Merry Christmas

I hope everyone is well and safe after our recent spate of canterbury quakes.

I was actually at school at the time on Lilian's computer and my kids had popped into the hall to say 'hi' to the kidsclub holiday programme. I would like to commend Trudie on how well she and her staff remained calm and looked after all of the children. It was a very hot day so the children  eventually evacuated to the rock area under the shade sails, where it was nice and cool.

School appeared to be very good after the quakes with no liquefaction - yippee. It will be checked carefully over the January period.

So everyone stay strong and enjoy the holiday. I am certainly enjoying the break - reading, shopping, little bit of digging!, taking the kids swimming etc and trying very hard to stick to my 'get fit over the summer project'.....

Thank you

Thank you to all of our parent helpers who made our trip to Spencer Park on Friday possible. We had such a wonderful day. What was your favourite part? The bus ride...making sandcastles on the beach...splashing in the wild surf...playing in the awesome adventure playground...class games... The cooling ice block... So many amazing things to choose from.

Thanks also to Anna and the Salvation Army for bringing the caravan out and for the tea, coffee, water and bikkies.

Your say

It is your 'last minute' chance to have your say about the direction of education in Canterbury. As a result of the earthquakes the Ministry of Education are consulting the community about the future 'look' of education for our children.

What skills, knowledge, values....do our children need to function successfully in the 21st century? Go to http://shapingeducation.minedu.govt.nz/ to share your opinion about the types of schools and learning opportunities our children need.

High quality, well trained teachers...access to e-learning and up to date information and communication technologies, sporting opportunities, swimming pools!, low student ratios, skills and competencies, development of the whole self, collaboration with peers, mentors, being literate and numerate, confident and happy..........irrespective of where you live

Ski Trip TOMORROW

One child's bag packed for skiing tomorrow - towel, change of clothes, sunscreen, gloves, woolly hat, hidden choccy bar.....

I am so excited for our Year 5/6 students who are finally going skiing tomorrow, a much anticipated trip after their camp was cancelled in February after the earthquake.

Huge amounts of preparation and planning have gone into this trip (thanks Mr Sim and the senior teachers) although it is still hard not to have anxious moments as a Mum letting my baby go off up the mountain (well, Porter Heights!) without me. I have read all the notices, approved them in fact and yet I still find myself wanting to slip a juice box in her bag or a tenner just in case she gets into a spot of bother!

I am sure they will have a wonderful trip and the best thing I can now do is set my alarm for 5 a.m. and go to bed....

OPEN THURSDAY

Shirley Primary & Intermediate will be OPEN tomorrow THURSDAY normal hours. Please bring extra socks/slippers/gumboots for children. Travel safely. I will monitor the ice in the parent car-park and may have to close it in the morning depending on how much snow has melted.

See you tomorrow
Sylvia

SCHOOL CLOSED WEDNESDAY

After great deliberation Shirley Primary & Intermediate will remain CLOSED tomorrow Wednesday 17 August to ensure the safety of students & staff in adverse weather conditions.

When we do re-open don't forget to bring in any work to show me that you have been doing at home or you could email a snow photo to sylvia.fidow@shirleyprimary.school.nz and I will print it for display or it might even make the newsletter!

Weather improving

At last the snow has stopped! We will just have snowdrifts and puddles to deal with.
I will keep you posted regarding school tomorrow.

SCHOOL CLOSED Tuesday 16 August 2011

Based on the severe weather warning and icy conditions Shirley Primary and Intermediate will be CLOSED again tomorrow, Tuesday 16 August. Keep warm.

PS If the children are bored try getting them to do a snow poem, snow picture, snow song....they can bring their efforts to me on Wednesday (or when school re-opens) for a prize!

SCHOOL CLOSED #2

I went to school at 8.30 this morning to make sure there were no children waiting and phew! there weren't. It was very quiet in Shirley. The roads are very icy so it was straight back home for us!

SCHOOL CLOSED

We are closed today due to the snow. Shirley Intermediate is closed as well. Keep warm!

Term 3

It is great to get back to school this term and we have had great weather. I was so pleased that the snow fell in the holidays and the term was not interrupted in anyway.

We have lots of exciting teaching and learning programmes planned for term 3 - athletics, technology, first aid, skiiing, performing.....

Please send me an email if you have any questions, or ring to make an appointment if you would like to have a look around our school

Sylvia

Thanks and looking ahead

Special thanks to Mrs Jane Lapthorn, Ms Therese Bierwith and the Selwyn House School Year 7/8 students for treating us to a wonderful viewing of their musical 'Seussical'. We had a lovely visit and appreciated the confidence and skills of the performers. The cupcakes were yummy, too.

