Dear Parents,
It has truly been an international week from learning about Australia Day, listening to Auld Lang Syne (in Mandarin) to the Burns Celebration today. There are lots of reminders in this Parent Update. Please do get in touch if you have any questions.
DATES TO REMEMBER (for the next 2-3 weeks!)
4 Feb – KidsFest School Trip for Year 1s: “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. Please email your class teacher for any updates.
5 Feb – 8.15am to 9am – Parent Workshop led by Miss Katie Byrne, Curriculum Coordinator will give you information on how and why we assess your child. Please email us to reserve a place and note the earlier start time of 8.15am!
5 Feb – PTA Valentine’s Disco – A lot of pupils are getting excited! If you’ve not yet replied, please bring in your form as soon as possible with HK$20. It will be a fun afternoon of dancing! Please do let your child’s class teacher and bus@nais.hk know if your child’s leaving arrangement will be different on that day.
5 Feb – 4.00 – 4.30pm – Parent Workshop led by Mr David Sheehan on “Advocating for your child”.
10 Feb – 8.30 – 9.00am – Parent Workshop led by Mandarin Matrix on “Supporting your child with the Mandarin Matrix online reading scheme at home”. Representatives from Mandarin Matrix will brief parents on how to get the most out of the Mandarin Matrix tools and online materials to engage and motivate your child to learn at home.
12 Feb – 8.30 – 9.00am – Parent Workshop led by Mr David Boyd on “E-safety at Home”.
Again for all our upcoming workshops, please email us to reserve a place.
11 /12 Feb – Residential Trip Briefings (11 Feb for Year 3 and 4; 12 Feb for Years 5 – 7). Representatives from Terratribes have been invited to brief parents on the residential trips coming up in mid-June. See below for more details.
13 Feb – Chinese New Year Celebrations at school – pupils can come into school wearing red or in their Chinese-styled attire (Note: this is the last day before Chinese New Year holidays.)
16 – 20 Feb – Half Term Holidays
Now, to what’s been happening at NAIS this week…
OUR NAIS TEAM FOR COBIS
As you know, our PE staff have been busy with team trials for the COBIS Games taking place in Athens, Greece on 14 – 16 May 2015. The team is limited to 7 boys and 7 girls and the chosen teams were:
Boys: Vic Jiwattanakul, Zan Thompson, Jotaro Kunitomo, Reza Bayat, Kenan Little, Brendan Wang, Justin Suo
Reserves: Charlie Dier, Aaron Hallworth, Bobby Li, Henrique Bastos
Girls: Simone Skovgaard, Amber Khaira, Polina Evdokimova, Janice Ooi, Nina Finch, Megu Tanaka, Crystal Deng
Reserves: Amaya Berrisford, Nicole Chan, Tina Ma, Jessica Wong
A huge congratulations to all! This will be a superb opportunity for our pupils to compete in athletics, swimming and football events at an international event and will be an experience that they will remember for the rest of their lives!
RESIDENTIAL TRIP BRIEFINGS
Our Year 3 – 7 parents are invited to meet Terratribes, the organisers of our residential trips taking place in June. They are a company used in all our China region schools, who have an outstanding reputation in delivering first-class learning and life experience for pupils. Our Year 3 and 4 pupils will be heading to Hong Kong’s outlying islands, whilst our Year 5 to 7 pupils will be heading to Mainland China. The briefings are scheduled for:
Wednesday 11 February
6.30 – 7.15pm for Year 3
7.15 – 8.00pm for Year 4
Thursday 12 February
6.30 – 7.15pm for Year 5
7.15 – 8.00pm for Year 6/7
Please register so that we have an idea of numbers for each session.
KINDERGARTEN VISITS
It was lovely to show the Principals of some of the Woodland Preschools around our wonderful school, and get to know them better. We have now run several tours for international kindergartens and we will be welcoming more over the next few weeks.
NAIS HIKES
Two NAIS hikes took place earlier in the week. A family hike in Sai Kung (led by Mrs Rebecca Merrett) and a Monday NAIS mums hike to Tai Tam (led by Jane Candlish – a Year 1 mum). Some great photos have been posted on facebook. If you are interested in hiking to take advantage of this beautiful weather and seeing more of Hong Kong scenic countryside, please do get in touch – you can find more information on the hiking blog – click here.
