ADVERTORIAL
St Francis school went to the beautiful St George’s Church earlier this term to perform kapa haka and musical items.
Before we left, we got dressed into our kapa haka uniforms and got ready and organised to perform.
We arrived at around 11:45am to do some practice and at 12.15pm, the concert started. To begin the concert, for 10 minutes, we performed a variety of dances and waiata. After that was finished, the senior class performed a haka.
Once the main part of the performance had finished, a few children did solo performances. Some played the piano, some played the guitar, and others sang beautifully.
Lastly, to finish the performance we all sung the special waiata, Pepeha, by Six60.
Once the performance was complete, everyone clapped and applauded.
We all packed up our things and walked out of the church and back to school.
It really was a very enjoyable, happy few hours for our school.
-By St Francis School student Charlotte Perry
Whole school speech and poetry finals held
We had our whole school speech and poetry finals recently, and each of the class finalists were able to present their winning speeches and poems from their class competitions.
We had lots of parents come to support and watch their children and our special judges were Sister Paula and Sister Cathy.
Our year 1 and 2 students were dressed up as characters from their poems which was amazing and fun to see and hear. Their poems were about helping others, peace, cats, watermelon and lots more.
After the poems were recited, our older students presented a wide variety of speeches with topics such as artificial intelligence, the universe and even why we should have a dinosaur as a pet.
It was a great occasion to share the many interesting speeches and ideas of the students here at St Francis.
– By Roy and Mr Fahey
Students plant 800 trees
This term, the St Francis School year 7-8 class ventured out to a farm in the beautiful Kauaeranga Valley to plant trees that we have grown so our kids and grandkids and future generations can enjoy the beautiful location.
We wore mufti so as to not get our school uniform dirty. When we arrived, there were many pre-dug holes to be filled and plants to be planted.
We rubbed the edges of the bags to make it easier to pull the plants out, then we put them in the holes and covered them in soil.
We worked diligently to achieve our goal of 800+ plants planted by 2 o’clock.
In the end, we drove back to our school in muddy clothing, having achieved our goal and we were ready for a good night’s sleep.
In preparation for next year’s planting, we recently transplanted seedlings in little bags for the students of 2025, so they can do what we did this year.
We had 20 bags of potting mix and 15 kids working hard throughout the day.
We ended up potting 829 seedlings with 51 left over.
In my opinion, it was harder potting the seedlings than planting the bigger plants because we had to work sitting down for hours putting strain on our backs. In the end it was worth it because we get to help keep the native plants of New Zealand thriving for future generations.
We were all given a cinnamon donut from our teacher for our efforts.
-By St Francis School student Jasmine Mariano-Lakhan
Mix ‘n mingle at Tararu rest home
Earlier this term, year 7 and 8 St Francis students went to Tararu rest home to mingle with and perform for the residents.
Once we arrived we were told to be quiet then we got out of the school van and our teacher guided us toward the main entrance.
We then somehow got lost for a while and I suddenly remembered that my aunty works there. If I was lucky, I could find her for directions but unfortunately, I didn’t see her.
Once we got out of the main building, we entered a lovely neighbourhood of villas and then managed to get lost again.
Then right away there was a staff member passing by so she led us toward what looked like a croquet court and just beside it was a new building.
We went inside and heard the old folks singing beautifully then we were asked to be seated.
Once they were finished our teacher introduced us all to them.
We had some of our students play piano and one of them played the guitar.
After this ended we realised we were in the wrong place.
Finally, we made our way to the hospital area. The people here were very frail and they were hard to understand. The people did what they had to do.
Unfortunately, we arrived there so late we missed our morning tea and we couldn’t mingle with them.
-By St Francis School student Zuriel Regis
St Francis School rippa rugby team makes the finals
About two weeks ago some of the year seven and eight students were chosen to represent our school for Rippa rugby in Ngatea.
About a week before the tournament, we started training during most lunch intervals.
On Wednesday, the day of the tournament, we were putting on our sports shirts and shorts, getting ready for the big day to come.
As we travelled to Ngatea, we went in our awesome school van.
On arrival, we were very happy and surprised that the weather was not at all like last year’s tournament, which was rainy, gloomy, wet, and muddy.
It was a happy, cheerful, and beautiful sunny day. It was quite slippery, since it was early morning.
We started to prepare for the first match.
The game started and everyone was slipping around and dropping the ball.
Sadly, we lost the first game by one or two points but as you people reading this would know, St Francis obviously doesn’t give up.
We had a good attitude and were still happy.
As another hour passed it was time for the second game.
We made our way to the field and this time it wasn’t slippery. As the match started, we kept in our heads that it’s not about winning the game but about getting lots of points because that’s how you win.
When the game ended, we won and we got about six or seven points.
We went back to our bags and took out a little snack and a drink to refresh before the final game. There were about five minutes left until the game started so we headed to the field.
The match started and it was an easier game so we knew that we had to get as many tries as we could to make it to the finals.
We won the game and got 15 tries.
A couple of days later, we got a message saying we made it to the finals in second place out of the whole region.
We will be going to Paeroa for the regional finals.
