Parkhill Primary School Newsletter
Issue 25, Thursday 22 August, 2019
Dear Parents/Carers
Week 6! We are nearing the end of our swimming program and I thank all of the staff and parents who have helped out during this time. It’s always busy busy busy and full of fun.
Community is a wonderful thing about Parkhill Primary School that really makes us stand out from other schools – I am always blown away by the generous donations we receive from families and community groups in support of our less advantaged children. This year we received more than $600 in donations to help support families access our swimming program. This is so wonderful and heart-warming – THANK YOU!
On Monday, members from our Master Planning group met along with representatives from the DET and interviewed three potential architects who will work with us on developing the Roger Beech Hall with the $4 million we received. It was an interesting process to go through and at the end of the day we appointed the architects GENTON.
During the next stages of the process we will be asking for your help and ideas again – this time to develop a full sized basketball sports facility which continues to host our Science Kitchen, Performing Arts programs, music instrumental sessions, and much much more. As you can see we are looking to develop a flexible multipurpose facility.
SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING:
There is lots of information available these days around suggested amounts of screen time for children. It is part of life that access to screens is becoming more and more part of our everyday functioning – but how does this affect our children? Below are some ideas and articles to help guide you on how you can manage healthy screen time use with your children.
THREE WAY CONFERENCES:
Three-Way Conferences will be in week 7 this term, 27th and 28th August. Some of the conference times are in the afternoon and some in the evening. In term 1 we ran a new model of Parent-Teacher interviews, which worked really well with positive feedback across the school. This term we are keen to pursue the Three-Way Conference model with a change to our structure and focus of those meetings. Tuesday will be our afternoon sessions from 1:10pm – 4pm, and on Wednesday our evening session will run from 3:50pm – 7pm, where you can book appointments with our specialist staff too. See below for booking information.
LIBRARY REESTABLISHMENT GROUP:
Our library reestablishment group has been meeting through term 2 to plan how we go about getting our library back into play. We have recently carpeted the area and are now looking to cull our non-fiction stock. There are boxes and boxes of dated non-fiction texts. We are planning a working bee to cull the collection of any materials that are pre 2000. If you are able to help support the working bee please let me know – there will be a morning tea as thanks on the day.
Working Bee: Monday 2nd September from 9:15am
OTHER:
Toys at school
We would like your help in discouraging children from bringing lots of precious toys to school. Often children bring a favourite toy and it stays in their bag, or something for show and tell or to play with at recess/lunch. These toys are ok for children to bring to school – but please do discourage them from bringing precious things to school. At school things get broken and lost and children become quite distressed and unable to focus on their day if this happens.
Swimming Carnival:
We have our swimming carnival approaching soon. The day is split into two parts – Y3-6 Carnival in the morning and F-2 in the afternoon. It is on Thursday 5th September, if you are keen and able to help please let me know. The Carnival is a testament to the program offered at Huntingtower and a great opportunity for the children to ‘show off’ their skills! brady.elaine.e@edumail.vic.gov.au
Book Day:
On Friday we will celebrate Book Week. Children are invited to come dressed as their favourite book character and bring along a copy of the book to share if they have it. The theme for this year’s National Book Week is ‘Reading is my Secret Power’. Book parade is always a wonderful way for us to promote literature and help children to engage in celebrating stories.
Children should come to school dressed in the their costumes but are welcome to change after the parade or wear their costumes all day – I guess this depends how far you go… looking forward to seeing which characters turn up tomorrow!
Dental Van:
Please return your dental van visit form if you wish for your child to visit the dentist – the forms are due back on 16th September.
Please do check out the calendar dates below for the terms events.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Elaine Brady
Principal
Calendar of Curriculum Events
Friday 23 August - Book Parade 9.15am
Tuesday 27 August - Parent Teacher Interviews
Wednesday 28 August - Parent Teacher Interviews
Thursday 29 August - Y5/6 Yakult excursion
Friday 30 August- Basketball Round Robin ( selected students )
Monday 2 September -Library Working Bee 9.15am
Wednesday 4 September - ICAS Science (selected students)
Thursday 5 September - Swimming Carnival
Friday 6 September - Division Athletics ( selected students)
Monday 2 September - The Well Being Show Incursion (whole school)
Monday 9 September - Science Week
Tuesday 10th September - Evening Soiree
Thursday 12 September - F/1C & F/1S Rippon Lea Excursion & Story Time
Friday 13 September - F/1T Rippon Lea Excursion
Tuesday 17 September - ICAS English (selected students)
Wednesday 18 September - MADD Day
Thursday 19 September - ICAS Maths (selected students)
Friday 20 September - Footy Day, Term 3 ends 2.30pm
Student of the week
F/1S - Anshika G
F/1T - Alfie B
2/3M - Noah S
4D - Dylan M
4O - Ewan B
5/6A - Jennon M
5/6CS - William K
5/6H - Isa S
Three Way Conferences Booking Information
Science Lego Mindstorms
"Exterminate! Exterminate!" While they might still be a few weeks off creating Daleks, kids of the Y2/3/4 Lego Mindstorms group certainly had fun working together to build the start of their five-minute bot. This group has been put together to help develop and extend them in the areas of teamwork, coding and design technologies. Their five-minute bot will form the basis of a number of projects that help them explore programming, user interfaces, and inputs.
STEAM: Water, Water Everywhere!
We have been learning about water in F/1S.
We have learning about:
The water cycle
How people capture and use fresh water
Our responsibility towards water
We conducted lots of experiments to help us learn more about the 4 stages in the water cycle: collection, evaporation, condensation and precipitation.
Procedure Writing in F/1S
We have been learning about procedures in F/1S. Procedures tell us how to do something. They include materials and steps. We had to teach the class how to do something during Show and Tell. Aria explained how to make cookies and Mavi explained how to make slime. We also got to make tea cup biscuits and frog in the pond.
Parkhill Primary School
Email: Parkhill.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au
Website: www.parkhillps.vic.gov.au
Location: 4a Parkhill Drive, Ashwood VIC, Australia
Phone: 03 9807 2239