Newsletter – Week 7, Term 3 2024 – Botany Downs Primary School

Week 7 Term 3, 2024

Kia ora koutou Parents and BDS Whānau,

Last week, our students performed at the dance festival held at Somerville Intermediate, performing two dances that made us all proud. It was a real privilege to see our students so enthusiastic and showing their Botany Best.

A special thank you goes to Mrs Jeffs and Miss Smith, who choreographed the dances, purchased costumes over the weekend, and led lunchtime practises. Thank you to our parents and caregivers for supporting these amazing students.

Your child’s safety is our top priority. We kindly ask for your cooperation in ensuring safe and legal parking on the streets surrounding our school.

Please avoid parking across driveways, as this can cause inconvenience and potential hazards.

Any parking concerns reported to the school are forwarded to Auckland Transport Concerns/Reporting a parking issue. This will ensure a parking warden will patrol the roads around the school. We also encourage our community to forward concerns to help support us. (see below). Thank you for helping us maintain a safe environment for all our students.

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

Coming up @ BDS…

Thurs 5 Sept – School Board meeting
Mon 9 Sept – PTA meeting
Tues 10 Sept – HPPA Boys Soccer / HPPA Rehu Tai Speech finals
Wed 11 Sept – HPPA Boys Soccer
Wed 18 Sept – PTA Jesters Pie Day / School Board meeting
Fri 20 Sept – PTA School Disco
Tues 24 Sept – Celebration of Learning:
classes open 3.15 pm – 5.00 pm
Fri 27 Sept – Last Day of Term 3

** click here to view more of the school calendar **

Contact AT – Parking Infringement

SCHOOL NEWS

Year 5 and 6 Speech Competition – Kotahitanga

Congratulations to all of our Year 5 and 6 speech finalists – Gemma Brealey, Jacob Kong, Cooper Ellis, Shorya Saharan, Amelia Berkett, Ruby Buckley, Jay Kim, Lisa Huang, Gabriel Divinagracia and Reuben Tate.

1st Place – Ruby Buckley

2nd Place – Reuben Tate

3rd Place – Cooper Ellis

HPPA Lit Quiz

Over the last two terms, the Lit Quiz group of students have been working hard preparing for the HPPA Lit Quiz. They read through a selected list of 10 books by top New Zealand children’s authors, taking careful note of details around the characters, settings, and plots. The weekly meetings held in the library involved fun book-related activities including two author interview videos, sharing book reviews, awarding books with medals, quiz practices, and writing a letter to an author.

From this group, six students represented BDS at last week’s competition held at Baverstock Oaks. It was a fun event involving 19 local schools, and our two teams enjoyed the challenging experience. Thank you to the whole group for taking part in Lit Quiz, and well done to: Amelia, Cooper, Mackenzie, Tanya, Jay, and April for giving your Botany Best at the competition.

Daffodil Day

Our Councillors were busy selling daffodil stickers and ribbons on Friday morning to raise funds for the Cancer Society’s annual Daffodil Day. Thank you to everyone who supported this very worthwhile cause; together we raised $405.

Junior Cross-country

Congratulations to our Year 0-3 students who took part in the cross-country on Friday. We were lucky to have beautiful weather, lots of whānau supporters, and resilient runners. Thank you to everyone who helped this event run smoothly, and our community for cheering on the children.

Certificates will be awarded to 1st, 2nd, 3rd place getters at Friday’s assembly. A huge thank you to our wonderful teachers; Ms O’Driscoll and Mrs Holmes, for organising our amazing Junior Cross-country this year. Well done to all the runners. Special congratulations to our top 5 runners…

	Year 0 Boys	Year 0 Girls	Year 1 Boys	Year 1 Girls
1st	Ephraim Kazaroho Rm 10	Parris Singh Rm 5	Uriel Su’a Rm 8	Luna Lopez Woo Rm 8
2nd	Kade Hubbard Rm 5	Megna Swaraj Rm 5	Nathan Mostert Rm 7	Suzanna Kamakorewa Rm 7
3rd	Vincent Wang Rm 5	Ranaya Galahitiyawa Rm 8	Jorawar Singh Rm 6	Hazel McNeill Rm 6
4th	Nazem Almayah Rm 10	Charlotte Koka Rm 10	Nathan Mighel Rm 6	Starzia Erskine Rm 7
5th	Ryker Christian Rm 5	Xena-Leigh Hamilton Rm 8	Baghel Singh Rm 8	Angela Cajayon Rm 6

