This week is Book Week. My personal feeling is we should all set aside time each week to celebrate books. The National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance recently published a list of reasons why books are important.

Books create warm emotional bonds between adults and kids when they read books together.
Books help children develop basic language skills and profoundly expand their vocabularies — much more than any other media.
Books are interactive; they demand that kids think. Fiction and nonfiction books widen our consciousness. They give us new ways to think and new ideas. They expand our universe beyond time and place and inspire our own original thoughts.
Books develop critical thinking skills. A book is read by an individual. It has no laugh track or musical score that emotionally primes a reader’s reaction. You alone decide what you think about a book and its contents with no one leaning over your shoulder telling you how to think.
Books develop and nourish kids’ imaginations, expanding their worlds. Picture books introduce young children to the world of art and literature. Novels and nonfiction books stimulate children’s sensory awareness, helping children to see, hear, taste, feel, and smell on an imagined level. Books inform our imaginations, inspiring creativity.
Books let children try on the world before they have to go out into it. Books give children an opportunity to experience something in their imaginations before it happens to them in real life. Books help prepare children for their next stage of maturity, vicariously preparing for the “grown-up” world.
Books help us to understand ourselves, to find out who we are. Books strengthen our self-confidence and help us to understand why we are who we are. They help us discover where we come from and help us figure out where we want to go.
Books help children and adults to open up, to move beyond self-absorption and connect to other people. Books show us the inner workings of multiple perspectives and let us know there is more than one way to view the world. Books build connections and broaden our capacity to empathise; they help us to understand others. Books help us to become more compassionate.
Books answer questions.
Books create questions.

At this week’s Assembly, we ran a quick Book Week quiz in which staff and attending parents had to nominate the title of a well-known children’s book, from the opening line. How will you score?

“All children grow, except one, grow up.”
“Once upon a time, there were four little rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.”
“The sun did not shine; it was too wet to play, so we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.”
“In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on…”
“Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place…”
“The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another…”

Book Week Parade - 12.45pm

This week is Book Week and our Dress Up Day is tomorrow. Students and staff will come to school dressed as characters from their favourite books. We will have a short parade of all ELC 4 to Year 6 classes and a big group photograph at 12.45pm at the front of the Myrniong homestead.

Spotlight of Myrniong Learning

Year 1 - We have been learning about suffixes. We have learned that the suffix ‘s’ can make a word plural, the suffix ‘y’ can be added to a word to make it an adjective, and the suffix ‘ed’ tells us something has already happened.

Samaritan's Purse 'Operation Christmas Child'

The Junior School Representative Council is working with ELC 4 to Year 6 classes to support Operation Christmas Child. This is a project run by the Samaritan’s Purse. It is a hands-on way for our learning community to help children in need worldwide by filling shoeboxes with toys, hygiene items, school supplies, and fun gifts. The boxes will be posted to children living in vulnerable areas of the world. We have the rest of this term to fill the boxes. The students in each class will also have the opportunity to write the recipients a note/letter. The filled boxes will be sent off in the first week of Term Four.

https://occ.samaritanspurse.org.au/

Week 6 Assembly

The following students received Star Student certificates at this week’s Assembly.

Year 2 - Will Diprose for always being ‘switched on’ in his learning, asking and answering questions to further his knowledge. Will is always willing to share his thoughts and give his perspective to a topic.
Year 3 – Eloise Bufton for putting a lot of creative effort and imagination into their design of a new front cover for “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling.
Year 3 – Harriet King for putting a lot of creative effort and imagination into their design of a new front cover for “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling.
Year 5 – Archie Barber for a fantastic effort on the football field at the Hamilton Schools’ AFL 9’s carnival.
Year 5 – Elsie Dyer for a fantastic effort on the football field at the Hamilton Schools’ AFL 9’s carnival.
Year 5 - Will Harvey for a fantastic effort on the football field at the Hamilton Schools’ AFL 9’s carnival.
Year 5 – Matilda Mercer for a fantastic effort on the football field at the Hamilton Schools’ AFL 9’s carnival.
Year 6 - Aida Adamson for her constant enthusiasm and always contributing creative ideas to the class discussion. She is excited to learn and works extremely hard to put new concepts into practice.
Year 6 - Isabelle Bricknall for consistently making an effort to push herself out of her comfort zone and always working hard to improve her classwork.
Year 6 - Ruby Price - Congratulations on completing Level 2 of the Compass Award.

Junior School Sport

Football

Last Thursday, the Year 5/6 classes went down to Pedrina Park to play AFL 9’s against other schools in Hamilton. The weather was sunny until the last game where it started pouring with rain! Luckily, we got all our games in and only got ‘slightly’ wet. There were two girl’s teams, the Magpies and the Owls. The boy’s teams were the Magpies and the Hawks. We are grateful to have had four amazing coaches, Todd O’Sullivan, Matt Bouchier, Mr Hawthorne, and Lachie Brown. It was great to see everyone getting involved even if they had never played footy before. All the College teams played really well, gave it their best and most importantly had fun!

Poppy Edgar and Imogen Johns

Year 6

Hockey

Congratulations to Evie Tempelton, who this week took the field for Victoria in the National Schools Hockey Championships in sunny Cairns. At the time of writing, Evie and the Victorian team had defeated South Australia and Western Australian in their opening two matches.

In the penultimate round of GRHA hockey, Division 4 Foxes had a comfortable 4-1 win over Coleraine Maroon. Division 4 Wolves went down to Coleraine Gold 7-0. In Division 5, Tigers defeated Panthers 4-0.

This weekend’s matches:

Division 5

Tigers v Demons Red at 12.00 pm

Panthers v Coleraine Maroon at 12.00 pm

Division 4

Foxes v Demons at 2.00 pm (College)

Wolves v Coleraine Maroon at 3.30 pm (Pedrina Park)

Saturday Netball is back!

Students in Years 3/4 and Years 5/6 are invited to join a College netball team to participate in the Term 4 Saturday morning netball competition.

To submit your child's name for a team, please email jsreception@hamiltoncollege.vic.edu.au

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