Thanks to our whānau who were able to pop in for our Learning in Action morning this week - our children love seeing you there and sharing their learning with you. As many of you comment the classroom is a very different experience from your school days!

We were delighted to announce our Student Council recently and award them their badges and certificates at last week’s assembly. 

Congratulations to:-

Joseph and Bréa  - our senior leaders

Leanne - Taupua | Support 

Alice - McAuley House

Cobie - Ligouri 

Harry - Theodore 

Nikki - Veronica 

Tom - Eymard

They are hosting their first event tomorrow - St Patrick's Day celebration with a Treasure Hunt and ask that everyone comes in as much 'green as possible!"

It has been a busy couple of weeks with many added opportunities for our tamariki - Te Maunga have shared some of their highlights over the time below but they also joined with Te Moana to have a workshop with a reporter from Kea News - see some budding reporters below who tried their hand at presenting the news.

We formally welcomed Viraneath, Luel and Mira as well as their whānau at our Pōwhiri and Mass on Wednesday. We had the joy of welcoming Fr Dyson to our parish and New Zealand as well as our wonderful teacher aide - Sandra Kern. Our grateful thanks to Fareen (Mira's mum) for making cupcakes for us all to celebrate afterwards as well as some of seniors cooking the pikelets and scones for the morning tea - what a feast. 

And after Father Dyson showed his skills in a game of cricket - Ka pai Father Dyson

Holy Week Drama - The Three Trees: Our tamariki are working hard to create and then perform this drama for you. We trust you have noted on your calendars that this will be held on Tuesday, March 26 at 5:30 pm. This will be followed by the judging of our cupcake competition which is a FOSA initiative as seen below. We look forward to seeing our tamariki’s efforts. 

Once again ngā mihi Nui|thank you very much to all our whānau who have once again transported and supervised our tamariki over a busy couple of weeks. You are awesome!

How much do you know about Caritas? This is our Catholic Aid organisation and it is part of a global network, the second largest humanitarian network in the world which ensures they can deliver directly to those who need it. The Caritas network has a rich history of listening to the most marginalised and vulnerable.  They work alongside the partners to build on existing local strengths and resources so that communities can drive their own development as self-resilience is the goal. Caritas is an organisation that is all about partnership and a 'hand up' mentality so something that we Catholics can be very proud of.

During Lent, we are challenged to remember the 3 pillars of Prayer, Almsgiving and Fasting. Praying for the success of Caritas projects is one way that you can help and another is to donate money to their work. In each classroom, we have the Caritas koha boxes so our tamariki can bring in coins to help the work of Caritas. Our end-of-term non-uniform coin donation will also help their work. Now our Bishops are appealing to you all through the Church Lenten appeal - we hope you will respond. Envelopes can be found in the back of the church and on our pamphlet display in the office if you don't want to use the option of donating online. 

St. Anthony's in community collaboration to beautify new airport fire station site

St. Anthony's has joined forces with Naylor Love, Wellington International Airport, several other Eastern suburbs schools, and Resene Paints to transform the Wellington International Airport Fire Station construction site into a vibrant and inspiring space.

Construction on a new, modern Airport Fire Station on Coutts Street, Rongotai began last year and will include landscaping work to improve the streetscape and create a spectacular public location designed for plane spotting.

This community project, aimed at beautifying the construction site, has recently seen the installation of eye-catching hoardings with unique artwork created by the students of St. Anthony's School late last year.

 

To celebrate this fantastic collaboration, an onsite BBQ was organized by Naylor Love and was attended by Mrs. Johnson and Miriama Williams representing the school board.

The school's tamariki took the lead in designing the artwork, with each hoarding featuring a striking theme and messages reflecting the creativity and aspirations of the students. Mrs. Johnson expressed her pride in the students' accomplishments and emphasised that “the project was truly student-led and their effort and dedication has created meaningful artwork that resonates with the values of our school and the community”.

The staff from Naylor Love, WIAL Fire, and Wellington Airport were highly impressed with the artistic expressions on display. The collaborative effort not only adds aesthetic value to the construction site but also fosters a sense of community pride and engagement.  Take a stroll near the airport tunnel and have a look at a great community project.