67TH HONG KONG MUSIC FESTIVAL
We will be entering 17 of our pupils into the Hong Kong Music Festival. The annual Music Festival will take place in March and our participants will be performing on a variety of instruments from, piano, to violin, voice and flute. We wish them the best of luck!
NAIS PARENT WORKSHOPS
Mrs Patsy Morgan led a Parent Workshop on “Learning Through Play in Key Stage 1”. Mrs Morgan, 1E Class Teacher, has a wealth of experience and explained how crucial play is to enhancing learning. She gave examples of what to do at home to support this learning, whether it's making coloured play-dough or adding glitter to bath-time. Mrs Morgan got a few volunteers to play “wacky words” (just as children would in a Year 1 class!) and led some parents into our Panda Playground to discover for themselves how much learning children can take away from a 15-minute play in our beautiful play area! If you missed the workshop, you can find our more if you click here.
PTA QUIZ NIGHT
More than 160 parents and staff were quizzed last night by our Quiz Master, Mr Brian Cooklin at the inaugural PTA Quiz Night. It was a fun night of trivia, games and socializing. A total of 26 teams battled their brains to answer some testing questions (for some!) and the winning team were the team “21 Again” – congratulations to them and the many raffle prize winners!
A warm thanks to all the PTA members, volunteers and NAIS staff who worked extremely hard in bringing the Quiz Night together. We can’t wait for the next event!
AN OPPORTUNITY TO PLAY CHESS
The HK Junior Chess Club is organising a Hong Kong Inter-School Team Chess Championships for both Primary and Secondary schools on 28 and 29 March. If your child is an avid Chess player and interested, please click here and contact the organisers directly.
MANCHESTER UNITED SOCCER SCHOOL CAMPS
As part of our large family of 31 schools, NAIS is able to take advantage of some exciting opportunities around the world. During Easter, Manchester United Soccer Schools (MUSS) will hold a camp on 31 March to 2 April at our Shunyi campus in Beijing. If you miss this one, MUSS will hold another camp in our Puxi school in Shanghai on 27 – 29 June this Summer. Please check out the information on the links above and/or email info@manutdsoccerschoolschina.com for more details, stating which camp you are interested in.
STAR OF THE WEEK – MANDARIN AND SPANISH
It’s always great to celebrate the achievements of our pupils and this week was no exception. We saw some proud stars for Mandarin (Years 1 – 4) and Spanish (Years 5 – 7) as follows:
Mandarin
Year 1: Kaavya Karnavat, Rita Zhan, Lisa Boschini, Jonathan Poon, Ariel Xiao
Year 2: Belinda Liu, Naomi Khaira, Oskar Boekhorst, Lucas Vandeweghe, Seowon Byun
Year 3: Adrian Li, Karl Evans, Felix Zhang, Chloe Chan
Year 4: Adria Jook, Chloe Lau, Zoe Yu, Luke Incledon
Spanish
Year 5: Henrique Bastos, Ebbe Lee, Jules Moges
Year 6: Riccardo Forzani, Nina Finch
Year 7: Judy Zhu, Charles Thompson
A big congratulations to our Stars!
BURNS CELEBRATION
It has been a truly international week. After learning about Australia Day earlier in the week, today we celebrated the life and poetry of Robert Burns (1759–1796), a famous Scottish poet. Usually a Burns Supper is held near his birthday on 25 January but we celebrated at school today with a special assembly in the afternoon. Principal Mr Brian Cooklin, dressed in a traditional Scottish kilt along with other Scottish staff, shared Burns’ poetry and pupils tasted a haggis (a traditional Scottish savoury dish) and listened to bagpipes playing. Click here for some fantastic photos of the celebration.
AND FINALLY….
We have also attached an Important Dates for Term 2 and 3 document. Please do print this out and keep it as a reminder of what’s coming up. But do keep checking our website and facebook for updates as there may be additions to these dates.
We wish you a lovely weekend!
