Category: News

Yesterday, with support from our military parents, we were able to provide our students with a mini Anzac Service. We are extremely grateful to Hunter (Topher and Ben’s Dad) who organised this special experience to educate our tamariki about the significance of April 25th in Aotearoa New Zealand history. As you can see above, Kahikatea did some real life maths learning about how to lay the crosses at the top of our field in the correct format. We appreciate them doing this for our ākonga (students) to learn and pay our respects to remember those we lost.

It is nice to be writing you the pānui for today, after letting Karen and Trish have a turn last week while I was away at a conference up in Te Tai Tokerau (Northland). I wonder if you could tell the difference in ‘writer voice’ when you read it and could tell it wasn’t me? I felt really lucky working with a different rōpu (group) of tumuaki (principals) in a beautiful part of our country that has rich spiritual and historical connections and soaking that all in (as you can see below). I urge you to make it up that...

The pānui is a day early as we have made it to Easter! It’s a bit different this year as with Easter falling early we will come back for another two weeks next Wednesday 3rd April. Yes, Tuesday is a holiday, normally it doesn’t affect us as it falls during the holidays, but this is a throwback to when we had a three term year. A big thank you to the PTA. for starting our Easter celebrations, hosting the Family Easter Event last Saturday. The weather was kind and the photos show how much fun everyone had, it was great...

Hasn’t there been a temperature drop the last few mornings? Luckily the sun has been shining lately giving us some gorgeous days at kura. Hopefully you noticed our new sign on the post out the front of the office? Darian deRidder, a former parent of the school made the original version underneath, so Julie got in touch with him to make a new version to show our name correction from ‘Tiritea to Turitea’. His son Hunter, who works for him, came and personally delivered it and enjoyed having a look around at all the changes since his time here. If...

Thank you to those who came up to school for our big mural reveal on Monday. If you missed it, we tried to capture it here. We are so happy with the end result and think it looks ataahua! (beautiful) and the kids all approve. Whakawhetai koe (Thank you) Carolyn for your passion, leadership and commitment to supporting our Year 6’s to make this dream become a reality. We are finalising the full ‘Mural Diary’ to share with you and hope to have this completed soon. In the meantime, there are a few posters with the process in the Mataī...

There has been a different āhua (feeling) around school this week as our Year 5/6's departed for camp on Tuesday. The school has felt a little empty and has been a lot quieter without them. On Monday, we welcomed Abigail, joining Meagan and Hannah in Rimu. She is the first member of her whānau to come to Turitea School, Nau mai haere mai to your new family here Abigail. Unfortunately ‘one came in and one went out’ though, as yesterday we farewelled Ava from Pōhutukawa. Her and her whānau are on the next chapter in their life as they relocate...

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou (A warm greeting to you all), We had a momentous day at school on Wednesday where we now have three generations of the ‘Maclan’ all attending Turitea School. You all know the lovely Julie, our office extraordinaire and her daughter Dani, who organises our school sports, choir, last year's amazing school production and she even came here as a little girl. Now we have Dani’s daughter Makenna joining Meagan and Hannah in Rimu giving us the ‘trifecta’ of Macdonald ladies. A unique situation that I am pretty sure doesn’t occur at many kura across...

It was great to see a huge showing at our annual PTA run Overnight Camp last Friday night. What an amazing night and so cool to keep this Turitea tradition alive as it has been a while since we last had the overnight component. As always, shout out to our supportive PTA for the behind the scenes mahi you do to make events like these happen and whakawhetai (thanks) to those parents who were able to ‘see a need, fill a need’ on the night or the morning after. Cheers Lucain for taking the pics below of the night. Special...

Hoping to see you all tonight for our annual PTA run Overnight Camp. As mentioned previously, this is a bit of a Turitea tradition and a great showing of our school uara (value) of whanaungatanga (community). I look forward to seeing our field transform into a campsite. Massive thanks to the organsing team from the PTA and everyone involved to make the evening a success.

Thank you for your support on Monday enabling us to have our Staff Only Day. We were extremely grateful to have Jon Procter share his pearls of wisdom about the history of Papaioea (Palmerston North) and the Rangitanē Iwi. The pics below show snippets of our tour. I’m wondering if any parents are interested in this kaupapa (topic) also and we might be able to entice him into running another hikoi (walk) around these spots learning our local history, let me know…