Thanks to the time and effort of Frith Dollimore, we were granted funding from MPI for 320 native plants as part of the One Billion Trees Project. With the plants delivered to school - thank you again Frith - the next step was of course a planting party.

It's not often you see kids arriving at school in gumboots and with shovels (ok, we see gumboots fairly often here but the shovels were new) but this is exactly what happened yesterday. The call had also gone out to the parents and community for help and they turned up, shovels in hand, ready to work.

I wish I could say it was a sunny day but no, as we watched the weather during the day it rained, drizzled, stopped and then rained again. We could only cross our fingers that when we actually got out there for planting it would ease, and it did...mostly.

With so many hands we made quick (if muddy) work out of digging the holes (this was helped by John with his post hole digger), dropping in fertiliser pellets, planting the plants and then adding guards and stakes.

Alison was hard at work manning the BBQ and it was great to have a hot sausage sizzle after the hard work was done.

Thank you everyone for your hard work, the area by the pool is going to look truly amazing once the plants have grown some and it's looking pretty good now.

I'm not sure there's a better way to round out a term than a whole school camp. On Monday 12 April the students, staff and some parents piled into the school buses and cars to head out to Bridge Valley Camp near Wakefield. Although the weather forecast was poor, spirits were high with a lot of fun activities to look forward to, and whew, by the sounds of it they certainly had a fantastic time. Camp was packed with activities including, archery, shooting, rock climbing, abseiling, kayaking, luging, swimming, team building games, water activity course and a toasty woodfire to warm up in front of afterwards. I'm sure every child came home with exhausted smiles on their faces (I'm not sure I can say the same for the teachers and parents...they may have just come home exhausted).

There was a lot of excitement at school with Emirates Team New Zealand successfully defending the Americas Cup. Although we couldn't watch the final race at school most kids watched it while at home last Wednesday afternoon and spent the rest of the week at school Buzzing about it.

A big card of congratulations was created and sent off to Emirates Team NZ and we once again made it into the local news.

​Click below to see the card the kids made.

On Wednesday 17 March, Bonnie, Jessica and Nina represented the school at the Waimea South Swimming Championship where they completed in the Year 5 25m Freestyle Event. Although they didn't gain a place in the finals Bonnie and Jessica each came third in their heats and they all swam very well.

Thank you everyone for joining us for swimming sports. The kids loved having parents there to cheer them on as they competed in their races and they had even more fun trying to beat the parents in the parents vs kids races.

Well done to all the children who competed in the races. It's fantastic to see such strong swimmers at school and congratulations to those that placed first, second and third.

The kids had a chance to play with an underwater camera today and had some fun taking candid shots.

What an unbelievable opportunity for the kids. Dive Kaikoura came all the way here to run a Bubblemaker SCUBA course for the senior class. They got to experience the thrill of breathing underwater and learn new skills all in the safety of our pool. The kids had an absolute blast with the common question being "When can we do it again?". I think we may have future SCUBA divers on hand.