Have a great start to Term 3
I hope you all had a restful happy time. We’re all geared up to have an exciting and busy term.
Timetable
We’ve revamped the timetable this term, moving specialist subjects to Tuesdays (except our first day back which needs to be with the groups and their teachers). So across this day, the children will have their library with Sally, performing arts with Tanya, Korean with Yonny and STEAM lessons with Sandy, (except for the preps who will have Art / Technology lessons on Tuesday afternoons with Michelle, who used to take the whole school for art in 2019.
Sleepover
This is something that we always have had (until Covid made it impossible last year). This year we’ve had to delay it, but HOPEFULLY, it will take place on Thursday 22nd July which is our second week back. There will be a detailed note about the sleepover in our newsletter next week, but for those of you who are new what usually happens is the following:
The children bring sleeping bags, spare clothes and spare sheets, blankets etc to school in the morning so they can transform their room into their sleeping cubbies or whatever.
Straight after school, there are some sandwiches and fruit for the children and then they collect wood for the fire.
Then tea-time will be staggered with the littlies going first before they have their disco, fire time and see the Village Idol competition before their bedtime around 8:00 pm.
There will then be a disco and perhaps a movie for the oldies...
Note: Only you will know if your child is truly ready to do the full sleepover. Quite often the youngies get picked up around 7:30 after having experienced a disco, Village Idol and sparklers and marshmallows at the fireside. Please be aware that if the teachers decide that your child is not coping, or not able to settle for the night, you will be called to come and pick them up. Part-time preps will need to be picked up first thing on Friday morning. (9:00 am at the latest). Some others may need to go home, those arrangements are done on a needs basis but generally for the oldies it is school as usual on Friday.
Whole School Performance
It’s term 3 and we are therefore all participating in the whole school performance. This means that instead of options on Thursday afternoons we will have extra rehearsal time, and I will eventually give most of my day off on Fridays to the play as well.
The classrooms are reflecting the children’s roles in the play, and you can find the African (Lion King type) set appearing in Laura’s room and the super-heroes that Melissa’s group will be portraying will be very comfortable in their classroom (pop in and take a look!)
As there are some mythical creatures in the play, Samantha’s group is going to take that up as a theme, and the oldest group have a theme “From Zero to Hero” looking at some of the meta themes from the play. They also are involved in props, and sets and are in charge of producing the program, tickets and advertising posters for the play.
Many thanks to Claire who has offered to paint the backdrop with some children helping as well. Would love to hear from more of you if you can help in any way. I will be listing names and costumes this week so that the class teachers can hopefully find a parent from their group to coordinate this. Please be aware that there are lots of stored costumes and materials at the school and it would be great if we could have a couple of parents interested in looking at these, in light of the costumes we will need.
Naplan
Later in the term, we will be doing a ‘School Readiness Test’ to ensure that we are ready for our students to do online Naplan next year. This will require the year 3’s and year 5’s to sit a test again, in order for the process to be monitored. This is a test of the test, not a test of the children’s abilities. However, they are required to sit the tests in order for the process to be experienced by the NAPLAN supervisors and our IT technician in order to ensure there are no hiccups when others do sit the NAPLAN in the following year.
Sport Cycles
This term Laura’s group will be having swimming lessons at the Croydon Leisure Centre and will be travelling there by bus. As we’re a nearly full group there won’t be much room on the bus but we’d love some extra parent helpers at the pool, to help with undressing and dressing. Melissa’s group will be doing horse riding, and again this is another way you can help the school by being helpers during these lessons. Although Melissa also attends these sessions she has a terrible allergic reaction to the horses, so she needs to keep her distance, which is why parent helpers are even more important for this session. Samantha’s group will be having Movement Matters sessions with Leah at school and they don’t need helpers for this group, and neither does Leanne’s group who travel to Lilydale in the mornings for tennis lessons with Triple Ace at the Lilydale Tennis Club.
Raincoats and Gumboots Reminder
Just a friendly reminder that a hoody made out of tracksuit material is not considered a raincoat. Please make sure your child has a rainproof jacket and hood and gumboots for this term. Also, the spare clothes bag should not only be for the littlies, our biggies often need a change of clothes after a physical game in our wetland environment.
Have a great start to term 3.
Tanya 😊