Playground Pavers Fundraiser

Last week you should have received a notice in your child's bag inviting you to order a paver for your child (or whole family).

These pavers will be installed around the edge of our school playground, alongside the pavers installed from previous fundraisers in 2011 and 2017.

We are offering two different options, either an engraved paver with up to three lines of text or a hand drawn design that allows children (or adults) to draw a design or picture that will then be engraved into the paver.

Ordering a paver is a great way to leave a lasting legacy at the school once students have graduated and families have moved on. Many of our students who designed pavers in 2011 and 2017 are now young adults who enjoy coming back to school and finding their design. Pavers cost a minimum of $50 each.

The funds raised from the sale of these pavers will be used to help develop our classroom libraries – rich collections of literature in each learning space to inspire students and develop their reading and writing skills.

If you require a new order form, these are available at the school office.

A Therapy Dog for SKiPPS

We are excited to announce that we have received funding to train a therapy dog and handler for the school.

Recently I applied for a grant from the School Focused Youth Services (SFYS) team to train myself and my miniature schnauzer Henderson as an accredited handler and therapy dog team.

SFYS are a government agency who operate to support students from year 5 to 12 who are attending school but vulnerable to or showing signs of disengaging from school.

Therapy dogs in schools are becoming increasingly commonplace and many of the schools in our network have accessed this funding to provide this service to the students in their school with great effect.

Thankfully, we were successful in receiving this funding which has been used for me to begin training with the Lead the Way institute. The training so far has involved extensive online learning and assessments alongside live workshops and obedience training. After a further period of training, myself and Henderson will then attend the Institute to hopefully pass their assessments and receive accreditation and certification to provide Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI) in schools.

There is an increasing body of evidence to show the benefits of AAI with children (and people of all ages) and especially those children struggling with general anxiety, disengagement from school, poor attendance, low confidence, learning anxiety, motivation and appropriately demonstrating their feelings.

There is a great article about this topic to be read at https://theconversation.com/therapy-dogs-can-help-reduce-student-stress-anxiety-and-improve-school-attendance-93073

Once accredited, Henderson will work in the school under strict standards and rules, including grooming, health screening and risk assessments. Families will have the ability to opt-out from working with him and he will be able to perform a range of roles from supporting distressed children, reading with children in class and working with children as part of a more proactive wellbeing program with specific aims.

School transition parent session

At the best of times, knowing whether your child is ready to start school and trying to help them to thrive once they get here is a really tough process. With the disruptions to children's lives and development caused by 18 months of COVID, this issue is especially important.

For this reason, our local schools have combined with local kindergartens to run an online session for parents who are going throuh this tricky process.

The event will take place at 6pm on Tuesday 14th July and places can be booked at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/transitionNBKPN

Order SUSHI for Term 3 Now!

The online ordering system is now OPEN until midnight, Friday 2nd July.

You can access the St Kilda Park Primary School sushi@school website via the following link and follow the instructions: http://sushi.net.au/school/st-kilda-park-primary-school/

Any questions, please contact SKIPPA on stkildaparkparents@gmail.com

SKiPPS newsletter 2021

Issue 9 · 22 Jun 2021

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