On World Kindness Day last week the 4/5/6's discussed what a kind person 'says', 'does' and 'is not'. Some really great discussion with some really positive comments in our reflection time.

F/1 Igloo is coming together!!!!

Preparation for Puberty (P4P)

Yesterday, one of our year 6s welcomed the year 5s to P4P with: “It’s just starting. Buckle up”. This is probably good advice for the adults in their lives too!

Bronni spent 4 hours with us yesterday. She’s condensed her 5 week program into two half days for us, so we covered a lot.

We started with establishing our rules – including that it was for 5s and 6s only, so not to talk about it with younger students.

We talked about what puberty is (a life transition from child to adult, including physical, emotional, hormonal and social changes) – the biggest change our body will ever do!

We covered lots of the physical changes they’ll experience, which made for lots of squirming and giggling. Some of these physical changes can make things uncomfortable. Next week, we’ll talk about self-care and hygiene to help with these.

Bronni was very reassuring that everyone’s “clock” is different, and as long as they are eating healthily and not doing excessive exercise, they will go through puberty in their own time.

We talked about the emotional changes we’re experiencing. Our emotions and our logic stop talking to each other, and with all the big feelings flooding in, we can ‘flip our lid’. We reinforced that all emotions are okay, but all actions aren’t, and we should check in to make sure we aren’t putting our big feelings onto others. We also talked about the power of apologising, and how much their families will appreciate them doing this when they inevitably lash out.

We also talked about changes in friendships and relationships. These will happen, because part of the work of puberty is thinking about yourself, your interests and your self-identity differently, and people experience this differently and at different times.

We talked about having a trusted adult to talk with about anything they are experiencing. And we talked about the importance of having a Plan B. If their trusted adult isn’t available, they can contact the Kids Helpline.

We spent the last hour talking about consent. We’ve been ‘doing consent’ all our lives, when we say what we want and don’t want from others. When it comes to touching other people’s bodies, there are strict rules and laws. The best way to feel confident about consent is to practise! [ Warning to families: you are quite likely to lose some ice-cream-stealing privileges in the near future – this seemed to come up a lot! ]

Understanding consent empowers us to have healthy relationships. Bronni explained to us a very useful tool to use to practise consent. This is “FRIES”.

F = Freely given (you don’t feel obliged, or only saying yes because you are worried about others’ reactions)

R = Reversible (you can change your mind at any time)

I = Informed (you understand what are you are agreeing to, and you can ask as many things as you need to before you answer)

E = Enthusiastic

S = Specific (for that moment only, not for every time)

While it was a challenging day, the feedback from students was positive. Here are some of their statements about the session.

I was very uncomfortable but it was very fun. It’s important because if you don’t know about that how are you going to get through life? It’s an important part of life.

It was informative and useful.

It was weird but exciting.

It’s important because it gets you ready for when it happens. If it happens and you don’t know, you might think something’s wrong with you. It was good.

I liked the activity at the end (Red, Amber, Green Flags in Relationships) because it was fun to comment on the situations.

Taekwando Olympian, Reba Stewart, Visits NPS

Today, Reba Stewart visited us and talked to us about her journey representing Australia in taekwando. Reba tried out taekwando to support her younger brother who was doing it to build up his capacity to sequence and pattern as part of rising to the challenge of dyslexia. "It was amazing, fun and all the kids got so excited that they wanted autographs!"

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