Kia ora kou tou
What an action-packed Term 3 we have enjoyed at Matua School. We started the term with Life Education sessions in their mobile classroom, where our tamariki loved meeting Harold. These Health Curriculum lessons are targeted, creative and popular with the children. Next year, we will run the Keeping Ourselves Safe programme in Term 3, and will alternate this with Life Education in future years. In addition to Life Education, we also focused on digital safety, with children learning basic skills to keep themselves safe in a digital environment, and parents joining us for a workshop called ‘Informed and Empowered’, exploring the challenges parents face and strategies to help.
The second half of our term focused on learning about ‘Multicultural Matua’. We had a wonderful ignition day where we celebrated the many different ethnicities that we find in our school and around our community. This springboard into our learning has led to many proud moments as tamariki and whānau have shared things precious to them within our classrooms.
Our PTA has been busy with the School Disco early this Term and our first Golf Day for parents just last week! The disco was a massive success, with over 400 children attending, and the Golf Day was a fantastic event that brought our community together to support the school and celebrate being Matua! Massive thank you to the sponsors who got behind the PTA for this event, which raised over $10,000 for our kura. You can view these sponsors in the images below. Thank you to everyone involved in making these events such a success.
STRATEGIC PLAN – WHĀNAU FEEDBACK
As we head towards Term 4, our Board of Trustees are reviewing our strategic plan for the next 2-3 years. Over the last couple of years, our key focus has been on delivering the new Literacy and Mathematics Curriculum and developing our Active Learning/PE programmes. Teachers continue to work hard to develop these areas as government changes continue. Next year, schools will be working with new Science and Social Science curriculum documents.
To help the Board consider next steps, we would appreciate your feedback. FOLLOW THIS LINK to share your feedback. We’d like to hear what’s working well for you and any areas to consider for the future.
CLIVEDENE ENTRANCE DEVELOPMENT
Over the holiday break, contractors will begin work on our new school entrance off Clivedene Street. There have been a series of projects leading up to this including the construction of the retaining wall and the removal of the Norfolk Pine. Last week, we completed the installation of five new garden beds for our Garden to Table programme. This new location creates space for a new playground and bike parking area. The next step is the entrance development, which will see new steps, a ramp and gardens connecting Clivedene Street to the school between Room 16 and 18. This entrance will be fenced off during construction and will likely run into the first week of Term 4.
Thank you for your support and engagement with Matua School and our community. I trust you will enjoy the holiday break, and find some time to enjoy being with your family.
See you in Term 4!
Ngā mihi nui
Marcus Norrish
Principal
SCHOOL CALENDAR
Helen is Matua School’s Premium Sponsor
Want to buy or sell a house? Give her a call – she’s really nice!
MATUA HĀNGĪ 2026
When we talk about how it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to prepare and serve a hāngī. What a huge success our school hāngī was. Thank you to Matua Chris for steering our waka and guiding us through the hāngī process, as well as ensuring that our hāngī was cooked to perfection. Feeding 450 is a big undertaking.
Thank you to PaknSave – we bought all the food for the hāngī from there; every item was great!
Thank you to the Matua teachers for turning up with aprons, boards and knives to cut up all the vegetables on Wednesday and then to those who were in the hall at 7 am on Thursday morning to bag the chicken and help lay the baskets. What an awesome team.
Thank you also to Olive, Eva, Arthur and Linnēa who supported Mrs Nelson at the very popular hot chocolate stall.
Thank you to the team of dads who turned up on Wednesday afternoon to dig the pit, then again at 6 am on Thursday to support with the fire lighting and then the perilous job of shifting the scorching rocks into the pit. Once the food was covered and steaming away it was laden with soil to trap in all that valuable steam. Come 12 o’clock, Matua Chris called for all hands on deck to begin the uncovering of the food.
Thank you to Mr Hantler, who led us in our karakia kai and some beautiful waiata as the food baskets were lifted.
Next, it was on to the task of ensuring all 450 meals were delivered into those waiting empty lunchboxes. Thank you to the parents who came along – armed with tongs and wearing their aprons to serve the hāngī to our school whānau.
Then came the clean-up… Matua Chris and his fantastic crew had to reinstate the patch of field. The tables were wiped, the trays were washed (thanks to a kind parent), and the rubbish was collected.
Thank you to everyone who played a role in the lead-up to and on the day of our hāngī. You were seen and are appreciated. It was a fantastic way to celebrate Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori.
