Creating our School's Waharoa

Room 5, 6 & 7 Camp

We had so much fun at camp last week. Thank you to all our parent helpers and to Island View Holiday Park for letting us stay. Make sure you check out our camp slideshow. 

Principal's Award

Well done Macy! You have been working extremely hard to follow the Golden Rules.

School Swimming Sports

Barbara Kendall Visit

Today we had Barbara Kendall come and visit us at school.

Barbara's talk today helped to inspire and motivate us. She encouraged us to have confidence and to work towards excellence. Barbara shared with us from her own journey of achieving consistent sustainable world class results and international leadership while maintaining a balance in life. 

About Barbara:

Barbara spent 21 years at the top of international windsurfing, competing at five Olympic Games, winning medals at three of them. She has four world Championship titles, 4 NZ sports woman of the year titles and been inducted into International Sailing and New Zealand's hall of fame and got awarded Sport New Zealand Leadership award in 2014.

Currently she is a member of the International Olympic Committee and volunteers her time to sit on 12 different sporting executive boards, commissions or working groups representing New Zealand, Oceania, Woman and Athletes on this highest level of sports administration. 

Barbara acts as an ambassador for Health 2000, the New Zealand Olympic Committee and Project Litefoot. She is a Patron of the Upside downs Education Trust, Motutapu Outdoor Education Camp, and Gulf Harbour Yacht Club.

Small Ball Skills

This term in Room 5 we are working on our small ball skills. We are learning to throw and catch a ball using hand eye-ordination at varying distances as well as working cooperatively within a team.

Below are some photo of us putting these skills in to practice in a game of scatter ball with Room 6 students.

Te Reo Maori

This term in Te Reo Maori we have been focusing on our school's pepeha.

Ko Putauaki te maunga
Ko Ohinemataroa te awa
Ko Mataatua te waka
Ko Ngati Awa te Iwi
Ko Toroa te Tangata
Ko St Joseph's te kura

This week as a focus on "Ko St Joseph's the kura, we were learning about our school's waharoa.  We learnt that Wayne Stuart, an ex-student of our school carved our waharoa many years ago.


At the bottom of our waharoa are the Priest's, we know they are Priests because they are holding crosses.  We know they are males because they are doing the pukana.  We know from kappa haka only males poke their tongue.  They are doing the pukana to scare away all things evil.

Above the Priest's are the Sister's of St Joe's.  We know they are the sisters because on their chest is their crest they would wear in their days.

At the top of our waharoa is the Holy Trinity, with God at the centre.  They wear a korowai (cloak) to cover us all in their love.  In each hand they are holding a patu (a maori weapon) which symbolises all of the work of God in our school.

We know we are a Catholic school and that makes us special.  Our waharoa is very special to us, because its story is all about our school and our religion.