Building Progress in Te Pihinga

I popped into school today and took a moment to check on the building progress in Te Pihinga.  Everything seems to be coming along nicely.  All the walls that were to come down are gone and the window has been installed in the break out room.  It's amazing how taking out a few walls really changes the space.  I'm looking forward to seeing the progress next week when I'm back in Christchurch (I'm currently taking a break and visiting friends in Greymouth).

Here are the photos!!!

Looking into the old Rimu

Looking into the old Kauri

And it has a window!!!

Jump Rope for Heart

What a great afternoon we had with Jump Rope for Heart.

Thanks Mrs Spragg for organising!  We had a great time in our house groups moving around the various stations.  What a great idea having chill out stations too.  The cushions and pillows were fantastic and it was great to have a few minutes to chillax in the sun and catch our breath.

Here is a Photopeach slideshow of some of the photos from the afternoon.  Check it out!


Jump Rope for Heart on PhotoPeach

YMS Got Talent

Yesterday we were wowed by the finals of YMS Got Talent.  We are certainly lucky to have such a talented bunch of kids in our school!

So many kids auditioned, but there was only a limited space for finalists to perform to the whole school.  Well done to everyone who auditioned.  I know it was hard for the judges to choose who would make it through.

Well done to the finalist Tayla, Brinley, Thom, Sam, Corbin (Matai), Lucy and Alexis (Te Kākano) and Catie, Julia and Nikoli (Totara).  Your performances were amazing!

Here are some photos of the fabulous performances:

Julia's Gymnastics

Julia's Gymnastics

Tayla's Jokes

Tayla's Boxing

Brinley, Corbin, Thom and Sam's Jokes

Lucy and Alexis' Ballet

Catie Singing

Finalists with their certificats and prizes

3rd Place went to Tayla with her jokes and boxing
2nd Place went to Catie with her singing
1st Place went to Julia with her gymnastics

Great job everyone!!!

The winners!!!

Moving Classrooms

Today our adventure towards our new learning space next term began!  After spending a lot of time packing up our old rooms, today Matai and Totara moved into the rooms formerly known as Rimu and Kauri.  It was a pretty big job and it all went fairly smoothly until the weather decided not to cooperate and we had to very quickly get everything that was sitting outside on the court inside!

We now have a fairly empty room for us to work in and a room that has two classes worth of stuff in it!  It will continue to be an adventure until the holidays and the builders come in and transform two rooms into one.  We can't wait!!!

We had lunch 'picnic style' in the room formerly known as Kauri.  We had great fun blogging about our moving day with a buddy from Totara on their personal blogs.

A MASSIVE thank you to Megan, Jodie and Vanessa who helped out with the move today.  Your help made the move go so much smoother!

Here are some photos of our picnic lunch

Song of the Week - Week 10

This weeks Song of the Week is "Team Ball Player Thing" which is performed by a bunch of amazingly talented Kiwi performers with the intention to raise money to help Cure Batten Disease.

Here is the link to the lyrics video:





There is also a funny video that talks about how the song was made:

Speech Writing

Every year we have senior students represent YMS against other schools at local speech competitions.  This year we decided to have speech writing as a whole school writing focus and have a whole school speech competition at the end.

Over the last few weeks, students in Matai have been learning about how to structure a speech by starting with an introduction, highlighting three arguments on their topic and then concluding their speech.  We call this the hamburger speech model.

Our speech topic was "Schools should not give Homework".  All students in Matai had to present their completed speech to the rest of the class.  Three students from the class were then chosen to represent Matai at the whole school speech competition.

The school speech competition was held on Friday 11th September.  Tayla, Tilly and Xavier represented Matai.

Val Carter (Chairperson of Fendalton Waimairi Community Board - Christchurch City Council) kindly came to school to be our guest judge.

You can see Tayla, Tilly and Xavier's speeches below:








Well done to Xavier who took out 1st place, followed by Tayla in 2nd place and Tilly in 3rd place.  You guys were all amazing!

Kids in Town

On a sunny Thursday 20th August the whole school got to experience a trip into the central city to perform as part of Kids in Town.

At 11.30am we jumped aboard two buses and headed into the city.  Everyone was very excited about what was going to happen.

Once in town, we piled off the buses and into the Christchurch City Council Building.  I don't think the staff and other people in the building really knew what was going on!

We were lucky enough to hear Aranui School's Kapahaka and Pacifica groups perform before us.  They were fantastic!

After a bit of waiting around, it was our turn!

Rimu performed their Jump Jam first...

Followed by the seniors Kapahaka....

.... and Kauri's Folk Dancing.

 Finally it was our turn to perform the song "Tohora Nui" with Totara and Te Kākano!!!

To finish our school's performance, the whole school performed "Mati Mahi Ka Ora" complete with NZSL.

All the YMS performances were amazing!  We looked and sounded fantastic!  All the parents who came to watch had huge smiles on their faces and there was lots of applause!

Next stop was a walk to the Botanical Gardens for lunch and a bit of a play (well deserved!)

The walk to the gardens was very exciting with lots of kids commenting on all the things happening in town.  It is a very busy place with lots of building work and a lot more tourists wandering around these days.

It was a bit of a rush to make it back to the City Council building to get the bus back to school.  We were all pretty tired and the trip back was certainly a lot quieter then the trip into town!  

Once back at school we were all very tired so we finished the day with a play and some quiet time in class.

What a fabulous day!  Everyone did YMS proud!