Marsden Year-End Activities

Big sigh, Meggie and Katie finished their last day of school for the year last week. We are exhausted - but very proud of our girls! Their school reports have already arrived full of praise and excellent marks for each of them, and both girls received awards at their Prize Givings. They also performed at a music concert - they both played piano and Meggie sang. Given that they have only been taking piano for a few weeks I thought they were very brave to participate.

Here is a clip of Meggie singing with her partner Charlotte. My phone ran out of memory 45 seconds into the song, apologies!

Meggie and Charlotte with their voice teacher, Annabelle.

Katie's Prize Giving was held first and she did very, very well. She was commended for "consistently high achievement and excellence in science and research" as well as winning the Year 6 speech cup. I stopped the video after that and missed catching the announcement of the next award on video - The "Esther Franks Year 6 Cup for All Around Achievement" which Katie also won!! She won that with her very good friend Emily Stewart. The program says, "This cup is awarded to a student who has worked consistently and has achieved at a high level." We are so, so proud.

Katie with her teacher, Mrs. Johnson, and Lottie, Juliet and Mila

Katie and Emily after being presented with the cup.

The Year 6 girls (as many as I could fit in my frame).

Meggie also won a prize at her Prize Giving. Whereas Katie's Prize Giving is held at school, Meggie's is in the Town Hall and is quite an affair. This year Meggie was highly commended in Languages, Information Technology and Mathematics. We are so proud of her for her hard work too!

I've cobbled together a video of the girls getting their prizes along with a short clip of Katie's last ever Primary School chapel service (I cried) - she is dancing away in the front but it's hard to pick her out of the massive crowd of girls.

Scouts Camp

I took the first few of these pictures as we dropped the girls off, but the rest of them were taken by the leaders. The girls LOVED Scouts camp! They are already asking to be signed up for the Easter camp. Next year all four girls will be in Cubs or Scouts - I think it's great since they will be at an all-girls school and we are a family of all girl children. So much better than selling Girl Scout/Guide biscuits!

Katie and Anna work on putting up their tent.

Meggie sorts out her new self-inflating camp roll.

With a little help from Katie and the instructions.

Anna, Anna and Katie on the flying fox.

Getting ready to ride.

Meggie on front horse.

Left-over glitter on her eyes from the cheer performance.

The Katies.

Katie

Meggie, Katie, Anna, Anna and Richard.

Katie, Anna and Richard

Girls in the jacuzzi.

Meggie and Katie R's tent.

Katie on the zip line.

Here comes Meggie.

Katie again.

Katie abseiling.

Meggie decides to try abseiling facing forwards. 

Group  Shot.

Cheer Performance

The oldest three girls had their first cheerleading performance at a school gala a few weekends ago. It was very exciting for them to get their makeup done and get to perform. Unfortunately the school hall was small and I was too close to get a very good video but I did my best and it's after a few pictures of them with their glittery eyes.

After the competition we drove Meggie and Katie up to Kaitoke to join their Scouts group at camp. I was really impressed at how the other girls helped them put up the tent without any parent help! I'll post those photos tomorrow since I have quite a few from their time at camp. Meanwhile I leave you with these to show you what Dugald and the little girls did while the big girls got organized:

Katie's Year 6 Speech Competition

Katie recently competed in the primary school speech competition at Marsden. She and one other girl were chosen to represent her class and the other Year 6 class chose two representatives as well. Last week all the representatives from Years 4, 5 and 6 participated in a speech competition that was judged by the school principal, Jenny Williams, and the head of the upper school English department whose name escapes me at the moment. Ellie and Josie were out of school early that day so the three of us went to watch and cheer for Katie. We were so excited when Katie won! Well-done Kit-Kat.

She did this to her own eye!

Here is the video of Katie giving her speech:

This is the video of the judges announcing the winner:

In other news Wellington hosted the world premier of The Hobbit last week - the girls and I went down to the Hobbit Market set up at Waitangi Park to enjoy some of the festivities and here is a shot of the Embassy Theater as we drove by a few days prior to the event.

And finally - a picture of Katie from her crazy hair/mufti day at school: