Newsletter, Week 3, Term 1 2023 – Botany Downs Primary School

Kia ora koutou BDS whānau, Week 3, Term 1, 2023

We hope this newsletter finds you and your whānau safe and well. A sincere thank you for your understanding, support and patience as we navigated these extreme weather conditions. We have been very fortunate and our kura has not suffered any damage so we can confirm that school will be open tomorrow, Wednesday 15 February.

We are looking forward to our Meet the Teacher and Whānau Picnic this Thursday 16 February between 5.00pm and 7.00pm. This is a great time to meet other Whānau and the class teacher. Important information will be presented by each class teacher in their classrooms (see times below). We still welcome you to bring along your own food and join us for our whānau picnic, however, this will now be under our school canopies as our field will be too wet. The Year 5 parents camp meeting will still go ahead at 7.00pm in Room 11.

Last week we included the photos of our new senior playground to be built in term two, and this week we are able to include the photo of our additional piece of play equipment for our junior playground. This will be built alongside the junior playground and we will reposition our jungle gym bars. Our Flying Fox is not working at present but we are able to get this fixed. Sadly we also need to remove the tree in the junior playground as it has become unsafe. We are all very excited about our new playground additions.

Welcome back to school and we are so looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow.

Ngā mihi nui,
Vicki Parkins, Principal – Tumuaki (vickip@botanydowns.school.nz)

Coming up @ BDS…
Wed 15 Feb – School Board meeting, 6.00pm
Thurs 16 Feb – Whānau Picnic & Meet the Teacher
Thurs 16 Feb – Yr 5 camp meeting, Room 11, 7.00pm
Wed 22 Feb – No uniform day – House colours
Mon 6 Mar – PTA meeting
Mon 13 Mar – Yr 5 camp departs (returns Tues 14 Mar)
Thurs 16 Mar – Yr 6 parent camp meeting, 6.00pm
Wed 22 Mar – Jester’s Pie Day
Wed 22 Mar Parent/teacher interviews, 3.20-5.10pm
Thurs 23 Mar – Parent/teacher interviews, 3.20-6.10pm
Fri 24 Mar – BDS Powhiri, 9.15am

Whānau Picnic & Meet the Teacher 2023

Thursday 16 February – 5.00pm – 7.00pm

Meet the Teacher Times:

Between 5.00 – 5.30pm: Drop in and meet Mrs Keenan in ESOL room

5.30pm: Junior school classrooms

6.00pm: Middle School classrooms

6.30pm: Senior School classrooms

7.00pm: Year 5 Camp meeting-Room 11

Homework for Whānau!

Knowing your tamariki is VERY important to us so we have a form for you to complete and return to school on our Whānau and Meet the Teacher evening this week (follow below link or see attached file). The information you give us will enable us to know more about your child and how to best encourage and support them to achieve their best this year.

Please return this form when you visit the classroom, or you can scan and email it to your child’s teacher. Hard copies will also be available at the office.

Homework for whānau form – click here

SCHOOL NEWS

Botany Best Awards

Botany Best: Anton Birchler, Eleanor Booth, Vito Feng, Azalea Ngo, Lavinia Chen, Jasgun Mavi, Lexi Jones, Lauren Hayes, April Clements-Goh, Lieol Strickland, Aaryan Verma, Emma Botha, Shrihaan Harridass, Caleb Uy, Qais Balasmeh, Jess Bredenbeck, Nikit Nandan, Kaylin Walker, Isabella Liang, Liah Van Wyk, Hadassah Shamuel, Ann Wang & Samarveer Parmar.

These awards will be presented at Friday’s school assembly.
Assembly start time is 9:10am; please be inside and seated by 9:05am.

Sod Turning Ceremony

A site blessing and turning of the sod ceremony took place at our Kura last year. This marked a significant milestone for our community.

Botany Downs School Staff, Kerry Budd representing the School Board, Bernard Cheng representing the Ministry, Adam Flemming representing Savills Construction and our Kaumatua John Dobson and Kaumatua Logan Dobson met before sunrise to officially commence the construction phase of our brand new classrooms.

The blessing and ceremony cleared the way for onsite work to begin at our Kura.

It was an incredible occassion and we look forward to inviting our community and tamariki into our brand new classrooms when it is complete.

Driving to School

Please can we ask all our adults who drive their tamariki to school to do so safely.

We have adults that are dropping off our tamariki by:

Parking across our neighbours’ driveways
Parking across our teachers’ carpark driveway
Making three point turns in front of our crossing
Letting children out on the road-side of the car

Please do not do this, we need to put the safety of our tamariki first.

We are so fortunate to have five access gates to our school and a Walking School Bus. These are a huge help for enabling your child to walk to school or park and walk.

Sports News…

This term we have cricket and softball inter-school competitions happening. The cricket sign-up has already happened with a great turnout. Softball sign-ups will be happening soon so if your child is keen, please ask them to listen to the daily notices.

Basketball will also be starting up later this term with Mr Yoon, and Mrs Jeffs and Miss Smith will be starting a dance group for year 3-6 students. Again please remind your child to listen to the daily notices for more information on these sports.

Swimming sports are happening in week 5 for the senior school. From this event students will be selected for the inter-school competition.

Rachael Jeffs Sports Coordinator (rachaelj@botanydowns.school.nz)

BDS Refreshed Values and our Expectations

After staff and student discussion and feedback we have developed our school wide expectations for our Values. Feedback from our whānau is very important to us, so if you would like to offer your thoughts, ideas, reflections around any or all of these expectations, please email Joanne Hughson: joanneh@botanydowns.school.nz

Respect/ Manaakitanga	Resilience/Manawanui
Show courtesy and manners Demonstrate cultural awareness and understanding Include and accept everyone Be kind and caring towards each other Cooperate and collaborate together	Don’t give up Learn from our mistakes Show a Growth mindset attitude Acknowledge our feelings Use self regulation strategies to respond appropriately
Relationships/Whanaungatanga	Responsibility/Kaitiakitanga
Friendly, welcoming and kind Caring and supportive Active listening Helpful Positive communication	Respect and care for all property Care for our environment Look after each other Show commitment towards responsibilities Accountable for my actions

LIBRARY NEWS

Caught Reading…

Our wall display is underway… please continue to send us photos of your children (or yourself) being Caught Reading so we can fill the whole space! Email your pics to: vanessah@botanydowns.school.nz. Thank you!