Tamatea Intermediate School was in the pink — and the red, blue, yellow and green. In fact most colours of the rainbow, when the kids dressed up and took part in the inaugural Tamatea Intermediate Colour Run last week.
The fundraising event was held to try to raise enough money to purchase Chromebook laptops for each student, with the aim of building this into a larger community event, says teacher Mia van Dulm.
"At our school we like to take the barriers away for students to access a technology-rich education. Our aim is to have enough Chromebooks each year for students to be able to have one-to-one access. Each year we raise funds to enable this so that whānau are saved an additional expense at the start of the year," Mia says.
This fun run wasn't just the usual dash around the field, but involved each student being sprayed with an all-natural and biodegradable paint powder before and during their run. The whole school was involved, with all students either running or walking around the school field area. Along the course there were eight stations set up to challenge students, including navigating through obstacles, balancing on beams and decoding messages in sign language while colourful paint was tossed around them.
"The kids absolutely loved it. There were endless smiles and laughter as they passed the paint-throwing stations. They begged to be covered in the colours they didn't have on them yet, all trying to get as much colour as they could. They had watched a promotion video of another colour run, but I don't think they expected it to be as epic as it was."
