Some of the things happening in the library this week to help celebrate Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2022.
Special picture books with lots of te Reo Māori inside. Teachers reading them to students at lunch time.
Children colouring bookmarks with Maori designs. A wee treasure to keep.
Thanks to the good people at Kiwi Gaming, we have been give a grant which pays for our NZ Standing Orders subscription. This means we will get a number of boxes of new books for our library.
As you can see from the photo, new books in the hands of our children, put smiles on everyone’s faces.
There will be plenty more boxes of books to come throughout the year. The books are new publications from a number of different publishers, so we are very lucky indeed. Yay for reading!
As we are now down to the last few days at school, the library has been full of games, reading, writing letters to Santa and lots of good old chatting with friends.
No matter how you spend Christmas, or wherever you may be, I wish you all a great festive season and a wonderful summer.
I hope you all have time to relax and read a few good books.
There is a very special letterbox in the library so if you want to write a letter to Santa, just pop in and place your letter in the mailbox.
Merry Christmas from the library.
Students enjoying time to put a Christmas jigsaw together.
This month we have been highlighting our bee books for the Bee Aware campaign. It is a chance to focus on bees and how we need to attract them to our gardens. Bees play a very important part to everything we grow, like vegetables and flowers. Take a look at some of the books on display.
We are very lucky that Mrs Brown has loaned us her two beautiful bee quilts. Mrs Brown is very clever. Aren’t they amazing.
Over the holidays perhaps you might want to plant some flowers that will attract bees in your garden.
Once again, the kind people at Upstart Media are providing us their latest issue of Upstart magazine, free for us to read online.
You get to read book reviews, enter competitions and just have some fun.
There are articles on resilience, getting to know some Maori Gods, experiments to try, or recipes to bake.
Have fun and enjoy this excellent magazine.
Just click here.
New Zealand National Poetry Day is coming up on the 27th August.
The whole month of August is a wonderful time to share poetry.
It is great to read poems or write poems anytime, but this month is particularly special as there are so many events all over New Zealand just celebrating poetry.
To help celebrate poetry here at FOS, we are asking you to create your own poem and bring it to the library to share on our display.
You might want to write free verse, rhyming, or even a haiku.
Come and look at some of library books to help with your ideas. Take a look outside your classroom and be inspired by nature.
Please bring all poems to the library by Thursday 26th August.
Have fun, and be creative.
Once again, thanks to CERT and the PTA, we are so grateful to have some some new books in the library. Huge thank you from everyone here at school.
When these are catalogued they will be available to borrow from the library. Some of the year five children were very eager to grab a favourite to look through, the minute the boxes were opened.
Welcome back to another exciting year from the Fendalton School library.
To start off, we are very lucky to have the chance to read the latest Upstart magazine, free and online here.
It is full of articles, competitions, and heaps more fun things to read and do. A big thank you to the kind people at Upstart magazine for allowing us to share their magazine.
We are very lucky to be able to share the links provided by Upstart magazine so that we have free access to the December – January issue of their wonderful magazine.
There is heaps to read, puzzles to do, and just lots of fun.
Dip in and out for a read whenever you want. Enjoy.
Huge thanks to Upstart magazine. Click the link here.
For a number of years now, the year six book club and librarian students walk down to the local kindergarten just before Christmas and share stories and songs. It is one of the highlights of the year for our bookish students and we end our time together with a shared lunch. It is always such a privilege to watch the students grow in their reading habits and choices.
Well done to you all for another year of quality reading and great book chats.
The library is looking festive for our last two weeks of term.
Pop in and read some books from our lovely Christmas collection.
Don’t forget, you can write your letters to Santa and put them in the red letterbox in our display. I will make sure Santa gets each and everyone.
All books are due back now for our annual stocktake. Please return books as soon as possible.
All students who return their books by Monday 7th December will go in the draw to win some of these cool prizes for summertime reading.
Penguins have been a hot topic in school this year. We’ve had the year two children designing and painting our own penguin as part of the Popup Penguins events. He was named after the very famous explorer and navigator Frank Worsley, who was dux of the school in the late 1800’s.
We also have had a couple of new penguin books added to our library.
Golden Eyes
The Yellow-eyed Penguin/Hoiho
By Kelly Lynch
This book is full of wonderful photographs of the yellow-eyed penguins/hoiho. They live at the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand. The book focuses on two particular penguins, Golden Eyes and his mate Curio. Through a series of photos, we follow their everyday lives and activities. We also see the special moment when their baby penguin is born. It is lovely to see these beautiful birds up close and share their stories.
The year two children got to ask the author a few questions
Did you ever get bitten by a penguin?,
I have never been bitten by a Yellow-eyed penguin, thankfully. They are shy and will avoid meeting people.
How many photos did you have to take to get the right ones?
It look a long time and I took oodles of photographs before I got the right ones. Sometimes it was really windy, other times the penguins came back from the sea very late and the sun had just set, or they would waddle off in the opposite direction from where I was hiding. Other times I was very lucky and a penguin would stop and preen themselves just in the right stop.
Did you have to creep around silently when you took the photos so that you didn’t frighten them?
Yes I did creep around silently to get into a hiding place where I could get ready to see the penguins when they came in from the sea. I had to make sure I was far enough away so they wouldn’t see me and I didn’t disturb them.
Did you like penguins when you were little?
When I was young I loved to watch birds in the garden, I still do! I didn’t know we had such interesting penguins in New Zealand until I was a bit older.
Thank you so much Kelly Lynch for sharing your thoughts with us.
A Little Blue
Written and Illustrated by Jeanette Goode
Simmy is sent to the West Coast to stay with his father while mum recovers from an illness. At first Simmy hates being where he is as it is so remote they don’t even have the internet. He writes regular letters to his mum begging to be allowed to come home. However, things start to change when Simmy discovers the little blue penguins. There are even some penguins living under a hole in his bedroom floor. The more he gets to know and understand about the little blue penguins, the happier he becomes. Watching out for big storms, going fishing and caring for the penguins, shows Simmy there is more to life even when you are out in very remote places. Sweet illustrations support the information this story book is sharing about penguins, and highlights the need for us all to care for these beautiful birds.
These books certainly tie in very nicely with our studies about penguins.
Tyson is a little lamb who is only two days old. He needs to be bottle fed every few hours so he is at school for the day with his owner Helen, who is keeping him safe and healthy. He even has a special sheepskin cover to wear to keep him warm.
On a little jaunt outside Tyson enjoyed checking out a book with Henry. Tyson was very wobbly at first and fell over a few times. But like everything in life, when things get tough, you just need to get up and try again.
Spring is a wonderful time for new growth; flowers and baby animals. It was lovely to have Tyson visit us today. As it is Te wiki o te Reo Maori if you can come to the library and tell me the Maori word for sheep – you can collect a kari koura. (While stocks last).
Big thank you to Hamish and Baxter for helping to set up our display for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori which runs all next week.
This is a wonderful chance for everyone to use te reo, not just next week but every week. Even if you don’t know much, just start with a simple greeting like Kia ora and Kei te pehea koe? See how far you can keep your conversation going.
Te Wiki o te reo Māori helps remind us just how wonderful this language is.
There are many books to learn the words for everyday things, and many bilingual picture books to read aloud. Pop in to our library and take a look at our collection. How many words or phrases do you know or think you will recognise in our books. Come and see for yourself.
Room 11 children were delighted with their very special guest today. A huge thank you to Eliza and her mum who brought in Token, a two week old Sussex lamb. Token is being bottle fed as he is a triplet and the mother sheep can’t feed him.
Token is very friendly and follows Eliza’s mum around everywhere because he thinks she is his mother. Children took turns hand-feeding Token. Lots of happy children and lots of questions too.
We have lots of books about sheep in our library so do come and check some out.
Token was so happy to be fed that he crawled along on his knees. Very cute to see.
Some of the books we have in our library.
Upstart Magazine have once again very generously shared a link to their latest issue now online.
Yes! You heard correctly. You can read the latest issue free and online by following the link.
This issue has articles on aliens, kiwis, even steampunk. Don’t know what that is? Well you soon will.
Lots of competitions to do as well. Click here and enjoy.
Wearable Arts is in the planning stages. Year Six students are working on their ideas and using dolls to work on costumes and then the practicalities of how they would work as costumes they could actually make and wear. Lots of thought and preparation goes into their designs including testing the best types of fabrics to use for safety reasons.
Lots of excitement in the Village today with bits and bobs spread everywhere and very creative children working on their projects.
The library has a display set up so that the rest of the school can see what is happening too.
This week marks the very special Cook Island Language Week. We are very fortunate for the help of one of our mums for putting together this lovely display in our library.
Lukasi is standing proudly in front of the display.
If you want to know more about this week and some of the events around town, then check out this link here.
Wow! What a wonderful, funny, entertaining performance by author Juliette MacIver. We were so lucky to have her at school as part of our Book Week. A huge thanks to ReadNZ for making it possible.
Our junior school were totally engaged with the author’s stories, photos, and picture books. To watch her perform (in a rather squished up room) in front of about 160 children is just amazing. Her books are very funny and hugely popular everywhere.
My favourite book is That’s not a hippopotamus and to see her with her bag of animals and acting out the story is just delightful.
