Principal's Page

Kia Ora Friends

Shush Deepavali, Tuhanu Diwali diyan bohat bohat vadhaiyan - Happy Diwali to all.

This Tuesday and Wednesday we celebrated Diwali at Western Heights. Teachers Smita D'Lima and Olivia Leaning put a huge amount of thought, time, work, effort and creativity into ensuring this was the biggest and best Diwali ever celebrated at Western Heights school. My sincerest thanks to them for an outstanding result.

For this year and onwards our Diwali celebrations will be called Diwali Mela - the word ’Mela’ in Hindi means a ‘Fair’ or exhibition. 

Our Diwali Mela this year ran over two days - Tuesday and Wednesday. Over the two days classes came in groups to visit and experience the Diwali Mela. 

There were many different stations set up - Henna station, Rangoli Craft Station, Diwali Burfi station, Diwali photo booth, Diwali Story Telling Station and seven Diwali Pods. 

Room 19 children were divided up into seven groups and each group was set up as a Pod. The groups had been researching on their chosen Diwali topic and an Indian City. 

They gathered information from the internet, discussed it and then recorded it by creating a colourful google slide. Room 19 children were very excited to present their google slides to their audiences. 

Each class was given a Burfi Cooking Kit Bag at the Diwali Burfi Station with the ingredients and a recipe template in it. They were also given a Rangoli Craft Kit Bag from the Rangoli Station. Classes visited the Diwali photo booth to get their class photo taken with the cool students from Room 34 and Room 19 dressed up as the main characters from the Diwali Story. 

Finally, there were two exciting dance performances one by Ruth and Jeeviya, and another by Zoe and Megan from our Indian Cultural group. 

We live-streamed our Grand Opening ceremony on Tuesday and our closing ceremony on Wednesday on Facebook Live.

As always - if you have questions or concerns about anything school-related - email me at macash@mac.com, and I will get back to you asap.

My very best regards to you all,

Ash Maindonald

Principal.