty
Raymond Yang	Combat Wars
		*

Rugby Chaos Game

Are you bored? Try Room 16's new game called 'Rugby Chaos'.
Available from Room 16. Here's the ad...

The Rippa Festival was a Ripper!!

Room 27 organised a great Rippa Festival. Check out the highlights on the video below!

Walking School Bus News!

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

Real Life Learning - Entrepreneurs

Have a look at all the innovative ideas classes have come up with after they looked at what are the characteristics of an Entrepreneur. 

Kids Getting Creative in Rooms 5 and 18!

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.