2014 HNHS School Magazine | Page 25

It was an honour to be chosen as Kauri house leaders by our peers and teachers. We began the year of house events at Riverbend for our Year 13 camp. This was an incredibly, enjoyable way to start the year because we all came together as a group, doing team building activities, putting together a chant and creating a skit. KAURI Our very first house event where we all came together as a group was swimming sports. Participation in this event was key to our success; we also had some wonderful champions - Jamie Grey and Alexia Hinton in the senior girls. Second place was ours, at the end of the day. We were blessed with sunshine for house athletics. It was an enjoyable day with the participation level soaring. 1st place was again ours and included many placing in championship events. We are extremely proud of all the students that have taken part in any house events this year, and are so thankful for all the time and effort Miss McDonald has put into Kauri house. It has been an incredible year I am sure that the motivation and participation will continue next year. Life skills was our next event. This was the first minor event of the year. Students made omelets and sushi, created Alice Guerin and Liam Reeves blocks of cement and did a geography quiz. Our group of Kauri students snared first place. The next event was house choir with the compulsory song being Happy by Pharrell Williams and we chose the song “I’m a Believer,” by Smash Mouth from the film Shrek. We knew it would be a tough challenge but we had more than enough students taking part in the choir. This was great. We were so thankful for all the help that was given to us, especially by the year 12 students Brie Keatley, Gracie Nisbet and Layla Pitt. We were blessed with many champions, and by many fantastic students who ran awesomely for our house in the cross-country. Kauri stormed to first place in the cross country by a landslide. Our last event of the year was tug of war, an event we have found trouble with in previous years. We knew that to win the Patu we would have to beat Rata by two places. Unfortunately this didn’t happen so we ended the year in second place.