Congratulations to Jamie Cockle from Room 22 who was Number 1 on NZ's Top 100 students in New Zealand and ranked Number 2 on the Top 100 Students in the World. Well done!!! Check out www.mathletics.co.nz every day to find out if you have made it to the list.
Wow! What a week! From early morning rises, bush walks, yummy food, exciting activities, wharf jumping, spot light and so much more its hard to think that 44 children and 10 adults could have so much fun!
Well thats just what we had. We set off on Monday 7th of May a little anxious at what camp was going to be like. After a fairly smooth ride on the ferry from Sandspit we arrived. Our camp was nothing like we’d expected - it was better!
Big cabins, right on the waterfront, wallabies (if you were quiet), wekas, kayaks, sailing boats, FISH oh and of course all our friends to share our memories and fun times with.
We had such an awesome week out at Kawau Island, the walks were fun - we saw dolphins at Coppermine Bay, that was a highlight! All of us learn’t how to sail and kayak. The challenging confidence course tested us, as with the orienteering and bivouac making.
Our nights weren’t boring in the slightest. We had spotlight one night, a movie another, cooked marshmellows on the fire and then the parents and teachers created such a fun and yuck burma trail!! Ask someone in Year 6 to describe it to you - if you like (but beware, you might not feel so good!).
When Friday came, some of us were happy to pack up and head home, while others of us just wanted to carry on into the weekend. l it was such an amazing time at Camp Bentzon - even if we did have to do PT every morning and have silent dinners!
Can’t wait to share the camp movie with you all soon.
Gulf Harbour
School has become a WasteWise School. We
would like to reduce the amount of waste that we send to landfill each year so
in order to do this we have become part of the WasteWise Schools Programme.
This means that
we will:
·Engage
in a whole school approach with the WasteWise Schools
Programme for a minimum of 2 years.
·Involve
all school groups including students, staff, parents and
Board of Trustees
·Engage
with the community where appropriate
·Develop
a long-term waste reduction strategy
·Annually
provide waste audit data to Regional Coordinator
·Annually
review actions to reduce waste.
On Tuesday 27
March, Mrs Vrettos and Miss Cassidy attended a workshop on ‘Introduction to the
WasteWise Schools programme and how your school can reduce its ecological
footprint. Strategies to successfully
implement the programme’.
On Thursday 29
March, Shelley Hackett from WasteWise came to school to help us with our waste
audit. She spoke to the year 1 classes
from Rooms 18 and 20 about waste and the different types of waste found in our
schools and homes. Then they headed out
with Shelley to conduct the waste audit.
It was quite a job, but the little ones were great at sorting out the
various types of waste.
Our next step is
to develop a long-term waste reduction strategy.
This years Swimming Sports was held at the Northern Arena pools on Thursday 29th March. Gulf Harbour School was one of 14 schools involved.
We took 17 students to the event (3 x Yr 8, 5 x Yr 7, 3 x Yr 6 & 6 x Yr 5) and well done to all of you! We were a great support to each other and have some fantastic swimmers amongst us.
Congratulations to Tessa Weston (Yr 8) for coming 1st in the 25m Freestyle, Backstroke & Breaststroke events and for coming 2nd in the 25m Butterfly & in the Medley, and also to our Yr 5/6 Relay team who came 4th out of 7 teams.
All in all, it was a great day for Gulf Harbour School and thanks so much to the Parents who took us there and stayed all day to support us.
It was a very bad start to the morning, with black grey clouds never ending all around the Auckland region. Room 22 were rather disappointed when Miss Morris told us that we wouldn't be going to the woolshed.
Suddenly there was a miracle, the rain stopped and a glimpse of sunshine began to break through the clouds. Miss Morris told us to grab our bags and asked if we had raincoats (just incase), thankfully for the children who didn't have one they were able to borrow one from the camp gear that Mr Petrie helped us get.
Next minute we were speed walking down the road, past Okormai and up into Waterfall Gully, which gave us a little bit of shelter from the tiny specks of rain that began to fall. Up, up and up we went through the trees and onto the paddock, finally we reached the lookout, and ate our lunch.
Little by little the rain began to get heavier, so we thought it best to leave the awesome views and make our way down to the Woolshed. At the woolshed we were greeted with two Rangers who explained some of the history of the park - especially what life was like before it was a park. They also shared with us what the park is like now days and the importance of keeping it pest free.
We had a great time, but knew that we had to make it back to school. So off we ventured into the rain, up past the lodge (the old Shakespear's home) and down across the mud flats and back to school.
A very fun, enjoyable day - I think the rain made it that way!
We have renamed Room 2 and 3 'The Island'. It is our combined class of year 3 and 4 students. It has been really exciting to set the room up in an open way with completely new furniture. We wanted to create a special feel and look for this new space and have used the Island theme. We have really enjoyed our first few weeks of school and had a special 'Island' day. Check out our video...
Here is our website address http://islandghs.wikispaces.com/
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!
Wow! What a week! From early morning rises, bush walks, yummy food, exciting activities, wharf jumping, spot light and so much more its hard to think that 44 children and 10 adults could have so much fun!
Big cabins, right on the waterfront, wallabies (if you were quiet), wekas, kayaks, sailing boats, FISH oh and of course all our friends to share our memories and fun times with.
Gulf Harbour
School has become a WasteWise School. We
would like to reduce the amount of waste that we send to landfill each year so
in order to do this we have become part of the WasteWise Schools Programme.
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. 
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!!!!
You most probably are, because we sold 1000 packs in only 5 days!
