Swimming lessons

After spending the bulk of this week away from school doing a course in Project Management (very intense and heavy stuff to learn), it was lovely to get back to school to see the kids and our staff. From all reports so far, swimming has been a mostly positive experience for all and everyone is generally coping well with the changes in routine. Please continue to support your children with consistent routines and good opportunities for down time and rest as we enter into our second and final week of swimming lessons. 

School Board and P&F

This week we had our final meetings for both the School Board and the P&F. I am so grateful to the parents in our school who can give their time, energy and expertise to these groups. I thoroughly enjoy our meetings and love working with people with different perspectives. Each parent and staff member who assists with the Board and the P&F are fully invested in guiding our school to be the best we can be. This year has certainly held up a number of limitations as far as opportunities for meetings, community gatherings and general community building which remains one of our top priorities moving forward. Please accept my sincerest and heartfelt thanks to those parents who have been able to contribute this year.

Transition

Over the next few weeks, we expect to begin transition processes with a number of our students who need support in moving to their new year level, class teacher and classroom. This process is well coordinated by our Inclusive Education Coordinator, class teachers and parents. This will also include transition for our Kindy kids coming to Prep where they will join us for assemblies and for play a couple of times. Our goal is to ensure our students feel as positive as they can about the new year ahead.

Grounds update

This week we have planted 12 more well established trees that will grow and provide beautiful shade in the years to come. Our windmill will have some more work done on it and around it next week with a cattle trough and a fence being added in. Please don’t get excited, we are not getting any poddy calves! I have already been told our windmill is serving the community, helping the local fisherman know whether to go out on the boat or not :)

We have shade sails coming for the see-saws and for the adventure playground. We are also replacing the swings near the kindy and duplicating the swings we add there up near the windmill for the Year 2’s.

Our Defence Memorial is underway with the steel sculptures being erected, now for some gardening with rosemary for remembrance and dandelions, the official flower for defence children. Mr Dellaway who did the sculptures is also creating some metal poppies to complete the memorial.

Our Indigenous garden should also be complete before the end of term with some  sculptures representing the Wulgurukaba people totems and some artistic pieces representing the country where our own indigenous children come from. We are very pleased to be including an Acknowledgement to Country written by one of our past Year 6 students.

O’Holy Night

Mr Christie has done lots of planning for our O’Holy night on Wednesday 2 December. We are hosting it on the low oval with lots of technology support. Hopefully the weather will be good and an outdoor event will be lovely. We are going to arrange some lighting up behind our Yellow Block so we can have some onsite parking in the dirt area to help alleviate congestion. The P&F will have candles for sale on the night but we encourage everyone to bring their own picnic style dinner, chairs and/or blanket to sit on.

Before O’Holy night though we do have our Swimming Carnival to look forward to which while we can’t have everyone is at least a start to getting back to normal.

Thank you to Sergeant Danial Trew for speaking with our students at assembly today regarding Remembrance Day. It was a wonderful reminder of how lucky we are to live in a safe country.

Best wishes for a fabulous week ahead.

Cheers

Penny Collins

Principal