Tomorrow our choir and Pasifika students will be performing at the Shirley rock n Roll Concert at Shirley Intermediate. Good luck and enjoy.

Finally, our Middles enjoyed an awesome day at Orana Park yesterday, our Seniors are there today and our Juniors go tomorrow. Thanks to all of our parents and whanau who have been able to assist on these trips. Lucky with the weather!

Ms Fidow

Week 9

Can you believe there are only 3 weeks until the end of term? (remember it is an 11 week term again).

They are going to be a really busy three weeks for us.
Interim School Reports and Star Sample Books are going home this Friday.

Next Tuesday we have Student-Led Conferences from 12.30 (school will close at 12.00!) and in the final week of term we have our three trips planned for Orana Park.

So the students will be busy!and ready for a holiday I'm sure.

Sylvia

Happy to be back:)

Re-opening Thursday 16 June 2011

Great news, we are re-opening tomorrow. Yippee.

Please bring boiled water for your child. It would be great if you could also please send them along with slippers or extra socks as they will be taking their shoes off to enter rooms.

There will be a mobile van in at 8.30 with $2 hot drinks for our community.

See you tomorrow
Sylvia

PS there will be no winter sport tomorrow

PSS The middle and senior school trips to Orana Park planned for next week have been re-scheduled to Week 11:)

PS

When we do re-open children will need to bring their own bottled water again please....

thanks

Another update

Well, it has been a very busy day at Shirley Primary School.

Michael from DD Architects came in and did a site and building inspection. Once again, our buildings have 'passed the test.'

Thanks to Mr McKenzie and Mr Sim who spent the day shovelling silt (I did a wee bit but luckily my phone kept ringing so I had to keep stopping and then thought I was better inside!). Big thanks to Helen McLean, Tony and Zoe Turner who turned up with some shovels and a wheelbarrow, too, and to the crew from the Addington Rugby League Club - most appreciated.

As I type 4 people from the HITMEN are currently removing silt from the junior block entrance ways, office and Room 3 doorway, steam cleaning and de-contaminating the area. Mary, our cleaner from TPS, has been working, too.

We have had the plumbers and drainlayers checking the septic tanker.

In the morning we have a sweeper booked from City Care to spruce up the concrete areas as much as possible.

All of the staff will be back in sorting out their classrooms. We will also debrief as a staff as I know many of their homes have been affected again, too.

We are hoping that we will be able to re-open the following day on Thursday, 16 June. Thank you for your patience once again.

I will confirm tomorrow after speaking with the architects and the BoT.

Hopefully, we all have a good night's sleep tonight.
Sylvia

Post 13 June 2011

THANK YOU  to our amazing staff who were so calm and super organised yesterday. The children showed amazing levels of resilience, too. What superstars. The last children were picked up by 4.30.

We got home to no power and as it was cold and dark we decided to spend the night in a motel in Woodend. Unfortunately, the fish and chip shop was out of stock so we had bananas and potato chip sandwiches for dinner, what an adventure!

Anyway, I am in at work now with some of the BOT and we are just in meetings with the engineer so will update you soon....Big thanks to Mr McKenzie and Mr Sim who are currently shovelling silt away out front!

take care
Sylvia

Stars 4 Kids

We are very excited by the new fundraising initiative by one of our talented Mums - well done Mandy.
Check out http://tvnz.co.nz/news for more information.

Thanks once again to all of the other communities who have supported us - post quake, too.
Onerahi Primary School in Whangarei, Pillans Point School (and Room 2) in Tauranga, Epuni Primary in Lower Hutt, Frankton Primary in Frankton, the New Brighton Lions, Richie McCaw, Erin Simpson and the original Karate Kid.

Our students are doing really well but many of them have had to move and in some cases a couple of families are now living under one roof. Our children are resilient but there are still a significant number of children not sleeping through the night, who are experiencing anxiety and who have increased worries. Some children have not been able to continue learning an instrument or playing sport because of financial worries. We are doing all that we can to support our students and families and really appreciate everyone's letters and cards and contributions.

Please check out the links to Stars 4 kids and Trade me on the front page of the website (special thanks to Mr Gunn for all of his clever technical work with the blogging and links:) )

Take care and keep warm
Sylvia/Ms Fidow
x

Happy Term 2

We ended Term 1 with a really fun, Friday!

We had yummy food thanks to the New Brighton Lions, water from Richie McCaw, special guests Mr Ralph Machio (aka the original Karate kid) and theeeee Erin Simpson from the Erin Simpson show, bouncy castles courtesy of Mitre 10 Ferrymead and Hornby, candy floss, freshfruit, games, discos, wearable arts....it was a lovely way to end a shaky term!