	Year 2 Boys	Year 2 Girls	Year 3 Boys	Year 3 Girls
1st	Gabe Jacobs Rm 4	Aahana Perera Rm 1	Noah Ellis Rm 29	Eleanor Booth Rm 27
2nd	Blake Sills Rm 4	Cassia Grisselle Rm 3	Vito Feng Rm 29	Lily Hodgson Rm 27
3rd	Jordan Claasen Rm 2	Lavinia Chen Rm 1	Xavier Marck Rm 29	Skyla McCallister-Lee Rm 28
4th	Blake Coxen Rm 3	Sarah Tbakhi Rm 2	Braxton Sills Rm 28	Nella Ranchhod Rm 29
5th	Luca Takaiti Rm 3	Olivia Chen Rm 4	Beau Scott & Ian Wang Rm 30	Alice Wang Rm 30

** Check out the school Facebook page for more fab pics of the Junior Cross-country!

Dance Festival

On Thursday last week, our wonderful BDS dancers took the stage to perform at the HPPA Dance Festival. Our awesome Year 3 and 4 group performed Better Place which was choreographed by Mrs Jeffs and her daughter Samantha Jeffs. We also had our amazing Year 5 and 6 group perform Wildfire which was choreographed by Miss Smith. These dancers performed their hearts out and we were so proud of them.

PTA Notice

Disco – Friday 20th September – Can you help?
We need some support from parents to help set up the hall and sell food, glow sticks etc. Please return the form sent home last week if you are able to help us at the disco.

Tickets and vouchers are now available for purchase via Kindo: beat the queue on the night and purchase today. Tickets $6 each and vouchers available in $4, $6, $8 and $10 values. Vouchers are used at the disco to purchase: slices of pizza, popcorn, lolly bags, chocolate bars, juice boxes and glow products – $2 per item.

Years 0-3, 5.30pm – 6.30pm Years 4-6, 7pm – 8.30pm

School Assembly

We invite you to attend our school assembly on Friday at 9.10 am. We will be presenting our Botany Best Certificates and Values Bookmarks. This week our item will be from Year 5, Room 23.

Our BDS Capabilities

Congratulations to our following tamariki who have shown their Botany Best by displaying our Capabilities: Tavis Lee, Sarah Tbakhi, Hailie Chan, Joanna Qiao, Kade Hubbard, Cici Peng Nathan Mostert, Ava Shahsavari, Leah Cronje՚, Wathsilu Paranagama, Christian Ilalio, Quintus Wang, Kruz Oti, Jia Zhang, Skylar Yip, Aidan Malez Ocampos, Isla Jones, Amelia Klee, Sana Shikoda, Shana Chen, Ariyan Atrushi, Selina Mulipola, Aaria Jones & Eason Dong.

Our BDS Values

Congratulations to the following tamariki who have displayed our school values. Our focus value for the second half of Term 3 is Respect, Manaakitanga. Bianca Zhang, Baraa Almayah, Luca Takaiti-Kerr, William Faletau, Isabella Hudson, Sachie Ogura, Ethan Pope, Renee Li, Amber Ren, Mason Huang, Aryan Karthick, Movindu Konara Mudiyanselage, Arlie Clements-Goh, Fedya Chibel, Zewen Chen, Mia Jack, Cooper Ellis, Vivaan Sharma, Makyla McColl, Ariana Reikop, Sonny Palalagi-Waru, Keileb Dell, Charlotte Walsh, Vito Feng & Whitney Chan.

Fun & Learning @ BDS

Year 2, Room 1: French Landmarks & Tongan Language Week
In Room 1 we learned about different landmarks in France and painted some beautiful backgrounds for them.

During Tongan Language Week this term, we learned how to greet and farewell each other in Tongan. We also made some collaborative Tapa Cloth art.

Year 4, Room 18: Monet Paintings
Room 18 has been learning all about Impressionist painting this term, and have been looking at the work of the French artist, Claude Monet. We practised our Impressionist techniques, and created our own version of his famous Waterlillies piece.

Children Turning Five – Enrolment

If your child is turning five in the next six (6) months please ensure you enrol them as soon as possible. Our roll is steadily growing and we need to plan for classes and teachers during the year.