Although we were in lockdown and children were learning from home, plans are in place to add responsibility and more outdoor education to the curriculum here at school. We have adopted Beebys, a DOC hut in the Nelson Lake's National Park.

Adopting a hut means we will be making trips up to Beebys (at least twice a year) to look after and maintain the hut.

In doing this, we’re giving the children the responsibility of looking after a part of our community.

Taking on this task has seen Lake Rotoiti in the news again. Read about it here:

School students take DOC hut under their wing | Stuff.co.nz

After going into a snap lockdown last week due to COVID-19 being found in the community in Auckland, we swung back into action with home schooling. Mike and Debbie made the rounds last weekend delivering devices and teaching packs to homes (a loop covering over 150km).

​For the students of Lake Rotoiti School education doesn't stop with the schoolwork as the kids get out and about helping on farms, mustering sheep, building huts, feeding animals and exploring the Nelson Lakes environment.

So while we can't go skiing, our awesome school has made the news with our lockdown antics.

Covid-19: Children muster sheep and build dens under 'frustrating' snow view | Stuff.co.nz

So far this term we have managed two days of skiing at Rainbow Skifield. While the first day was grey and gloomy our second was spectacular. Blue skies and fresh powder...what more can you ask for.

While the whole mountain isn't quite open yet, the more experienced skiers have still been able to ski from the top down and work on their skills and our newer skiers have been working on their skills on the lower slopes.

This year we've implemented a new Health and Safety measure while skiing. Identifying children on the slopes has always been tricky, especially since we encourage the use of helmets. Instead of going traditional with hi-vis vests, we've supplied kids with bright green mohawks to apply to their helmets. There's no mistaking a child from Lake Rotoiti School now!

Days of significant frosts in St Arnaud meant the ice skating pond froze solid enough for some skating and we jumped at the opportunity to takes the kids out for their physical education lesson. 

The kids had a brilliant time skating (some wobbling) on the ice and pushing each other around on chairs.

This term we have had Tim in to teach the seniors the Ukelele. They're all picking it up relatively quickly and with great enthusiasm.

It's always a fun day when snow hits St Arnaud. Not enough this time for a snowday but definitely enough to make snowballs and snowmen. We're hoping for a nice cold snowy winter and an excellent ski season!

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.