We are now looking ahead to Term 2 with a focus on sustainable futures!The big question on everyone's mind will be 'how can we assist or what can we do?' to support our future?

The Year 5/6 students will be participating in swimming and winter sport and we have a whole school trip planned.

We will also be starting up our new Superstar Discovery programme on a Friday for all of the children.

So, hopefully everyone is having an early night tonight :)and have their school bags and uniforms all ready for tomorrow
see you there (here!)
x

Moving on...learning...celebrating

 It was great to open up part of our field for the children to play on today...(shame we will have to put the yellow closed flags up tomorrow because of the rain).
The children enjoyed running round on the field and were very interested in the patches with grass seed on them.

This week teachers have been released to meet with parents and the children to discuss goals for the year (you may remember these were scheduled for the 22nd February and had to be cancelled).

On Friday we are having a special celebration to acknowledge the bravery and resilience of our children. From 11.00 the school day will proceed as follows:

 11.00 Whole School Assembly
 11.45 Activity Station 1
 12.15 LUNCH cooked and provided by the Lions
 12.55 SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE
 1.00  Activity Station 2
 1.30  Activity Station 3
 2.00  Activity Station 4
 2.30  Return to class

Each activity station will enable the children to participate in fun, challenging and exciting activities!!

We hope to see you there, and don't forget the children can wear mufti so leave the school uniforms at home! No gold coin required.

School's back...

It was great to re-open on Tuesday! Staff and children were all very happy to see each other. Being open has allowed our children, their families and us to have some sort of normality again. We had a few less children than we normally do, though.

Thanks to the parents who have rung or emailed me to update us on what your plans are. The children miss some of their old friends so email them either on info@shirleyprimary.school.nz or each class has their own email address, too. room.1@shirleyprimary.school.nz  room.5@shirleyprimary.school.nz etc.

One of the learning activities the children participated in this week was identifying some of the things that are the 'same' at school and some of the things that are 'different' -

• Same - happy, smiling faces
• Different - large round septic tank on-site
• Same - active, learning children
• Different - large green water tank on-site (don't confuse the two!)
• Same - exciting learning programmes
• Different - heaps more spongy bark in the playground!

Earthquake Update #11

Unfortunately local residents have just received notification that they should not use their toilets and that port-a-loos will be provided for them.

We have had our drains cleared of silt and drainlayers do not anticipate a problem with sewerage on the school site but a backlog in the local area might create problems for us.

The Ministry of Education are going to provide us with a septic tank which will suck away the effluent waste (from our toilets) so that it does not go into the local shirley pipes until they are fixed. The septic tank arrives on Wednesday.

As we are due to open tomorrow (Tuesday) the MOE are going to provide us with a temporary solution - port-a-loos -  which may be used for our staff and some senior students only (i.e. seniors who feel confident about using one). Junior students will still use the toilets. Minimal flushing should be fine over this short period of time (24 hours).

I am very sorry that this new late development has occurred but I hope that you will rest assured that we have done all that we can to minimise any potential problems.

See (some of you) tomorrow
Sylvia

Earhquake update #10

Great news. The Board of Trustees met today and signed off all of the requirements for re-opening the school on Tuesday 15 March 2011. So, just to confirm,  Shirley Primary will open this Tuesday 15th March, normal hours.

Please send your child along with their own named boiled or spring water. The school will have some spring water which we have bought but it is important that each child brings along their own. We do have running water (non-drinkable) and our toilets are flushing. We have hand sanitiser for each classroom.

There will be a parent coffee meeting in the hall from 8.45 a.m. on Tuesday once you have dropped your children to their classes.

Please note the court along the fence next to the library and by the garage will be an out of bounds area as will the verandah end past R8. Look out for tape and temporary fences.

The staff are every excited about the children returning to school.

Sylvia

Earthquake update #9

some more progress pics....

Earthquake update #8

Well, as stated in a generic text sent out to the community we cannot open on Monday 14 March 2011 sorry but we hope to open VERY soon after.

We are doing all that we can to make our school safe for our students and staff. We have had a number of contractors at school this week: builders, electricians, carpet layers, glaziers and 'ashphalt layers'. We have even invited more structural engineers back in to double check the safety of a classroom.

Special thanks to our caretaker Mr Robin McKenzie who is doing an awesome job of continuing to remove silt, clearing up rubbish, fixing things and re-organising storage spaces etc.

