School Highlights
Welcoming students and families to Term 1
On 28 Jan, we welcomed our Year 7 and 12 students and families to Term 1. We were thrilled to have them in our community and back on campus.
Years 7 to 12:
Then on 31 Jan, our Years 1 to 6 and Years 8 to 11 students and families joined us back at School, ready to kick off Term 1 as well!
Years 1 to 6 and Years 8 to 11:
Finally, on 1 Feb we welcomed our Prep students to Kilvington. It was a special day!
Prep:
Good luck and welcome to our community everyone!
Campfire Library sessions
Vanessa Grosso, Library/AV Technician
It's been a busy week in the Library, with the commencement of the Junior Library sessions. Prep and Year 1 certainly enjoyed their special 'Campfire' Library sessions!
Happy Lunar New Year!
Alan Clarke, International Student Coordinator
Friday 12 February, is considered the first day of the Lunar New Year of the Ox for many Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean families.
It’s probably not evident from my name, but my family do in fact, celebrate the Lunar New Year each year. As some of you may know, my wife was born in Seoul, South Korea, and migrated with her family to Australia in the 1980s.
In Korea, Lunar New Year is called 'Seollal' and is one of the most important traditional holidays. New Year’s day is typically spent with family making dumplings ('mandu'), eating Tteokguk (rice cake soup) and Jeon (Korean savoury pancakes).
The most common traditional new year greeting in Korean is 'Sae hae bok mani badeuseyo' (wishing you lots of luck for the new year). It is customary for children to say this phrase as they bow to their family elders. While I couldn’t include a video for this short article, included are photos of my children in their hanbok (traditional Korean clothes):
Korean mandu made by Mr. Clarke –
According to Korean folklore, a person who makes beautiful dumplings will have beautiful children.
To all our Kilvington families from various cultures that celebrate the Lunar New Year, I wish you good health, happiness, prosperity and fortune in the Year of the Ox!
HOW MY FAMILY CELBRATES THE LUNAR NEW YEAR
Joanna Jiang, Year 8
Lunar New Year is one of the biggest festivals in China, and it’s also my favourite festival. People in different jobs, including teachers and students, always have a long holiday to go back home with their families to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
In previous years, my family was usually very busy. We made paper-cuts for window decorations, pasted antithetical couplets (a form of new year poetry) and more.
There is one thing that’s very important each year - to decorate everything with the colour red (to avoid a monster called ‘Nian’ coming and damaging our house).
In China, the streets are always full of people during the New Year holiday. All the people dress in red. Adults buy a lot of things from the shops on the street, children love to play games and guess riddles with each other, and the elders sit in the shade and chat together. I love these moments during which we have a lot of great times until evening.
But this year will be different because of Covid-19. We can only facetime with our families, instead of having a big celebration in person.
All Chinese have a big dinner called ‘Nianyefan’ (年夜飯) on the evening of the Lunar New Year.
Nianyefan is the biggest dinner we have during the year, in which we sit around an enormous table with the whole family. The food includes fish, dumplings, meat, rice, soup, etc. All the food has its own special meaning for the year.
One of the happiest things for children is the red envelope or ‘hongbao’ (红包). Adults usually gives us red envelopes with money in it to wish us a wonderful year (the money can't be less than 100 or the children will get angry). People greet each other by holding each other’s hands and saying happy new year.
This new year, I’m looking forward to making more new friends and improving my English a lot. All in all, I hope everyone has the energy of the Ox this year, and is always happy and confident!