Pānui (News)

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…

Nau mai hoki mai ki a koutou (Welcome back everyone) We had our ‘first day back’ mihi whakatau to embrace our new whānau to the school on Tuesday, which I found really special. It was nice to set the tone for the year from this and ‘live and breathe’ our uara (values) of Whanaungatanga (Positive Relationships) and Manaakitanga (Kindness and Hospitality) in doing this important ceremony in Te Ao Māori. 

This will be the last pānui I write to you for 2023 and I’m getting in a day early ahead of our last day tomorrow as I know it will fly by. I want to thank you all for such a positive year here at Turitea. I am really proud of our school and all that happens in and around the place. It has a beautiful vibe with happy children and friendly parents. I’ve been feeling spoiled too with so many whānau writing beautiful cards and giving me lovely and thoughtful gifts. I appreciate you all and am lucky to...

And just like that we have finished the penultimate week of the school year! The common conversation around the place at the moment is ‘How is it already December?’ as it does feel that this year has flown by. Our end of year trips have begun with Mataī and Pōhutukawa visiting the Wildbase Discovery Centre yesterday and Rātā and Rimu going to Memorial Park today. I’m joining in on the fun with them, hence why I’m getting this to you earlier than usual. Yesterday, Iti and Manawa from Kahikatea took our last class assembly for the year and they did...

If you are reading this via Hero, you might have noticed that the Hero interface has been freshened up and looks a little different. They haven’t changed where things are though, so hopefully you are still able to navigate this easily enough. Today we welcomed Lihmé (said La May) to Pōhutukawa. Her whānau have moved from Cape Town, South Africa to Palmerston North via Auckland first. It is a delight to have you join us here at Turitea, we know you will love the community feel we have here.