Currambena Primary and Preschool

Week 5 already! It’s hard to believe!

This week’s big event is Lane Cove Children’s Voices for Reconciliation in the Plaza tomorrow morning. A couple of our children will be making speeches about reconciliation issues and the rest of us will be teaching all the other schools a call and response chant… to get everyone doing something together. After the performances and speeches we are hosting the students and teachers from Alexandria Park School for a BBQ lunch back here at school. There will be sausages and bread rolls, fruit and cordial.

We had a wonderful day at Kinma last week and enjoyed a range of activities with the children and teachers there. It is great to see that both our schools are thriving!

Meanwhile back here at Currambena, our group is working on so many things just now! We are planning a workshop/simulation (or two) to demonstrate the issues of poverty in Third World countries; we are planning a Mini Fair on Friday 5th June to raise money for our sponsor child in Uganda; we are writing stories, completing work book pages, learning about electricity, 2D shapes and about other cultures, including aboriginal ones, and yesterday we had what could have been the longest Class Meeting agenda in history! We are very busy as usual!

Some requests this week… Olivia and I would love some help with driving to Ice Skating and Rock Climbing on the next two Mondays (1st and 8th of June). Please let us know if you can help. Please also remember to let the school know as early as possible in the morning if your child is going to be absent for the day. An email is also good. This is very important for all sorts of reasons. Please also make sure your children come to school with plenty of food… even when there is canteen or Friday’s walking up to the shops. They almost always get hungry before the food is in their hands! Many in the class do seem to be needing extra food at the moment… and extra sleep, too… maybe they are growing quickly or maybe it’s the cooler weather. And lastly, please have a go at retrieving some of the lost property around the school. There are two boxes full in the front foyer and we need someone to take it away, wash it and take it to St Vinnies please.

And thank you… to Peter’s mother, Margaret, for covering some books for our class…and to Kerrie who is doing a fantastic job of keeping the school library looking wonderful and welcoming!

Have a good week everyone.    Love,    Wendy

Hi everyone.

Thank you very much to Rowena for taking the group last week when I was away. Next Tuesday, Rowena will again step in for me when I take a day to visit a school in Mittagong which uses similar methods to ours with secondary students. This means there will be NO GUITAR NEXT WEEK.

Yesterday we had Janelle from World Vision at school in the morning running a simulation with us about the global food crisis and its effects on markets and tribal workers in Kenya. We learned a few words of Swahili and were ably assisted by Luuk, Willem and Alyce in various roles. I hope you will have heard about it at home last night.

Last Friday we had a talk about the MS Readathon and some of the children were very keen to sign up for this. Parents will need to be involved when the money is ready to be sent.

Tomorrow we have Information Morning. Thank you so much to everyone who worked so hard today making the school look so well-loved! I hope  we have lots of visitors to appreciate it.

On Friday is Walk Safely to School Day. Lane Cove Council is hosting a breakfast from 7:30am in the plaza for families who register for the event. Do this asap if you are interested. There will also be some breakfast here at school thanks to Fran’s group!

Next week, as I said above, I will be away on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, we have someone from the ABC coming to interview the kids about BTN. That should be fun! On Thursday, we will be going with Olivia’s and Fran and Jo’s to Kinma for the day, by bus, and that will be fun, too, I am sure.

Our two student teachers finish up this Friday for the term but will be back later next term. They have both created some great lessons for us and we are now really getting into electricity, aboriginal studies, 2D shapes and review writing! Sport with Willem and Luuk has been fantastic lately, too, and so we are all getting fit as well.

Have a great week. 

Love, Wendy

Welcome back everyone!

I hope you all had relaxing and fun holidays. Special welcome to Holly (returning) and Peter (starting) who will be with us for the rest of the year.

It will be another busy and fun-filled term for us with a highlight being the week of Aboriginal studies either here at school with a rich program of activities or in Queensland at the Laura Dance Festival in June. Today we will be discussing our holidays and making plans. Luuk and Willem will be leaving in June and so one of the plans is to use their remaining time as well as possible! We will all miss them when they go!

By all reports the AAPAE conference in Christchurch was a great success and certainly generated some good discussion at our Co-ordinating Day meeting yesterday. It’s great to have the opportunity to meet teachers from other schools like ours and share ideas and compare issues.

I have a  couple of jobs needing doing for our group which could be taken home. One is covering some books and the other involves sorting and washing/cleaning some games. Please let me know if you would like to do one of these.

See you all during the week.  Love,  Wendy

It is hard to believe the term has gone so quickly! We have a list of things we still want to do and there don’t seem to be enough days left!!

One of the plans is to go to the ice rink at Baulkham Hills for a session next Tuesday from 11:30 to 2:30. This will cost $13.50 per child and includes skate hire. We will need at least two drivers to help us get there, leaving school at about 10:30am. Please let us know if you are able to come. I know it is quite a way further than Macquarie but the children are adamant that the skates are sharper and the ice smoother there!

We would still like to go the Greenwich Baths on Monday afternoon ( if that’s not asking too much of our wonderful helpers!) and we are also planning some sort of lunch party for Thursday, the last day of term! And all this is on top of the Social this Friday night!! Let’s hope the weather clears by then. Guitar players and Band members are hoping to perform at about 6:30.

We enjoyed having a visit from a group of student teachers from Sydney Uni on Monday and before the end of term we will be meeting two student teachers from Macquarie Uni who will be doing their third year prac with us this year. That should be fun.

It was also fun to see Georgia yesterday, here for a visit day. Last Thursday we had our get-together for last year’s Year 6 to come back and tell us about their first experiences of High School. They have gone to a range of different schools and regaled us with stories about their first term. Interestingly, in answer to a great question from Patty, they each gave their experience so far a score out ot ten and the range was 8.5 to a full 10!  That was great to hear.

Thank you to everyone who has brought in catalogues for our maths activity next week. We are still needing more if you remember and the box for them is under the craft table near our door. We’re going to have some fun!

Also thanks to Kerrie and the library team. It is looking absolutely fantastic up there!

That’s all for today!      

Love, Wendy

Hello everyone.

We have been very much enjoying this fine autumn weather… particularly our afternoon at Greenwich Baths thanks to Anna-marie and Anne who have, most kindly, offered to take us again next Monday. “Yes, please!” we all agreed. I am still investigating the ice-skating at Baulkham Hills.

Our PE program is especially rich at the moment with Luuk and Willem working some gymnastics. The kids are enjoying it very much and are practising in small groups towards a performance for the whole group.

Personal Projects are due at the end of next week (12:30 on Friday 27th to be precise) so this coming weekend should see a flurry of activity for some!

In other areas, we are working on division, algebra, information report text features, spelling skills, reading and comprehension development, global interconnections and general responsibility taking! It is amazing that we are already at Week 7!! Some of the kids are working ahead in their text books … this is great!!

Tomorrow, Thursday, Emma will be taking the class for the day so that I can work on the curriculum documents for the Board of Studies. This means that I will NOT be here for piano lessons before and after school. Sorry about this. I will speak to the children involved today and encourage them to practise extra well for next week.

Next week, on Thursday evening, we will have a dinner for the Year 7 kids who left last year to come back and tell the current group about their experiences of High School so far. This will be especially relevant for children currently in Year 6 but children in Year 5 could also come, with parents, of course! If everyone brings some dinner to share at about 6 or 6:30, we will eat then have some discussion as a group and then have some time for the kids to hang out and reconnect. Please let me know if you are able to come.

Have a good week.   Love, Wendy