Welcome back, everyone!
It was lovely to see all the children back from last year, all looking older and bigger and a big welcome to our new parents, both in part-time prep, prep and Samantha’s group.
We are hoping for a very different year from the last and our teachers are all feeling very positive as school is virtually back to normal. We will, of course, keep Covid safe practices related to hygiene going, but it will be great to have all our normal activities running, particularly the singing in our performing arts lessons.
May I just mention that our teachers have spent a really long time getting their rooms ready for the children. We give them three days but, multiply that by three and you might have more of an idea about the physical time they’ve spent at school over the break, and that’s not counting what happens on their computers at home as well.
In the lower primary block, the rooms are set up for action! There are activities all around the room inviting the children to choose something they are interested in.
The upper primary, both doing the same world geography theme are inviting the children to think about travelling, Samantha is going to start their travelling around the school grounds with a treasure hunt while Leanne’s room has a security check at the entrance and the chairs are already set up as an aeroplane, with the meeting area transformed into the VIP lounge.
The teachers get as excited as the children do with these themes, which is why they all have so much fun, and of course, learn heaps through experiential learning.
We have a couple of outside improvements to start the term; check out the bridge across the stony creek outside Laura’s and Melissa’s rooms, and a very upmarket fully enclosed sandpit to protect the sand from animal’s droppings and also provide a warm dry place to play when it’s raining.
We’re giving Special Lunches a miss first term as we are looking for someone to step forward to run it. Sophia’s mum Roxanne is happy to be a helper but doesn’t feel she can run this on her own. Volunteers very welcome.
We have lost all our parents of year 6 students who have been great supporters of the school over the years. One of the casualties is the Parents and Friends Group (aka PnF).
We are hoping some more of you have time to give to this group. They would normally run the first BBQ back which is on February 12th. This would entail purchasing the bread and sausages and having a couple of people assigned to cooking them on the school’s BBQ.
We often found that one of our ex-parents used to run around getting donations for this in exchange for advertising in our newsletter. We don’t expect that level of commitment as it’s a big ask, but hopefully, there’ll be a few of you able to help run the BBQ.
We used to have half the parents bringing a salad and half bringing dessert (e.g. lower primary and upper primary maybe?) Please see me (Tanya) if you’re interested in helping with PnF this year. The more there is, the less there is to actually do.
Tina, one of our prep parents has been collecting signatures from parents who are interested in seeing Village School expand into a secondary school and so far 13 of our existing prep parents have signed.
This is an exciting concept and we’d love to hear from the rest of the school, just how many of you would be interested in having your children continue into secondary school at Village. Tina will be around in the mornings, or you could just email Tanya if you’re interested in supporting that idea.
Not a lot has changed, having the four classes makes it a tad easier to organize extras, like the tennis, swimming, Movement Matters and horse riding which will be our four sports for this year.
Sandy will still work one day in the STEAM room, Sally will still take library, I’ll do Performing Arts and Yonny will do Korean this year and we’re looking forward to celebrating the Lunar New Year Korean style.
Carmel is hoping to run some Yoga/Wellbeing sessions during option time on Thursday afternoon. We can’t start this yet as we have to have parents being part of this to make it work.
The teachers run an interest session, and some of the learning supports will do the same, but we rely on five or six parents bringing their special passion, hobby or whatever to share with the children.
Again, the more we have the easier it becomes. It’s nice to work with just 5 or 6 children with Options, particularly if it’s something like needlework, knitting, crocheting, woodwork, chess, painting, ceramics, jewelry making.
So far, I know that Samantha would like to do archery, Carmel yoga and Leanne would like to do paper quilling.
I’d love to hear from you if you can help with this program. The children really love it and are looking forward to it happening again. It is timetabled to happen on a Thursday afternoon between 2:00 and 3:00 and if we get a good number of parents come forward we might even be able to run it for the last four weeks of this term.
That would give us two four-week blocks for term 2 and then two more in term 4. We leave term 3 because we use that extra time for rehearsals.
Sorry, this ‘note’ from Tanya has turned into an essay!
Have a great week everyone
~ Tanya