Ka pai to mahi – well done to all those students involved in this inspiring community collaboration!

Can you help us?

Treasurer vacancy

We are looking for someone to fill the volunteer position of Treasurer on the school board following the resignation of our longstanding board member, George Bouras (who will be greatly missed!).  As a member of our school's board, you will work in a team and your role is to work with the principal to prepare the annual budget for the Board’s consideration and to review the monthly financial statements prepared by AFS our school accountants.  You may also work with the auditors as required.   You may have financial skills and experience and it is helpful if you have knowledge and understanding of our school and community.  Free training and education is offered to every school board member through NZSTA’s range of learning and development opportunities, the Advisory and Support Centre and their regionally based team of advisors.

This is a great opportunity to contribute to our school and share your knowledge and skills.  The time commitment is 2 meetings per term with some time for analysis ( a couple of hours)  and conversation with the Principal from time to time.  For further information or to volunteer, please email the school on office@stants.school.nz 

Speakers’ programme 2024 – your ideas please!

Just a reminder that we would love your ideas for topics for our 2024 speakers’ programme.  Last year we were thrilled to have great community participation in our speakers’ programme.  These free community events covered building resilience in our tamariki and nutrition and physical education for our tamariki.

This year, we have a speaker booked for Term 3 who will cover cyber safety and what parents can do to keep their children safe online.  We are planning to have an event in term 2 and would like to hear from you about potential topics and/or recommendations for particular speakers.

Please email your ideas to office@stants.school.nz

 

You are invited to our Board meetings

Next week  everyone is welcome to attend our school board hui which are held twice a term at school.  The next board hui starts at 6 pm on Tuesday 19 March.

 

Ko ngā pae tawhiti whāia kia tata, ko ngā pae tata, whakamaua kia tina.

The potential for tomorrow depends on what we do today. 

Our Year 5-8 students had a wonderful day at our Cricket Fun Day on Wednesday 6 March. A huge thank you to the parents who could help. 

St Anthony’s had a lot of comments from parents at other schools about how amazingly well-behaved our tamariki are and how they are excellent sports through their encouragement and support of each other (team mates and opposition). So well done tamariki! We look forward to the next Eastern Zone fun event.

For our most recent visit to the city, we went to City Gallery and viewed an exhibition called ‘Turbo Croc 2.0’. It was a really interesting exhibition showing works by multidisciplinary artist Ahsin Ahsin, an artist from the islands of Aitu and Aitutaki. This exhibition riffs off the evolution of his ‘Croc’ character. In 2018, the first ‘Croc’ — a half human/half crocodile hybrid — emerged in Ahsin’s practice, born out of his research into amphora black-figure vase paintings (a technique common on Greek vases between the 6th – 4th century BCE.)

Drawing from 80s and 90s sci-fi films and skate culture, Ahsin’s paintings are boundary pushing manifestations of big street NRG. Characters and motifs show up in his work like makers stamps —inscriptions that shapeshift through painted surfaces and city streets. His practice now contains an entourage of characters that includes robo croc, black figure croc and flamboyant & thicc croc. 

After we viewed and discussed Ahsin’s work, we made our stamps, using math transformation techniques, on blocks of wood and polystyrene. You will hopefully see these up somewhere in the school later in the term.

To all our tamariki:

A message from the parish office:

It is wonderful to see a lot of our tamariki walking or wheeling to school. Last week we watched an interesting video on how children who live in a remote fishing village in the Philippines travel to school as well as how children travel to school from Kenya to Morocco. We are extremely lucky where we live to have such great access to our te waahi ako | place of learning. We hope you are enjoying the sights and sounds and the connections you make as you travel to school and we look forward to celebrating with you at our Whānau Breakfast at 8am Thursday 28 March, dressed in ‘whacky’ shoes.

2024 Boys Knee High Socks Update

We have been made aware that the factory producing our boy's knee-high navy/red socks is currently having production issues. You may buy navy knee-highs as an alternative in the meantime . Once they are in production again you can purchase these in-store from NZ Uniforms in Thorndon.  They have them behind the counter (under St Anne's School - they are the same as ours) or you can order them online.