The view from the top of the Mangawhai Cliffs walkway. One of our 2012 camp walks.

…for another exciting year of fun and learning at Karapiro School? We certainly are. We have an exciting learning programme planned for 2012 with an early highlight being our school camp to sunny Northland from Monday 13th February to Friday 17th February. The office is now open for information and enrolments and classes will begin on Wednesday 1st February. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Happy holidays from Tweedle Dee and Dweedle Dum (aka Thomas & Joseph)

We would like to wish our school community a very Merry Christmas and we hope that you have a relaxing break. The staff will be back at school from the 23rd of January and our students start on WEDNESDAY 1st FEBRUARY at 9.10 am. We are looking forward to starting the year with a 4th classroom, small class sizes, talented teachers and amazing students! Should you need to contact us over the break or should you wish to enrol your child, you can call David on 0278468959.

We will be hosting a waka ama group during the holidays so please say “hi” if you are around the school. We will be holding a painting working bee at school on Sunday 22nd January at 10 am for anyone who is a dab hand with a paint brush. We will be getting the interior of our new classroom ready for carpet.

Please put our camp meeting date, THURSDAY 2nd FEBRUARY 7pm here at school in your new diary now! Camp will be in Mangawhai from Monday 13 February to Friday 17 Febraury.

To our Year 6 students, best of luck for your new schools, to everyone else….we look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

Alice in Wonderland

Tonight the Karapiro Hall is the place to be for our annual end of year concert and year 6 farewell. This year we will be presenting Alice in Wonderland as our show and we will be farewelling 14 AMAZING year 6 students and some wonderful school families.

The action starts at 7 pm and concludes with supper after the show and presentations. Be sure to get their early for a good seat!

A quality cast!!

BUNNY BANTER: The March Hare and White Rabbit (aka Sarah and Zeanna)

Once again we were entered in the annual Cambridge Christmas Parade. This year our float had an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme and around 50 of our students dressed up and took part in the fun. Thank you to everyone who helped put together another amazing float!

Lunch with the Prime Minister.

Our senior students were very excited to meet Prime Minister John Key while he was on the campaign trail the day before the election. Mr Key took time out to chat with the students and ask about athletics day. Thanks to Taupo MP (and Karapiro School parent!) Louise Upston for arranging the meeting.

Rebecca and Abigail fly home in the 50m sprint.

We had a fun day at the annual interschool athletics champs at Vogel Street. Our year 4, 5 and 6 students enjoyed competing against  the other rural schools in a range of running, jumping and throwing disciplines. Congratulations must go to Abbey, Rose and Rebecca who achieved top three places in the overall championship and to Blake who was this year’s overall Year 4 boys’ champion!

Our champion Year 3 and 4 team.

We sent three teams along to this year’s BP Technology Challenge, all teams competed very well creating solutions to design problems given to them on the day. We would like to say a special congratulations to our Year 3 and 4 team for taking out first place in their competition with their design and construction of a fishing rod. The competition is the culmination of our technology studies here at school.

This term promises many highlights including our end of year concert, year 6 farewell, athletics champs and learning agents activities. At the end of this term we will be sending out reports and learning journals. We are looking forward to an enjoyable and rewarding run in to the end of the year. Well done the All Blacks!!!

Happy Holidays!

We can look back on quite an amazing term three.
We enjoyed a wonderful book week and book character day, a sensation ski trip with many outdoor adventures for our year 6 students and a highly successful interschool cross country championship hosted by our school. We have had a fun disco celebrating the dance unit we had completed, an awesome ag day with high quality entries and a huge number of visitors and nine of our senior students impressed us with entertaining, well constructed and superbly presented speeches at the speech final. We have continued to take our learning in maths to new levels through an intensive contract with the University of Waikato and our latest reading results are fantastic.  We can also sprinkle on events such as Kiwi Golf, Kiwi Cricket, RWC celebrations, Group Day, the KWH prize giving and our learning agents programme!

One of the term’s major highlights was completing our regular Education Review Office (ERO) review. Their report recognized the high quality of education delivered by our school and indicated that ERO are so confident in our school that they will not return to review us for another 4 to 5 years. This decision is not made lightly and is awarded to a very small percentage of high performing schools.

The highlights described above would not have been possible without the incredibly support of our super students, their talented teachers, a sensation support staff, brilliant BOT and proactive parents! Have a wonderful break, we have certainly earned it!

School starts for tem four at 9.10 am on Tuesday 25th October (after Labour Day).

Charlotte with the trophy

We would like to congratulate Charlotte, who is this year’s Karapiro School speech champion. Charlotte presented an entertaining speech convincing us that New Zealand is a far better place to be than Australia. She won an entertaining final featuring nine very confident and capable speakers. Josh was this year’s runner up with Hannah and Sam sharing third equal place. Well done to the other finalists Sarah, Rose, Rebecca, Cam and Abigail. Charlotte and Josh will go on to represent us at the Rotary interschool championships in November.