Ka nui te mihi koutou (Many thanks to you all)
GIRLS RUGBY EXCHANGE
Our Year 5 & 6 Girls Rugby Team competed in a tournament at Te Kura o Manunui. The girls ran with determination, scored some amazing tries and tackled hard. They showed great courage and should be very proud of themselves.
NEW UNIFORM OPTIONS
The Matua School Board has approved two new options in our uniform range. Sports shorts (popular with the boys) and Bike Shorts (popular with the girls) can now be worn at school. These two options are light and suitable for sporting activity, so we expect them to be popular when worn with sports tops. The new sports shorts are currently in stock at NZ Uniforms, and the Bike Shorts are expected to be available by the start of Term 4.
As you know, from the start of 2027, students will be expected to be wearing the approved Matua School uniform. We are nearing the end of a three-year transition as we have phased out old uniform styles.
ROLL GROWTH CLASS
We are in the process of looking at our roll growth classes.
If you have a child who is turning 5 within the next 12 months, please can you complete an Intention To Enrol Form by clicking on the following link.
SICKNESS & ATTENDANCE
SCHOOL UNIFORM
CERTIFICATES AND SPOTLIGHTS
MAHURI NEWS
These very clever Matua learners from the Māhuri Team have been making terrific strides in their learning in their classes this term. We are very proud of their achievements and wish them a restful holiday, as it is well deserved.
LIBRARY NEWS
SPORTS NEWS
Last week, our mountain bikers headed to Summerhill for the Western Bay of Plenty Cross Country MTB Championships. The weather was on our side with glorious sunshine, and the course was in epic condition! Our riders took full advantage of the track during practice, getting in plenty of practice jumps and warm-up runs before race time.
When the races kicked off, all of our kids rode hard and showed fantastic grit and determination against some very tough competition. We had some outstanding results across the board, with a special shoutout to Zara and Frankie, who both earned spots on the podium in the Year 5 Girls division!
A massive thank you to the great group of parent supporters who came along to help out, cheer on the team, and transport gear and bikes—we couldn’t do it without you!
YUMMY APPLE STICKERS
We have sent away 7700 Yummy Stickers, which we will receive sports gear for. Please keep up the amazing work of collecting “Yummy Stickers” over the holidays – they all add up!
SINGING LESSONS AT MATUA SCHOOL
HOLIDAY PROGRAMMES
BELLEVUE ATHLETIC CLUB
triKINZ PROGRAMME
Triathlon Tauranga is proud to be the Tri NZ Club of the Year, and our triKIDZ programme is all about giving local kids aged 5–12 the opportunity to learn the basics of triathlon in a supportive, no-pressure environment, while having plenty of fun along the way.
Our Term 4 programme will help kids build their skills and confidence ahead of the Weet-Bix Kids TRYathlon on Sunday 29 November.
Families can register directly for membership here: https://triathlontauranga.org.nz/membership/
Or, for more information, you can email development@triathlontauranga.org.nz
JUNIOR TEE-BALL AND SOFTBALL
ALBION JUNIOR CRICKET CLUB
FUN FIRST FOOTBALL
SWIMMING LESSONS
SCHOOL HOURS
A friendly reminder that school is not open until 8.30am. If you require childcare before these hours, please contact SKIDS either by email – matua@skids.co.nz, phone – 027 586 0408, or book online – www.skids.co.nz/Matua.
SCHOOL INFORMATION
LUNCH ORDERS – EVERY FRIDAY
Lunch orders are available for delivery to Matua School each Friday.
SUBWAY
Simply order your SUBWAY lunch online through you myKindo account by CLICKING HERE
Order (or cancel) any time before 9:00am on the day or schedule in advance.
Help? Visit support.mykindo.co.nz or call 09-869 5200 Mon-Fri, 8:00am to 4:00pm.
TERM DATES 2026
Term 1, 2026 – Wednesday 4th February – Thursday 2nd April
Teacher Only Day – Friday 20th March (MoE Curriculum Training Day)
Term 2 – Monday 20th April – Friday 3rd July
Teacher Only Day – Friday 29th May (MoE Curriculum Training Day)
King’s Birthday Public Holiday – Monday 1st June
Matariki Public Holiday – Falls in school holidays
Term 3 – Monday 20th July – Friday 25th September
Term 4 – Monday 12th October – 16th December
Labour Day Public Holiday – Monday 26th October
Last Day of School – Wednesday 16th December
SETTING UP KINDO
Setting up with Kindo
Kindo is our prefered payments system. To help you learn how it works, we’ve added their new help sheet and video. We hope it helps.