Kia ora Papanui Primary School whānau

I hope you are all doing well.

We have two and a half weeks to go now until the end of the school year! How did that happen? The year has raced by again. Despite it being near the end of the year, there’s still plenty on at school and some fun things coming up as we count down to the 17th of December; looking forward to the summer break and, sadly, preparing to farewell our fantastic Year 6 tamariki.

Today we had our Friends of Papanui Primary Casual clothes day, Christmas fundraiser, and again we were blown away with our communities generousity. Thankyou to all who brought in goodies for the Hampers. Best of luck for the raffle!

Our Winters team kids have just finished up their two weeks of swimming lessons at Aqua gym. Again these lessons have been really successful with our kids practising the skills they will need to swim and stay safe in the water this summer. It is our Cranford team’s turn next week.

With the warmer weather, two weeks of swimming, and a long year nearly behind us, the majority of our tamariki are starting to feel pretty tired. This can mean their resilience is a bit lower than usual, so it’s a good time to wrap lots of support around them—plenty of downtime, nutritious food, and good sleep.

To truly look after our tamariki, we also need to make sure we’re in a good space ourselves. Taking time to care for our own well-being is just as important. Here’s a great podcast by Pio Terei and Kathryn Berkett that reminds us that creating a positive, safe environment for our kids starts with looking after ourselves.

You may have noticed the fantastic new monkey bars outside of Pūkeko. These were made by Graeme Brown, Braxton’s dad. They are brilliant and Graeme did them for us at a really great price. Cheers Graeme!

On the 16th of December we are inviting all of the people who have helped out in some way this year to a morning tea to say a huge thank you. With all of the things we do across the school year it’s fair to say many of them we just wouldn’t be able to do without whānau support. So we thankyou.

At last night’s board meeting we discussed the recent announcement from the Minister to remove school’s obligation to give effect to Te Tiriti. It was unanimous in the room that Papanui Primary would not be taking this out of our objectives. The board have decided to send a letter to the Minister stating that nothing will change for us and that we will be keeping Te Tiriti as a key Board objective now and into the future. We will share this letter with our community in the coming days.

What’s coming up….

  • Monday 1st December – Friday 12th December – Cranford team swimming at Aqua Gym

  • Wednesday 3rd & 4th December – Hato Hone St John in schools programme

  • Tuesday 9th December- Year 6 helpers special lunch

  • Thursday 11th December – Year 6 leavers hui – 2pm

  • Friday 12th December – Year 6 leavers’ fun afternoon at Loop Youth Centre

  • Friday 12th December – End-of-year reports live on HERO

  • Monday 15th December – Christmas singing concert

  • Tuesday 16th December – Whānau helpers morning tea 10:30am

  • Wednesday 17th December – School finishes for the year at 12 pm

    2026 

  • Tuesday 3rd February – Drop in and meet your child’s teacher day

  • Wednesday 4th February – First day of school

  • Friday 6th February – Waitangi Day

  • Friday 20th February – Big Day out at Jellie Park

  • Wednesday 25th March – An evening with Rob Cope – Our kids online

We are already a fair way into planning for 2026 with lots of exciting things happening. We will be heading to Jellie Park on the 20th of February for our annual “Big day out”, and as usual we will need lots of helpers for the day. If you are keen to come along, can you please pencil in that date as we would love you to come to support. We will be there between 11am and 2pm.

Another date to pencil in is Wednesday 25th March 2026. I have organised Film maker and author Rob Cope from Our kids online to come and do a parent session with our community about the realities of our kids being online and how to keep them safe as they go through their primary and teenage years. I went to this at my son’s school, and was blown away with how great it was. This really is a must do for every parent and I totally recommend you coming along to this. More info to come closer to the time. Watch this clip to find out more.

Have a relaxing weekend, spending time with your friends and whānau.

Noho ora mai (stay well, look after yourself)

Ben Galletly