Week 4 Newsletter, Term 4, 2023

Together We Grow – Ka Tupu Kotāhi ai Tātou

Kia ora OVS whanau and Caregivers,

I live by the old mantra “no one ever learnt to sail on a flat sea!” and I can say with confidence, that from my opinion, our recent OVS Ag day was successfully navigated through some rather choppy conditions. Being my first Ag Day, I was nervous enough, but with the weather making it’s presence felt, I thought we were in for a bumpy ride! But despite the occasional waves I felt the day was a huge success. The students attitudes and behaviour were excellent, the array of creative work on display was wonderful and the variety of activities and food were much appreciated. As a staff we have met to record our learnings from the day and are all excited and looking forward to 2024, bigger and better than ever.

As we all know, days like this don’t just happen and we always have an army of busy workers behind the scenes making sure everything is ready. So, to everyone who contributed to make the day so successful THANK YOU and please accept our gratitude!

Board of Trustees Pool Initiative

Hot off the Press!

The OVS Board have moved to open our School Pool to school whanau for a minimal cost over the upcoming summer Swimming Season. Please watch the next weeks newsletter which will include all the relevant details and how to sign up.

New tamariki (students) to OVS

Welcome to these New OVS Super Stars: Lacey, Luna, Esther and Keira 🙂

Star Spot – Celebrating Student Learning

A huge OVS congratulations to our R.U.R.U award winners.

Well done to Max, Dre and Ivy. Awesome Learning!

Enrolments 2024 – Reminder

If you, or any whanau you may know, are intending to enrol students next year. Please get in touch with us as soon as possible to assist with our planning.

HERO App

The Hero App is a fantastic communication tool that allows teachers to share each student’s work with parents and caregivers digitally. Thank you for downloading the Hero App, and if you are yet to download it (approximately 50% have downloaded so far), please do so as soon as possible. If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch.

Book Fair

Walt Disney said “there is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on treasure island,” and I experienced just how true this statement is with the enthusiasm and energy our kids shared for last week’s “Hats off to Reading – Scholastic Book Fair.”

They really sunk their teeth into the hat making competition too!

I’m hoping all the new additions to your shelves bring joy, learning and wonderful adventures to the children and their parents. It warms my heart to see so many of our kids interested and excited about books.

With over $2000 sold, you all contributed to the rewards that will allow us to update our school library’s non-fiction section in 2024. Yaaaaaah!!! Meaning we can continue the legacy of our school library and keep books in our children’s hands.

From my heart to yours, and on behalf of our kids, past, present and future, thank you

Darcie

Ag & Flower Day

Massive Shout Outs!!

Thank you to:

Our amazing OVS teaching and support staff for their time, commitment and dedication in helping their students to complete their amazing exhibits and displays for the big day!

Whangarei A & P Society – generously sponsoring of the ribbons and engraving of our trophies and cups (please see flyer regarding the big Whangarei A & P Show coming up in December!);

PTA members for their fabulous food tent;

Julia and Zoe for the phenomenal face painting;

Rachael Lafon from Whangarei A & P Society for kindly volunteering her time to judge the Ag animals;

Melanie Hudson (aka The Coffee Girl) for the delicious and much needed coffees;

“Poppa” Allan for driving the students around the track in his spectacular truck and trailer;

Gareth Bourke for the awesome quad bike trailer rides;

Libelle Group for providing their fantastic free school lunches;

Our wonderful Mr T and super sidekick Sid for their hard work preparing the animal pens and field

Property Update

Asbestos removal has commenced, however more asbestos has been discovered and requires further testing. Until we have the results, work has been stopped.

PTA Message

Raffle

There will be one booklet per family – please check your eldest child’s bag (if we haven’t managed to get them out this week then it will be early week 5). We have lots of extra tickets so selling more than one booklet is encouraged! Email pta@otaika.school.nz or talk to Jen to arrange another booklet.
If you can’t sell your booklet, please return all tickets so that we can pass these on to someone who can.

The PTA have put in a huge amount of effort this year, getting prizes from the wider community as well as our school family businesses. We would really appreciate it if you could try your best to sell these tickets – email around work, your sports clubs etc.

The funds raised from this are going toward camp fees in 2024.

A big thank you to our sponsors – please support these businesses where you can.

Max

Barkers
Timezone Whangarei
Nailed it by Victoria B
Russell Law

In First

In First Printing

Yovich Engineering

Kim Leah Photography

Hauora Whakamana

Mean’s Vietnamese Cafe

E Sports Gaming

Extreme Mini Golf Whangarei

2 Ducks Contracting

Tipsie Nail Studio

Bunnings Whangarei

Golden Bay Cement

New World Regent
Flipout
Brooke Gibson at Ray White
Shoe Pulse Whangarei

Ag Day

A big list of thank yous from the PTA – especially given the weather this year.
To everyone who baked for us – both the cake auctions and the home baking for sale. Thank you to the helpers on the day – Mr T, Alana Lyall, Georgia Shepherd, Lisa, Adam, Nicky, Asher’s Grandma Christine Grimmer, Amy and Lauren.The face painters were amazing! Thank you Julia Tapp and Zoe Quayle. They are known as the Painted Poppets and can be found here. The quad and mini truck was also a huge hit with the kids, a big thank you to Gareth, Rick and Allen Campbell. Thanks also to the Coffee Girl for providing barista coffee and donating a portion of sales to our fundraiser. Thanks to whānau for supporting our fundraising efforts. We made $2160 profit which will go a long way to funding the classroom grants for 2024. Teachers use these to purchase the ‘extras’ (and some necessary things) such as certificates, stickers, decorations, games, baking, STEM activities, extra pencils/pens/stationery, prizes (i.e. for reading challenges etc), lego, glitter etc.

If you have any feedback please email pta@otaika.school.nz. We’re keen to hear your ideas, but do need to hear them in advance so we can put them into place.

Internet Connection for Home

The Ministry of Education together with Manaiakalani Education Trust and EDOS are supporting school communities by assisting whanau who currently have school aged children and do not have access to the internet. This initiative offers free internet connection and technical support, as well as covering the monthly internet cost until 30 June 2024.

For a household to be eligible…

A household must have at least one child in school year 0 to 15* who routinely stays at the address for parts of every month when they could be expected to do schoolwork.
1. A household would be eligible if a child lives at the address part-time.
e.g. Under a shared custody arrangement, or, routinely for some school days every month as part of the extended whanau.

2. The household shouldn’t already have an Internet connection.

*Years 14 and 15 refer to Teen Parent Units

For more information, please visit https://edos.kiwi/

Broken glass outside school grounds

Please be careful when walking out the school gates as there may be the odd small piece of broken glass on the road, grass verge and perhaps the footpath.

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