Curriculum

Reading With Kids

As Book Week is fast approaching, celebrations such as this are not just about finding a costume for a parade (even though we thoroughly enjoy this aspect of book week), it’s about celebrating books, authors, illustrators and the libraries in our schools and greater community. Books and reading are so important for our kids that we don’t just celebrate this for a week, once a year, it is something to be continually celebrated.

It is never too early to start a habit of reading with kids. Children are exposed to reading from such an early age, which stimulates language development. But how can we get the most out of reading with our kids?

• Have your child read to you. As our children learn to read independently, they tend to be really excited to read to us if we can find the time to slow down and turn reading into an activity to share.
• Read to your child. This helps them to learn about expression, pacing and the different ways we can experience books. This is a great opportunity to stop and ask them questions about how they would feel, what the characters are feeling and what they are thinking about the story.
• Have regular time for the family to read altogether, perhaps once or twice a week as we all know that it can be challenging to find the time. The ability to possibly sit together as a family and read aloud or in silence can be such a powerful tool.

What can we do when our kids don’t want to read?

It is obvious that not all children will develop or sustain a love of reading, however it is important to address these issues if, and when they arise. Children may feel disconnected from books and find it challenging to engage in a particular genre, series, or theme. Sometimes, kids may feel controlled by what they read and may be seeking an opportunity for more choice, but our role as parents and educators is to help them overcome such boundaries and we can do this by:

• Reading Together. Them to us and us to them. 
• Finding books that are at a level that stretches them, but not so much that it's demotivating.
• Offering them as much choice as possible in terms of what they read, even if that means reading a novel they may have already read.
• Try and stay away from potentially bribing our kids to read, unless the bribe for reading one book is the chance to choose another one!

Books provide a doorway to the world, through them our kids can climb mountains, experience new cultures and travel through time and space.

For more information regarding how we can support kids in reading please visit:

www.happyfamilies.com.au

National Science Week

This week, we are celebrating National Science Week with the theme for 2023 being Innovation: Powering Future Industries. Students will be conducting a Fantastic Flight Festival and it will take part Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. Every class will be challenged to build, test, improve and retest a paper plane to fly the longest distance in all the junior (F-2) and senior (3-6) grades. The winners of the junior and senior grades will win a ’Do Science Prize Kit’. We wish good luck to all our students participating and we cannot wait to see all the fantastic flight designs and flight paths they will take.