Newsletter – Week 3, Term 3 2020

Important Dates

Monday 10 August

Y4-6 Cross Country Training – 10:45 am

Tuesday 11 August

Y4-6 Cross Country Training – 10:45 am

Wednesday 12 August 

Drop-In Cafe in the Library. All parents/caregivers welcome – 2:30 pm

Thursday 13 August

Y4-6 Cross Country Training – 10:45 am

Board of Trustees meeting – 7:00 pm

Friday 14 August

Find-Out-a-thon prizes given out to those children who have 6 or more sponsors and bring their sponsorship form to school.

Monday 17 August

Full School Assembly hosted by Rooms 7 and 18 at 2:15 pm

In this Issue – Week 3, Term 3 2020

1. Find-Out-a-Thon

2. Help for Busy Parents – YMCA Before and After School Care

3. Auckland Transport Drop-In Tues, Aug 11 anytime 5:00 – 8:00 pm Rm 15 

4. NZ Maths Week

5. Sunnybrae App

6. The Arts Update

7. Community Garden Group

8. Strategic Goal – Wellbeing

9. Updates from our Parent Teacher Association (PTA)

10. Welcome to Sunnybrae

  +  Community Notices

1. Find-Out-A-Thon 

PTA Find-out-a-thon Fundraiser: Please encourage your child/ren to learn their Find-out-a-thon lists as part of their home learning programme and seek sponsorship from your family, friends and workmates. All children with six or more sponsors should bring their sponsorship form to school next Friday to receive a small prize.

2. Help for Busy Parents

If you need to drop off your child/ren at school before 8:30 am, please make arrangements with the YMCA for your child to be part of the before school care programme. At 8:30 am children can head into their classrooms but not before. All students need to be at school by 8:45 am in order to prepare for the day.

Please pick up your child by 3:00 pm each day. The YMCA is available if you are unable to pick up your child by this time.

YMCA Before and After School Care

Before School Care

Monday to Friday 7:00 am – 8:30 am. The cost is $14. An OSCAR subsidy is available from Work and Income for those who qualify. Breakfast will be served from 7:00 am – 8:15 am. Breakfast options are toast and spreads, cereal, Milo or water. Set up in the morning will be Board Games, Chill Out Corner, Creation Station, and Building. A term plan will be out at the start of the term with actual activities.

After School Care

Monday to Friday 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm. The cost is $18 for 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm (casual booking $21) or $13 for 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm. An OSCAR subsidy is available from Work and Income for those who qualify. Afternoon tea is served at approx. 3:30 pm. Our programmes are based around our themes of Active, Life Skills and Creative. A term plan will be out at the start of the term with actual activities.

How to Book

YMCA uses Aimy Plus, New Zealand’s leading booking site for children’s activities. You may have already set up a profile for Aimy Plus. If not, you’ll need to set one up the first time you use it. It’s simple to do, and will securely store important information about your family and your child (e.g. any health or dietary support needed). Once you’ve created your profile, you can book and pay for your Out of School Care online. https://ymca-akl-ham-bop.aimyplus.com/

YMCA Contacts

If you have any questions about the programme please call 021 223 8458 during the programme times, or North Shore Reception on 09 480 7099 outside of the programme times.

For further information https://www.ymcaauckland.org.nz/find-your-local/north-shore-recreation-centre/kids-programmes/north-shore-out-of-school-care/

3. Auckland Transport’s Changes to Sunnybrae Road a Health and Safety Concern

Drop-In Session 

Tuesday, August 11 

Pop in for a few minutes between 5:00 – 8:00 pm

Room 15 Sunnybrae Normal School

Please come and voice your concerns to the Auckland Transport representative around proposed changes to Sunnybrae Road. Their plan has negative implications for the safety of our students and families in regards to moving the bus stop closer to our Drop Off Zone. 

The great news is that there is an alternative plan which is FANTASTIC for our school. Come to the meeting and hear about the modifications being proposed by Sunnybrae Community members. There are already 86 submissions opposing the proposed AT plan and these people are all in favour of the alternative plan. 

Auckland Transport’s principles include “People Come First – We put people and safety at the heart of everything we do.” With this value at the forefront of their decision making, and with the weight of submissions from a small, local area in relation to this proposal, AT should take the alternative plan seriously and implement it into our neighbourhood. 

We need your help. Please pop in anytime between 5:00 – 8:00 pm next Tuesday. It will only take a few minutes of your time.

