Junior Jottings Number 6

Welcome to Term 2! I hope you all had the opportunity to spend some quality time with your children over the holidays. They have come back refreshed ready for the busy term ahead.

We warmly welcome Mrs Margaret Mills Smith and six children who started our latest New Entrant class in room 1 last week. Mrs Ryan will take over this class on her return. We also welcome Mrs Dawn Statham and Mrs Carolyn Murphy who are working during the mornings this term in room 3.

The first week has had the children embedding what they already know and starting a range of new activities.

The cross country run practices for all the students have begun with the children already looking forward to the big event on Tuesday May 18th at Williams Park. The postponement day is Thursday May 20th. Please ensure that your child wears suitable shoes for the practice runs each Wednesday and Thursday morning. Thank you to those parents who have sent along slippers despite this current warm weather. The children love popping their slippers on to keep their feet warm after their run. As well as the running practices, Jumpjam continues our fitness programme on the other mornings in the hall as usual.

Heart Jam - 28 May
On Friday 28 May thousands of children in schools across the country will take part in Heart Jam; New Zealand's largest aerobics class. Our Junior syndicate have been learning a new routine specially choreographed for Heart Jam by Brett Fairweather. Please bring a donation towards Heart Jam on this day and come and watch your children participating in Heart Jam.

On Thursday each class started this term's physical education programme with the children being involved in the learning and playing a range of new games. At lunchtimes the children can also play these games and it is also pleasing to see that they are taking equipment out from the PE shed to use.


Each class has begun a focus on time in their mathematics programmes. Time is a very difficult concept for children to understand and they do not accurately tell the time until they are about seven years old. In their first two years at school, they are learning about the days of the week, seasons, months of the year, calendars and how long it takes for events to occur. Year 1 are learning to tell the time to half past and o'clock on analogue clocks while the Year 2's are working with both analogue and digital clocks and learning about quarter past, quarter to and time in minutes.

Our Visual Art focus is painting and the students have had a fun time mixing primary colours to create secondary colours. They will also be learning about tints and shades over the next few weeks.

Some of our writing this term is being linked to our Inquiry and the children will be learning how to write explanations and reports as well as recounts. Our inquiry entitled 'Changes in my world' is science based and will include life cycles, and physical and chemical properties of common materials and changes that occur when materials are mixed, heated or cooled. Rooms 5 and 6 will be going on a trip this Wednesday as part of their inquiry.

The 'Hearing and Vision' tester came to school on Tuesday and assessed some of our students. You would have received a little pamphlet of the results if this involved your child.

The Speech Language Therapist also visited last week and worked with some of our students.

We had a special assembly on Friday about ANZAC day. Please talk to your child about this as they may have some further questions.

'Hooked on Books' has started this week. Thank you so much to those of you who have volunteered an hour of your time to listen to children read. I appreciate it very much and if there is anyone else who would like to do this could you please contact me?

Room 3 has begun the P.M.P. programme (Perceptual Motor Programme) and are at the moment working with happy sticks. These are wooden sticks that they use to keep in time to music. They will also be using other equipment designed to help with the development of their fine motor skills and eye tracking.

Hotdogs are available on Wednesdays throughout the term. If your child is ordering one please send the money in a named envelope to your child's teacher. 'Muritai Munchies' are available on Mondays and Fridays as usual and orders are posted into the box in the hall kitchen before school. PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE WILL BE NO MURITAI MUNCHIES ON FRIDAY 30 APRIL AND MONDAY 3 MAY.

Scholastic Book club orders close with your child's teacher on Wednesday 5 May. Make cheques to 'Scholastic books' as we are unable to take cash.

If you have any questions about your child's learning please do not hesitate to contact your child's teacher either by email or by phoning the school office on 562 8409 to make an appointment. Staff emails are their surname followed by muritai.school.nz. Please have a look at our new website and while there remember to click around the different classroom blogs. These take some time for teachers and students to put together so comments about the learning that is occurring are greatly appreciated. Have a great week.

Kind regards

Maureen Buckley

Deputy Principal