Senior School Reflections

WELCOME TO WEEK 9

This week has been very exciting!

With Christmas coming up, the end of the year approaching, and Graduation for Year 6, there is so much happening. It’s all so exciting!

The Year 6s have been getting ready for Graduation. They’ve been creating their own pages for the Graduation yearbook, using everything from watercolours to oil pastels. They have been working so hard.

The Year 3s and 4s went to camp at The Briars in Mount Martha. They enjoyed lots of different activities like canoeing, the giant swing, hut building, and more. They were very tired afterwards, especially because they had the swimming carnival the next day. What a busy week for them!

Congratulations to Red House for winning the swimming carnival by a close 12 points ahead of Green. This is Red House’s fourth time winning the carnival!

Thank you, everyone, and good luck to the Year 5s who have their captaincy speeches on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Callum and Bridget

As the end of the year approaches and our time as Art Captains comes to an end, we’ve been looking back on everything we’ve done. From the production to our weekly art lessons, this year has been filled with a real love for the arts.

At the beginning of the year, we started rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast, and later we performed it at the Town Hall for all the parents and teachers. In Visual Arts, we created self-portraits, made stop-motion videos, and worked on so many other fun projects.

We hope that next year the arts will continue to be celebrated just as much as they were this year. We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Stella and Sienna

Sports Captains:

PIP - Red

They announced Yellow in third place, and the tension between Red House and Green House was so stressful - it was crazy. But before I tell you who won, let’s go back to when we got off the bus. We were ready to go with a can-do attitude, and personally, I was really nervous because it was all of the Year 6s’ last swimming carnival!

The races were intense. Everybody was fighting for first place! After lots of 50m and 25m races, we finally got halfway (lunch time). They announced the scores, but even if one house was in the lead, they hadn’t won yet. 

Yellow House was coming third, and they were now promised 2x points for every race because they weren’t as high on the leaderboard as Green House and Red House.

Then Green and Red were separated by only two points!

GREEN HOUSE = 174

RED HOUSE = 176

So many events went by, and we kept applying more sunscreen. Finally, we got to the end. First, we did our casual Year 6 dance, and then Red and Green were biting their nails waiting for the result…

RED HOUSE TAKES THE WIN!!!!

LUCY - Green

Yesterday was the swimming carnival. Everyone wanted to do every stroke, which was great because the points were really close—but Pip will explain that!

The first event was the Medley Relay. Everyone was a supportive teammate and super competitive. The second event was Freestyle, which was easier because everyone knows how to do it, so lots of people did 25 metres (one lap) or 50 metres (two laps).

After freestyle, we did Breaststroke. Breaststroke was good because it’s a nice, slow stroke, so it gave everyone a bit of a rest! After that, we had the NOODLE RACE, which I think was a lot of people’s favourite—even the Year 6s and 5s.

Then it was finally lunch, which gave everyone some energy for the next race. After lunch was the hardest stroke: Butterfly. Butterfly was tough, but everyone managed to push through it—even in the 50 metres—because you got double house points.

After the most tiring stroke came another slow and easy one: Backstroke. And lastly, we had the relay. Everyone was up and at ’em, which was great for their houses. We finished the day with the Year 6s’ special event (the dance!).

MAX - Green

Everyone did so amazingly. Everyone tried their best to win points for their house and to do every stroke—so many people swam that we even went into overtime.

Thank you to all the teachers who helped, and a big thank you to Mrs Birch for setting everything up. Everyone had so much fun! And a big well done to Red House for taking the win for the third time in a row!

Charlotte - Yellow

BOOM, BANG, SPLASH — we were off to the swimming carnival! Each year, Year 3 to Year 6 compete in the carnival, and this year it was held at Ashburton in the outdoor pool. Red House won again, and as Yellow House Sport Captains, we kinda knew they would, since they seem to win every year! But we were really there for the fun. Yellow House doesn’t have as many people as Red and Green, so we didn’t score as high, but we still had an awesome day.

A huge thank you to Clements and Sydney’s mum, Laura, for her support and pride in Yellow House, and to Miss Daws and Miss Harrick for helping the Sport Captains with the day’s schedule. A big thank you to Miss O’Dwyer for doing the scores and points, and to Miss Birch for organising and running the whole swimming carnival!

We might not have won, but we definitely had fun - whether we were in the pool racing or on the sidelines cheering and screaming our heads off!

As this is our last Yellow House Sport Captain newsletter, let’s fill the pool with happy tears, smiles, and laughter.

Maximilian - STEM

This year has been a blast in the STEM area of our school. We’ve done so much and had so many opportunities. Probably the most exciting thing that happened was getting the 3D printer. The printer has opened so many new doorways for our school to explore in the future, and it has brought joy and wonder to the faces of all our students.

Something I found really interesting when we were learning about the 3D printer was the platform you design on. The website you use to make your objects is called Tinkercad. All you have to do is drag and drop shapes, merge them together, and create your own object to print. It was also really cool and satisfying to watch the 3D printer slowly build the design you made.

Another thing I really enjoyed (and hopefully you did too) was coding. I have a strong passion for coding, so I was super excited when I found out we were going to do it.

I hope you all had an amazing year full of mind-blowing STEM, and I hope you have a great end to the year!

Ms Clare Smith

Senior Leader