Apanui School

31/08/2026

Sharing stories together is a powerful way for children to make sense of the world, build their language skills, and connect with their culture and family - making it a vital part of early literacy development. Stories can be shared with young children in many ways, be it through books, play, art, music, everyday conversations or everyday routines.

Our 2025 research report Strengthening early literacy practice: Exploring story sharing in diverse, equity-funded kindergartens highlights how parents, kaiako, and whānau all play an important role in helping children learn about stories and storytelling. Here are some of the ways storytelling can be fostered!

https://www.nzcer.org.nz/news-and-blogs/supporting-early-childhood-storytelling-11-tips-kaiako-and-whanau

31/08/2026

School Photos are just three weeks away - order your photos on line or using the envelope that went home a couple of weeks ago.

30/08/2026

24/08/2026

Our school photos will be held on Tuesday 22nd September, order forms for this are coming home today!

You can also collect an envelope for sports photos from the office if you would like one.

If you prefer you can order online from:

School photographs are a special part of your child's life journey and are a must have treasured memory of their life journey from being a young infant to a thriving young adult. Order yours from Lazer Photos today!

23/08/2026

Sickness Update

Kia ora e te whānau,

Unfortunately, Influenza A is now starting to hit our staff and their own children pretty hard too. We currently have nine staff away, and many of our usual relievers are also sick, which is making finding cover increasingly difficult.

We will absolutely do our best to keep things running, but tomorrow this will mean combining several classes so that we have enough adults across the school to safely supervise and care for everyone.

I just want to give you a heads-up that this will cause some disruption to our normal classroom routines. Our teachers will do their best to keep learning programmes going, but with classes combined and staff covering in different places, maintaining our usual classroom programmes will be a struggle.

This is another reason we really need your help to slow down the illness moving through our kura. Please continue to keep tamariki home if they are unwell and give them enough time to properly recover before returning. We completely understand the pressure this puts on whānau, but at the moment we are trying to manage significant illness across both our students and our staff.

Hopefully we can get through the worst of this quickly. Thank you for your patience, understanding, and support while we juggle things at our end.

Ngā mihi maioha,

Whaea Mārama

11/08/2026

Sickness

Kia ora e te whānau,

We have 74 students away sick today, which is around 17% of our school, along with eight of our staff. We have also sent another nine tamariki home sick during the day, so unfortunately there are a few fairly nasty bugs doing the rounds at the moment.

We currently have students with confirmed cases of Influenza A, strep throat, and RSV, and all appear to be spreading quickly through the school.

If your child is unwell, please keep them at home until they are well enough to return. Please also remember to let us know they are away through the HERO app or by contacting the school office directly.

Hopefully we can slow some of these bugs down and get everyone healthy again soon.

Thanks for your support,

Whaea Mārama