We are thrilled to say that St Anthony’s is off to the Zoo this Monday albeit virtually! Thanks to Wellington Zoo and Francesca von Lanthen’s prompt response, all our tamariki will be joining a video call with the Zoo team. The focus is on Caring for Animals, specifically what that looks like right now while we are in Lockdown and the staff will even include a few Believe it or Not facts for us too! Thanks, Wellington Zoo and Francesca for a great start to Monday’s learning. 

Just a reminder that at this stage we are planning to have:-

• Te Maunga Camp in Week 9 
• The Grandparents Mass will be rescheduled, most likely early Term 4 
• Teachers Only Day at this stage is rescheduled for the final day of the term. Again we will confirm this as the see how NZ progress through the Covid Levels

Thanks for all the messages of support to the staff over these weeks. We really appreciate it. We look forward to all our tamariki joining us for Onesie or PJs day tomorrow!

We’ve been shopping! New resources for our school

The Board has approved the purchase from school funds of Decodables for Te Ākau to meet the needs of our growing junior class.  We have also approved the purchase of 2 more Dash robots and the lease of10 new iPads from our Bazaar income.

Decodables for our growing junior class

What are decodables you may be asking?  Decodable books are designed to support a method of teaching reading using phonics.  The programme teaches children phonics skills in a sequential and systematic way so that they can learn the sounds (phonemes) and the letters that represent them (graphemes) and then practise and apply this knowledge through reading a text that makes sense. This ensures that every beginning reader will experience success in their reading from their very first book Read this article to learn more.

Dash robots Dash is a small mobile robot that is full of character and drives around making noises and shining lights. Dot is its sidekick, and it, too, is full of character. The robots help our tamariki learn the basics of robotics and coding in classroom settings. We have all loved coding with our Dash robot and now we have more... We have purchased 2 Dash robots with our 2021 bazaar income to add to our robot collection so that all our tamariki have more opportunities to experiment and code on an individual or small group basis.

iPads We have decided to add to iPads with the lease of 10 second-generation iPads for use within our classes from our 2021 bazaar income.  Our tamariki use these iPads for a range of educational activities including maths games, art and design, reading practice, filming, photography and working with our robots.

The Early Days...

Alina’s Lockdown

We went into Lockdown with very short notice, but we managed to get into our online work with just a few hours of preparation time. Coincidentally, the day we went into lockdown was my birthday, and it was really cool and funny having a lockdown birthday, getting wishes from classmates through a video call, and hearing 15 kids singing Happy Birthday on a Meet call! We’ve posted lots of work on Seesaw and have been using Google Hangouts to keep in touch with our teachers and classmates. We also call our friends to see how they are going and work with them to get work done. We have class calls throughout the day to check in everyone’s progress and see if everyone is on the right track.  Our work has been fun, challenging, and creative and online learning has been fun and different from our usual classroom.

Isobel’s Lockdown

Hi my name is Isobel and this is my experience of Lockdown: When we first got the news that we might be going into lockdown I was quite startled and didn’t think much of it until Jacinda Ardern mentioned the Delta variant. I was shocked and kept thinking how it could have gotten into NZ. I think at some point I kind of started to panic even though I knew it was all ok. The next day I went online at ten-thirty and had a call with my class at eleven. Not everything was bad though, I got heaps of time for art and other activities that I enjoyed. Sleeping in wasn’t so bad either. Our classes weren’t scheduled meaning we could meet up with our friends online and do any activity any time! I know that our prime minister made the right decision and that lockdown will be over soon!

Chance and Probability

Te Awa have been learning about Chance and Probability during distance learning, and doing some fun investigations to explore what this means. The first thing we did was make some colour spinners together on a video call, and talk about the probability of our colours being landed on!

Luna has some surprising results as her highest probability was red with 4/8 and the most unlikely to come up was yellow with 1/8. ‘Strangely the winner was yellow, maybe it was because the hole in the cardboard wasn’t right in the middle, it was a bit towards the orange side so maybe that’s why it won - very strange!’ Luna

‘Pink has the highest probability of coming up because there are more. The most unlikely to be landed on is purple because there is only one. The fractions are the probability of each colour being landed on.’ Emily K

Next we did a coin flip investigation, to see what the probability of landing on heads and tails was and if we could make accurate predictions based on this.

After Tamiregnaw got the results of his first 10 coin flips, he was able to make some great predictions for his next set of 20 coin flips!

Bianca was able to describe the chance of landing heads and tails as an even chance or ½. Her predictions were close to her results after 10 coin flips and she then realised she could use this to help her with her next prediction for 20 coin flips!

Believe it or Not?

During distance learning, Te Awa has also been doing some interesting work on our ‘Believe it or Not?’ Inquiry. 

Betty researched the Weta, an animal with some quite unbelievable facts!

‘A curious thing about Weta is that they can listen through their knees, and are older than most dinosaurs!’ Betty

Jessie said ‘I enjoyed this activity. It was fun, I found out some interesting facts about sloths!’. Look at the surprising facts she found in her research.. Do you believe them or not?!

For one of our activities ‘My Unbelievable Environment’ we made up some crazy facts about our local area, so interesting that no one could resist a visit. Check out Ethan’s hilarious take on some places you may know (but not recognise!) in Seatoun!

Enjoy Cardinal John's message today...

Lockdown can be really hard on families.  In this trying time, coming together to pray can help cultivate healthy relationships and connect us to God.  Sometimes we don’t really know where to start, or just need that little bit of encouragement…  Visit the Archdiocesan website and Facebook pages for resources and inspiration:

• For couples:  The Marriage Ministry Team regularly posts useful tips and resources for couples at this time.   Visit us here.
• For Families:  Praying together as a family can be a challenge anytime, and even more so when we are in lockdown – but perhaps this time at home also offers new opportunities!  Follow our Facebook page for pointers to praying with your children and building a family of faith in this time.
• For young people:  It’s not easy being away from friends, feeling isolated at home even if surrounded by family. It’s easy to question where God is in the situation… The truth is that we are never alone, God is always with us. Check out @ADWyoungchurch on Instagram and Facebook to connect with other young people and find some inspiration during lockdown.

We are excited to announce that we are fundraising with the Entertainment Memberships. 

Entertainment Memberships have thousands of up to 50% off and 2 for 1 offers for dining, takeaway, activities, local shopping, travel and services in our local area. Entertainment is now 100% digital, so it’s the best things about the iconic Entertainment Book on your phone.

Get out and about and support your local community at the same time.

Please take time to read this article and remember each time you enter our church (assemblies included) that we need to scan in. Thanks in anticipation