Thanks also to our cleaners, Mary and Margaret,  who have thoroughly cleaned the interior of the school which has not been a pleasant job.

And thanks also to our dedicated teachers who have been ringing all of their students and families to check on their well-being, planning for the return of the students, discussing our earthquake procedures, tidying their rooms and generally supporting each other. I am pleased to inform you that as of last night all of our teachers, who are still able to live in their own homes, got power on; YAH! but some are still living without water or sewerage - as I'm sure many of you are.

Finally, a big thanks to Mr Ian Fletcher(Principal) and Pillans Point School in Tauranga who once again are supporting our school after an earthquake. I will look forward to sharing some of the neat ways they have been supporting us in the future.

Anyway, here are some progress photos. Unfortunately (despite priding myself on being a 21st century learner) I still cannot upload my videos from my phone to my pc even after two frustrating hours of trying, d'uh.

Earthquake update #7

Please disregard what you read in the paper today or saw on the MOE website regarding our starting date. We do NOT have one yet. We are still waiting for our sewer pipes to be cleared and checked, for our water testing to be completed and for our concrete areas to be re-surfaced.

We are working hard to rectify these problems but we cannot compromise the health and safety of our students and staff. Thanks for your patience.

Check out the school website for e-learning games, encourage your children to do some daily writing and maths, read a book, make a newspaper bridge or tower, design a trendy face-mask etc


Thanks
Sylvia

Earthquake update #6 - Photos



No more swimming

Room 3 carpet



Rm 3 doorway into cloakroom



In the playground



Court

Netball court






   




Rm 3



Here are a couple of photos from our school. I have videos from the day which I will work out how to insert later.

Earthquake update #5

Green stickered today, yippeeee!Just need to sort out the sewerage, water and ashphalt/concrete but we are on the way.

Hope you are all staying strong, approx. 4 of our staff members still have no power or water and our thoughts are with one young teacher who has not been allowed back in their family home at all.

take care
Sylvia

earthquake update #4

It has been a very busy week at Shirley Primary.

Initial engineer reports have been very positive about our school buildings and we now await a more detailed inspection tomorrow.

Today we had Michael Morrow and Donald Aubrey in with the 'farmy army' - what an amazing group of volunteers from all over NZ. We had a group of young farmers from Fairlie, a past pupil who enrolled at the school in 1935, couples from Oamaru, two young lads from Northern Ireland, a girl from France, a politician!, a man from Hawkes Bay, some locals from Redwood, an unlikely farmer from Lake Tekapo, a man from greendale, some parents from Papakaio School, people from Southbridge...the list went on. We are so GRATEFUL for their help clearing liquefaction from our school site.

We are excited that we will be able to re-open our school on site. However, along with all schools in Christchurch we remain closed at the moment. The Board of Trustees are reviewing what we need to achieve before we are able to open. Health and safety of our students and staff are an absolute priority. Please continue to listen to the radio and the tv for updates. We will not open before the 14th March.

take care, please feel free to email me at sylvia.fidow@shirleyprimary.school.nz
alofa tele
Sylvia

earthquake update #3

I am very pleased to be able to inform you that we got power on at home tonight which is great. I am so sorry for all of you who have not got power on yet - lights make you feel so much better at night-time!

Power has come on at school too and I was able to check my emails. Unfortunately I am not able to refresh the front page of the website but hopefully you have checked this blog and are also receiving my school (502) texts and school emails.

Just a quick update - the Ministry of Education are still completing safety assessments of school property and we do not have a starting date for school yet. We have increased security checks at school.

Keep remaining positive, I know personally how difficult it is to keep the children occupied and calm. Actually,  we did some basic facts challenges and story writing at home today which the kids really enjoyed!! And then I was so pleased when tv came back on:)

take care
Sylvia

Earthquake update #2

All schools continue to remain closed and staff are not allowed on site.I will be meeting insurers and engineers over the next two days to assess any damage. School camp has been cancelled.
Please listen to the local radio and tv for updates on when schools will re-open.

I know many of our families, including staff, have sustained serious damage to their homes and my thoughts are with you. I only hope you have not been personally affected by the loss of lives.

Take care
Sylvia

February 22

Thanks so much to the teaching staff and kidsclub staff who kept the children safe until their parents were able to collect them. All children were safely picked up by 5pm.


The school will be closed until further notice. We sustained liquefaction and some cracking to the ground.

Hope you and your families are all safe.

Sylvia

Twenty Eleven

Happy new year! I am loving the school holidays although I am looking forward to an exciting new year at SPS - with less shakes:).

Keep safe, enjoy the holidays and I will update (more regularly) with news from our community.