Helping Hands in Advent

We are learning that Advent is a time to grow even closer to Jesus as he comes into our hearts. Our Helping Hands Christmas Tree reminds us to show The Three Cs as much as possible. Parishioner Barbara is using her helping hands in our classroom - thank you!

Welcome to Bailey

We welcome Bailey to our classroom and to our school!

Called to others: Rainbow Day

Each class dressed in rainbow colours today and brought grocery items for the Young Vinnies collection. Rimu was in red. 

Bubble fun!

We have been learning about bubbles! We know that they always go into sphere shapes, they like wet surfaces and we can see rainbow colours at the edges. We had stories and poems about bubbles and made bubble art!

Welcome to Beau

A big welcome to Beau, who has started as a New Entrant in our classroom!

Our day with Rata

Today the Rata Year 2 children joined us! We shared writing, maths and reading time in the morning - they were great buddies. In the afternoon we learned a song called 'The Marvellous Toy' which told a story and described a toy. We constructed marvellous toys ( with green bottle top eyes) from recyclable cardboard or Lego. 

Saint Mary

We are learning about Saint Mary. Here we are acting the time when Mary tells Joseph that she is going to have baby Jesus.

Thank you!

Thank you to parent helpers and PTA for helping to bring about our trip to the Art Gallery and Museum. We learned so much about viewing and making sculptures at the Art Gallery then studied dinosaurs and fossils at the Museum.  It was also very exciting to travel by bus!

Welcome Sid!

Welcome to Sid, our brand new class member.

Aim and throw

Our sports coaches are helping us to aim and throw this term - today we started with bean bags. It was lots of fun!

Welcome back!

We are enjoying our study of shapes in Geometry. We are learning to describe and group them as well as find shapes everywhere around us.

Our first cricket lesson

Here we come, Black Caps!

Movie characters

Today we are dressing as characters from movies! We brought a gold coin to help Pohutukawa raise money for a trip next term.

Which characters can you see? 

St Patrick's Olympics

Today our school held its own Olympic Games! We dressed in our House colours and competed as different countries from around the world. Here we are representing Great Britain, Philippines, U.S.A. and Samoa. We had relays, football, mini-ball and Rippa rugby after the parade and opening ceremony. Joyce House won the gold medal.

Library learning

We love going to the Kaiapoi Library! We explore new things each time - on this visit we learned how to issue our books using our own cards on the bar code machine.

Keeping the ball close to our feet

Our sports coaches have used lots of fun games to help us learn large ball control - in the photos you can see Truck and Trailer and Kick the Cone.

Welcome Odin

This week we have welcomed Odin to Rimu.  Happy schooldays, Odin!

Sports Coaching

This term our skills focus on kicking and striking large balls. We played Rob the Nest dribbling balls with our feet and Bomb Site where we tried not to touch cones with the balls!

Welcome to Term 3!

We have begun the term with a visit from the Life Education Trust educator Claire and her helper 'Harold'! We are learning how to be 'bucket fillers' for people, using The Three Cs.  

Here we are teaching friendship skills to Harold's puppet friends...

Fun with fractions!

We have a birthday boy in the room today! It is the perfect opportunity to practise fractions - cutting playdough cake into halves then quarters. One whole cut into ... helped us remember how to write a fraction. We found that two quarters matched one half and four quarters made one whole.

The Fairest of Them All

Today we watched the NZ Playhouse actors present a show. It had some fairytale characters in the story and an important message about living life in the moment and not just in front of a screen. We welcomed Tuahiwi School who joined us in the hall😀.

Using our senses

We have been learning about the senses which are part of our amazing bodies! What incredible creations we are.

Fire! Fire!

Just got the fire hats on and the Kaiapoi fire alarm went on cue...

We visit Kaiapoi Library

Science Alive!

We loved being force detectives with our Science Alive educator and parent helpers! We read the fairytale of The Three Little Pigs then explored lots of forces to work out a plan to catch the wolf....

The King's Cake

Our big book this week helped our learning about The Three Cs as well as counting 46 candles! It helped to make the candles into four groups of ten then add six. (Just like home, just grown-ups light candles.) We acted out the story then made Kings' Cakes out of play dough!

Catholic Schools Day May 16

We shared the celebration with St Joseph's School from Rangiora, beginning the day with Mass. Next we went to Kaiapoi Domain for our annual cross country event!

SPCA fundraising

Today we brought gold coins to help raise money for sick animals. We dressed as animals too and played lots of animal games!

Up the Stairs

Our Big Book this week has been Up the Stairs - here we are retelling the story using toys on real stairs.  The top stair has a dragon on it!

Our toys love stories being read to them ...

Welcome!

Welcome back to Term 2! We have had lots of fun and welcomed Ruby Jean to our classroom too.

Naomi starts! She loves Terrific Ted.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar in Rimu

Seniors teaching

On Friday we enjoyed having some Totara students sharing their art knowledge and teaching us more about mixing paint colours to achieve special effects. 

We love swimming!

We have loved working with our swimming tutors. We have practised floating on our fronts and backs and using our arms and legs with kick boards. Thank you to our instructors and parent helpers these last five weeks!

Visit by Tim Bateman

On Thursday we met an inspiring, famous rugby player called Tim Bateman. He always tries his best and so do we! 

The Last Supper

We are learning about Holy Week. We know that Jesus shared his last meal with his special friends, the Disciples. 

St Patrick's Day

On Thursday, we learned all about St Patrick and how he used a shamrock leaf to explain the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We know that our school and parish are named after him! We celebrated with Mass and then lots of games in our House groups.
Here we are, next to our school's statue of St Patrick: