Kōrero

Ko te piko o te mahuri, tērā te tupu o te rākau

The way in which the young sapling is nurtured determines how the tree will grow

My apologies for the lateness of this newsletter, but this week we come to you from Wānaka. The Wānaka Show is one of the highlights of our year as we connect with members of our wider school community and our Old Girls in the area. This year we shared our show site with one of our sister schools, Columba College, and we are thoroughly enjoyed having them with us! The camaraderie and conversations were fabulous as we look to further developing and strengthening our relationship with them. As in previous years we our Head Girl, Camryn Porter, and Deputy Head Girl, Sophie Mulder, handed out invites to our Open Day in May and our Craighead cookies (supplied by Lama Cookie Drama), which were well received! If you were in Wānaka this weekend, I hope you were able to come along and see us. Our team at Wanaka was Deputy Principal Ms Sonya Hull, Mrs Gilly Owens and Chief Operations Manager, Ms Renae Meggitt, we will be delighted to see you.

On Wednesday we were privileged to have our Head Girl’s mother, Mrs Vanessa Porter come into school to present the Swimming Sports Awards. This is one of many Craighead traditions that we honour each year and it’s always delightful to see how proud the girls are of their mum’s. As a school we would like to thank Mrs Porter for making herself available to do this, we really appreciated it. Those competing at the Swimming Sports did very well and it was wonderful to recognise their achievements. As we reminded the students again, excellence as a concept is a continuous evolving process with no destination; instead, it is a mindset – in the words of John Wooden “It takes time to create excellence. If it could be done quickly, more people would do it”, and for those girls who have been successful at our Swimming Sports, this is certainly true. It takes time to achieve what they all achieved, it takes training to achieve what they achieved and it takes determination and support, so thank you to our parents for all you do in support of your daughters!

Congratulations to the following students who were named as Grade Champions and Runners up:

Minor: Lauren Crawford (GC) and Sophie Burton (RU)

Junior: Francesca Gough (GC) and Brooke Thompson (RU)

Intermediate: Megan Scott (GC) and Olivia Walsh (RU)

Senior: Briar Annett (GC) and Emily Caird (RU)

This year we have two records broken in the Minor Grade. Congratulations to Lauren Crawford who set the following new records of 32.70s in the 50m Freestyle, and 39.32s in the 50m Backstroke.

Our Volleyball girls did very well at the South Canterbury Aoraki Championships on Tuesday. Thank you to Mr Jones and Mr Townshend for their support of the team on Tuesday. There will be a full round up on the Volleyball season in this edition of the newsletter.

Craighead Connect had their AGM and first meeting for 2024 on Tuesday and it was lovely to see a really positive turnout and some good ideas being shared. Getting involved with our school community through Craighead Connect is a great way to contribute to our school community and I really encourage people to get involved. Congratulations to Mrs Sarah Pierce who was returned as the Chair, Mrs Amanda Spillane who was returned as Vice-Chair, Mrs Christine Crosbie who comes in as the new Secretary, (a big thank you to Mrs Michelle Agnew who is leaving the Secretary role this year) and Mrs Tania Attridge who remains as Treasurer. Over the course of the year Craighead Connect are planning some great events, so watch out for these and make sure to come along and support them and your daughters/

Thank you to Camryn Porter and Sophie Mulder for representing us so well at the Wānaka Show. We always have wonderful feedback about our girls and their representation of the school whilst away. Thank you also to Camryn and Sophie’s families who were there in support as well, it was lovely to see you all along with a number of other families today. If you’re an Old Girl living in Wānaka who popped into see us thank you, we love to see you, one of the many highlights of this Show is meeting up with you and listening to your stories of your school days, it is clear that Craighead is held with affection for many of you.

We will update this newsletter on Monday as we do have a few other stories to share, but for now we are signing out from Wānaka and heading home to Timaru.

Ngā Manaakitanga

Ms Lara Hearn-Rollo