4. NZ Maths Week

Next week is NZ Maths Week and it would be really great if you could include some fun maths learning at home. On the NZ Maths site, there are challenges and games that can be played over the week. 

You could also take a look at NZ Maths, their family section includes many different ways you can support your child in maths at home.

Remember to get your child to log onto Mathseeds or Mathletics 

Below are a few more ideas you could use for motivation

1. Design an A3 Maths poster

   Your poster could:

• give information
• share maths vocabulary
• explain strategies
• promote enjoyment

2. Make a counting book for a junior class  

3. Create a maths game

4. Read Maths themed books – 100 books about Maths

5. Play board games 

5. Sunnybrae App

Check out our App. This is a great way for us to stay in touch with you and to keep you up to date on all school events. It is free! From your phone, you can order school lunches, send an absence notice, read the newsletter and see urgent notifications/alerts.

To download:

• Scan the QR code and click on the link or go to the app /play store and search for ‘KiwiSchools Connect‘
• Download the App 
• Select ‘Sunnybrae Normal School’
• Choose to ‘Subscribe to All’

6. The Arts Update

Music programmes at Sunnybrae –  We are very lucky to have a music specialist, Bronwyn Babbage at Sunnybrae Normal School. In her classroom programme, she fosters a love of music in our students. The children love playing the instruments, composing, singing, listening and reflecting on music in their world.

7. Community Garden Group

We would love for members of the Sunnybrae School community to join our Community Garden Group.

• Friday lunchtimes at Sunnybrae from 12:30 pm – 1:00 pm
• All members of our community are welcome
• You may like to bring your own gardening gloves
• Please sign in at the School Office

8. Strategic Goal – Wellbeing

This week our focus has been on worries. Teaching children the neuroscience behind worrying helps them make sense of the way it feels, so they can better work through it.

We talked about how worrying happens because of the time when our brains were first formed – think cave-person times. We discussed if a sabre toothed tiger was running at us should we worry? Yes! Worrying sends messages from our brains to our bodies to prepare us to…run, climb a tree, swim across the river or hide… etc

We discussed what needs to happen in our body for us to escape danger. To run away from a sabre tooth tiger or try to fight it off, we need adrenaline and this makes:

• Our heart pump faster
• Our breathing become shallower
• Our muscles contract

Changes take place in our brains too. Because our top priority is escaping the sabre-toothed tiger, the huge outside area of the brain (cortex) shuts down –especially the front of our brain (our prefrontal cortex) because when we’re really, really worried, we don’t need it. We just need lots of adrenaline to run and hide, or react and defend ourselves.

But our world has really, really changed since the cave person times. We thought about all the change that has happened, even just in the last 300 years. There has been the invention of vehicles, technology, computers and more – and we no longer have dangerous animals in our backyards. The world is actually safer, but our brains haven’t had a chance to catch up. Evolution (changes to our brains and bodies) takes hundreds, if not thousands of years. This means that sometimes our brains and bodies react like there’s a sabre-toothed tiger in the room, even though there isn’t. So it’s normal to over-worry and feel a bit anxious sometimes. Then we  talked  about what experiences can make us worry so much that our brains release a surge of adrenaline when we don’t need it.

• Trying something new
• Speaking in front of a group
• Meeting someone new
• New places
• Lots of noise
• Lots of people
• Fast or noisy traffic
• Having a big test or assignment
• Not being with people we love

We discussed some of the things that can help calm us down. These things let our brains know that there is no sabre-toothed tiger in the vicinity and there is no need to panic. We talked about the most important thing to do when we feel very nervous, worried or anxious is to focus on our breathing, inhaling right down into the base of our tummies. When we do this our body tells our brain to calm down. This is scientific and it works.

9. Updates from our Parent Teacher Association (PTA)

Yummy Sticker Promotion: Thank you to those families who have been collecting cut-out labels from bags and the stickers from apples for the annual Yummy Sticker Promotion. These are available from New World and PAK’nSAVE. Yummy Sticker sheets are due in by 18 September. Please hand your completed sheets to the office. The more stickers we collect, the more sports equipment we get for our school. To download and print more sheets go to www.yummyfruit.co.nz and click on School Sticker Promo. Thank you for supporting our Sports Department.

Like us on Facebook: Click on the link below to access our Facebook page www.facebook.com/sunnybraenormalschool/

10. Welcome to Sunnybrae

This week we would like to welcome the following new students and their families to our school community: Valeti Moala (R2) and Effie Wang (R2).

Kind regards,

Lorene Hurd

Principal

Community Notices