The whole school entered a drawing competition for patterns, colours, and ideas for our Elmer elephant. Tamariki had their work chosen and became the official artists to design and paint ‘Elmer’. Three main themes were presented for them to work on – (1) a school theme relating to our ABC school values Awesome Achievement, Brilliant Behaviour and Connected Citizenship and our school whakataukī – grow tender young shoot, or (2) a colourful spiral themed pattern or (3) a rainbow weather design. The children mainly went for the school theme but we have incorporated a rainbow into it. Once we had the theme the artist came up with a clear design which we started to draw on, map out and paint. Tiaki the name means ‘Protect’, ‘Protection’ or to ‘look after’. On Friday the 28th of July we held a colourful dress up day and raised over $300 for the Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust.