Stonefields Kapa Haka

Team, for those that are still keen to keep up their learning with Kapa Haka we've found some good resources online. This tutor has been posting up some resources . You'll have to have a Facebook account to access it, so you might have to share yours with your learner. Not all are our songs however Matua Whaitiri is an incredible teacher that I'm sure the learners will utilise. Follow him on Facebook. He's being very ambitious but is posting daily at the moment. We'll put some of our own resources up for the group when we get the chance. Still trying to find our feet with working from home and setting the kids some duties.  Bryan

Kia Ora everyone. Here is our plan for 2017.  We have an exciting and varied schedule for this year - even though some items are not 100% confirmed, we thought whānau would appreciate getting some dates in the diaries as early as possible. This year's plan: April - Te Oro We have been invited to perform at Te Oro for the Manaiakalani Cluster's environmental focus day.  This is on Wednesday 12 April with the exact time TBC. May - marae noho We are holding a marae noho at the school on May 27 & 28.  The focus will be on the history of the unique area on which our school has been built. June - Matariki We will perform at the school's Matariki assembly (2pm on 30 June) to celebrate the Māori New Year. August - marae noho On either the weekend of 19 / 20 August and 26 / 27 August we will gather the tamariki together with the view of recording them onto a CD. December - End of Year As with previous years, the kapa haka participants will perform at t...

Kia Ora Koutou, There has been considerable interest in our Stonefields Kapa Haka shirts and hooded tops.  We secured our funding from  Alexander Motors  and from our fundraising events over the past year.  We have been extremely fortunate to have been able to provide Kapa Haka t-shirts for our learners at no cost to our families.  The generosity has been outstanding. Our Design Chris Henoa has been working on the design for the past year.  The vision was to ensure that the design incorporates what makes this group special.  There are links to the school, the land and our protectors.  The detail is phenomenal.  When we get a chance we will ask Chris to provide a summary of the design so we can all understand it’s journey.  We can now be proud of something that represents this group. Ordering Clothing Due to the expressions of interest for further items we have reconnected with the supplier to understand ...

What’s Happening On Friday the 1st of July the school is doing it's first official school wide hangi experience.  This is an opportunity for the children and community.  The school has provided the community with a hangi pit and now this is our opportunity to showcase it to the community.  As the Kapa Haka community we will be working in partnership with the school to be able to perform it.  This is a massive undertaking.  In 2014 we completed a hangi for our Marae noho which was for 150 people, this time we are looking at feeding around 600 people.  This will be an incredible and ambitious undertaking. Why Is It Important Not only is this important for our children but also for our community.  Our community will benefit from experiencing traditional Maori cooking.  We can share the culture and assist the school in connecting with its biculturalism values.  Food can bring the community together but what we learnt from the l...

Seasons greetings team.  We have had a massive year with our group growing exponentially from last year and then taking on some pretty ambitious targets.  Highlights would have to include our Marae Noho at AUT Marae as well as the performances we have had at the School Gala, Art Expo and Bailey Road School. Given that we have had such an incredible year our Kapa Haka whānau would like to engage with both the learners and the greater Kapa Haka community to step back and celebrate the year that we have had.  We would like to invite our greater whānau to the last practice for the year (Wednesday 16th of December) at which we will be - Performing some of our favourite songs from the year - Blessing our new korowai, uniforms and leavers taonga - Having a shared breakfast to celebrate the year To help support this we would like to welcome you and siblings if able and a plate of FINGER food to share.   We would love to see as many people as possible...

Today's performance is confirmed.  Please make sure that those who are attending have their guardians available to pick them up after the performance.  We are all excited to have everyone there.    See you this afternoon.   Kapa Haka Tutors

Purpose This communication is to share details of the groups next scheduled performance. Background We are proud to say that the Stonefields Kapa Haka group has been nominated to perform at the inaugural Tamaki Cultural Festival at Bailey Road School on Friday the 6 th of November.  This event was created to bring our schools together and to celebrate each others performances.  This is the first of what is hoping to be many of these events in the future.  There will also be a performance by TJ Taotua to close the event.   We will be representing Stonefields School as a member of this cluster group.  Other schools that will be performing include: Saint Pius X Catholic School Glen Innes Primary School, and Glen Taylor School Our Involvement We want as many of our learners to be there to perform as possible.  This is a great opportunity for our team to showcase what we have learnt so far in the year, but also to see what other sc...

Hello All,   For next week only, we have changed the date of practice from Wednesday to Thursday the 17th of September.  We hope that you can make the adjustment as this will be the final practice before the learners first formal performance for the Art Expo on Saturday the 19th of September.  For the practice we will be meeting in the Hub 1 at 8am and looking to then move to the hall at 8:30am so we have an opportunity to practice on the stage.    Look forward to seeing you all there!   Kapa Haka Committee  

Kia Ora Whanau, As you will be aware the school is holding a Art exhibit over the weekend of the 18th & 19th of September.  The Kapa Haka group has been invited to perform on Saturday morning.  For those learners that can make it, our performance is at 10:30am.  We will require your child to be at the school at 9:30 so we can get them dressed and run through a practice of our performance.  This is our first school performance this year so it would be awesome to see you all there. Kapa Haka Committee   

There has been a great response from our community around the Marae Noho visit.  We are excited about the opportunity to share the time with you all.  Thank you all for your continued support.   Just a friendly reminder that payment of the commitment fee is due on Friday (21/08/2015).  Some slips have been handed in without payment so if you believe that you have forgotten the fee can you please confirm payment with the office before this Friday. Thank you again for your support! Kapa Haka Committee   

This is a heads up to advise that we will be having a Noho Marae (sleep over) this year.  We will be doing this at AUT (in the city) at the end of this month (29 th and 30 th of August).  This is a chance for us to connect as a group and take it one step further than last year i.e. go off school grounds.  On Wednesday practice we will be distributing permission slips to the learners.  The details of the event will be in the permission slip.  Although we would love everyone to come there are some restrictions in terms of numbers.  There is a sleeping capacity of 80 people so that equates to 40 children with an adult supervisor.  Permission slips will be available tomorrow .  Please contact one of the Kapa Haka tutors or reply to this communication if you have any questions.

A reminder that we will be having a Kapa Haka committee meeting this Sunday.  We have posted it on the blog previously but just want to remind people that it will be this Sunday over at the Harrison's house: 7 Ganley Tce, Stonefields.  Starting at 6pm. Looking forward to seeing some new faces there!   

Next Friday, the 22nd of May, the school is having a Cultural Mufti day.  The communication will be shared with the school in next weeks school communication update but we want to share that message with you. T he general theme is to invite the different cultures of the school to showcase their heritage.  This will be a wonderful display of the multi cultural environment that is Stonefields School.  Although we come from different backgrounds we have the same goals i.e. a whanau kotahi (one family) environment .   Your children will be invited to share in their heritage or come to school in mufti.  A gold coin donation will be collected by the school staff during the day. The school has kindly agreed to commit a portion of the money raised to Kapa Haka needs.  The money raised from the Cultural Mufti Day will assist in the Kapa Haka group to be able to achieve some of the ambitious activities that we have in store for the group. Our immediate needs a...

The Kapa Haka community are looking for people to join our committee.  We have drafted some ambitious goals for the group over the next year and we want you to be part of it.  What we are after is people to: Make sure we are on the right track i.e. Aligned to our goals Provide your expertise (what ever that may be), and Make it happen There are no pre-requisites to being part of this committee.  You don't have to be Maori to join this group!  In fact it would be great to have non-Maori involved to again tie in with our community.  Our focus is on cultural awareness for the learners and our community.  If you can see benefit in that for our community then we want you! We are well aware and proud of the strength of our Kapa Haka community.  We are truly a culturally rich group.  This was made obvious by our Marae Noho and the continual support shown last year.  This was a wonderful showcase of our community work...

We want to reinforce the message that was communicated to the learners this morning that the Sunday practices have been postponed.  There will be NO Sunday practices until further notice. We have considered the feedback of the parents and the school and decided that we will still conduct a concert but leave it until the end of the year.  Our intentions are to showcase what the learners have gained during the year.   We have a lot in store for our learners and we are hopeful that you will support us to deliver these experiences.  In previous communications we have talked about the schedule for the year.  The feedback has been positive but we are wary that we will need the community support to be able to deliver.    

Great work from those who attended this week.  We had a fantastic turnout.  Last week Ms Martin reinforced to the learners that we should make a choice to commit or not to the group.  It seems as though that message has resonated with the group.  We are so pleased that we continue to get such great support from our community and the school. We split the class up to have a bit of fun this morning.   The boys and girls were split between doing the Ti Rakau (short stick) and waiata (singing) / haka.  We swapped around after around 15 minutes.  We want to try and keep it light as we know that the activities can be challenging. The ti rakau continues to be a hurdle for the learners.  It would be an advantage if the learners and parents take some time to review the videos on this blog for 'Ka Pioioi E'.  Matua Chris and Whaea Rongomai demonstrate it at full speed.  It is a challenge but some learners are progressing.  We know this t...

Purpose This communication is to share the vision and goals for the Kapa Haka group with our community so we can share what we are trying to achieve.  It is vitally important to the community that we are all engaged and coordinated to work towards these common goals. Background A considerable amount of work has been invested in communication this year.  The team has done a great job developing material and tools for the use of the learners.  We have started a blog that we use to communicate and provide the tools for the learners to succeed.  What we have learnt is that this is only engaging with a fraction of our community.   This feedback has been invaluable, so our approach is to continue to invest in the blog but also use other avenues to communicate, one being email but others include the weekly school communication update and Kapa Haka practices.  We encourage you to view the blog and get your children confident with the tools on the s...

Purpose This communication is to share the proposed schedule of events for the remainder of this school year. Background We have been listening to the feedback from our parents.  One of the items was on how we could calendar the year for the learners so that they are aware.  Thank you all for this feedback, as it has been high on our list also.   Previously we communicated our aspirations of creating a whanau kotahi (one family) environment as well as nurturing our future leaders confidence in themselves as well as Te Ao Maori (the Maori world) through waiata (songs) and dance.  We want to share our schedule for the remainder of the year.   Schedule Below is the proposed 2015 schedule: Tuesday 09 June ERO (Educational Review Organisation) visit Kapa Haka learners to lead the welcome Speeches as well as songs Will be conducted during the school day i.e. 9am to 10am Not run by Kapa Haka tutors (school led) annitta.nin@stonefields....

We Need You!  Your ideas, your skills and your expertise. We want to openly invite our Kapa Haka parents to come and join us to discuss what direction the Kapa Haka group will be aspiring to achieve in the future.   The first term was full with new songs and experiences and we dreams of using these experiences to take our group to a new level.   We are really wanting to engage with our new and existing parents to help take us towards the collective vision of the group.   Your contribution is valued.   Please do your best to be there!  We will be meeting in Hub 1 from 6:00 – 7:15 on Tuesday the 28 th of April.   Please comment below if you have any questions or queries.