Balmoral School Newsletter - 9 June 2023

Principal's Welcome

Kia ora e te whānau

Last week a parent sent me a link to an interview on National Radio with Dorsa Amir, a Developmental Psychologist. Dora researches this dynamic time in our lives and the pressures parents experience when raising children. She challenges parents to let kids experience boredom, solve their conflicts, learn how to process complex emotions and for parents not to feel worried if children don't have 600 toys. 

She believes the pressures of parenthood today result from social and economic changes. Today both parents of children are required to hold down a job to make ends meet, have smaller families and fewer children and often live apart from extended family. This causes additional stress and is particularly true of Western Society. 

She has observed in the US that adults are more likely to intervene in children's daily routines and give feedback to children. Parents, she hypothesised, are socially required to provide a lot of attention to children and then intervene in children's lives, making the children's lives highly controlled by adults. This level of control by adults has not been seen in past societies. 

The question Dorsa discusses is whether the adults micro-managing children is creating additional problems for children and, in doing so, stopping them from learning through play. 

If you are interested in some of the theories that drive our school's response to learning and how your child learns and want to think about your interactions with your child, I would encourage you to listen to the interview here. It is excellent food for some deep thought.

Nāku noa
Malcolm

New Playgrounds and Outdoor Classrooms

Over the last month we have completed two large property projects.

Finally our outdoor classrooms have had their canopy installed. These are waterproof shade covers and are great in both winter and summer. Thanks very much to the PTA, their supporters and families present and who have now left our school for this wonderful legacy for our ākonga.

Our Primary playground opened in early May and our new intermediate playground with the new matting opens on Monday. The Board would like to acknowledge the support from the MoE for the new safety matting on both playgrounds. The actual replacement of the intermediate playground has been a Board funded project.  

Many thanks to all our whānau who have offered to sell chocolates for the school or donated to the PTA instead. The library will again get a good injection of literature for tamariki to enjoy.

Unfortunately, government funding like that of health is woefully short of what our school wants to provide for our ākonga. To cover this shortfall, we are required to fundraise. As a not-for-profit in the local area, everything we raise is returned to our community. 

A big thanks also to the PTA, who put in a lot of work behind the scenes to make this happen

Mitey Bite - Mental Health Education in the Classroom

In ESOL classes we have been talking about our emotions. We are learning to identify which feelings are comfortable and which feelings are uncomfortable. Even though some emotions are uncomfortable we know we need to feel all emotions.

We are using an emotions wheel to learn some different emotions. Some children are learning that there are more emotions than happiness, sadness, and anger! Next, we looked at some drawings and had to decide whether the picture showed a comfortable or uncomfortable emotion. Children then started to name the emotions. One child noticed that the comfortable emotions look pretty similar and it is sometimes hard to name, while the uncomfortable emotions look quite different.

Our next step is to think of when they have felt some of these emotions. Where do we feel these emotions in our bodies and what does it feel like? Once we have worked out what our emotions feel like, we can experiment with what actions to take when we feel different emotions to keep ourselves regulated.

Primary School News -

Whānau Mahira

Earlier this term the Mahira children went on a trip to Mangere Mountain. We learnt the story about Hape and Kaiwhare. We are making an artwork of Kaiwhare, the taniwha. 

Over the last few weeks we have been exploring drama and this week saw the culmination of our work on Hape and Kaiwhare with our performance at assembly. The children used many of the drama techniques we had practised - movement, facial expression, use of the space (pathways) and different levels. The children had had to work with each other, whether they were in the waka, a mountain, ocean, or covering Hape’s whare with mud. We had a number of practises during the week, each time the children displaying the Balmoral Habits of thinking, persisting, creativity, managing self and communicating. 

During the performance the children needed to listen carefully to the narrators so they knew when to move and what to do. Our narrators had practised reading slowly and pausing at the right time so the ‘actors’ had time to do their actions. It was amazing to see the children go into their roles as they told the story. 

Headbands were worn. Using crayons the children closely looked at kōwhaiwhai and koru patterns to inspire their own design. Dye was painted on top of the crayon which made the black and white patterns pop out.  It was a lovely sight to see the different coloured groups on the stage: iwi - whero; mountains - kākāriki; ocean - kikorangi; Hape - kōwhai; and Kaiwhare - waiporoporo. The colourful groups helped the children know where they needed to be and the teachers to check the children were in the right place!

Thanks to all the families who managed to come along to assembly, we hope you enjoyed the children’s drama!

Intermediate School News

Evie, Cleo and Jack are hard at work on the new mural which will brighten up the garden area outside Hub 1. They worked with Craig on the design, the brief for which was 'bright, colourful plants'. They then sketched the design onto the prepared surface with crayon, and are now adding the paint layers. Some problem solving has had to happen along the way, which they have enjoyed. They have many interested observers, and have thought of ingenious ways to include these observers in the design. How they've done this will be for people to spot once the mural is finished!

Year 7 at Tui Ridge

We are looking forward to welcoming the Year 7 whānau home from Tui Ridge camp later this afternoon. The children have had a busy and fun time in glorious sunny, cold, weather. They have mountain biked, conquered mazes, challenged themselves on the giant swing, and used slingshots to cover each other in paint among many other activities.

Camp can't happen without a lot of work both beforehand and during the week. Our huge thanks go to all the parents who were able to accompany Turanga to camp, and to all of the Turanga and Specialist teams, and Dan in particular, for all the work to make it such a successful week. 

Community News