Principal Message

Dear Families,

Thanks for a fantastic start to Term 4 last week. What a great weekend of weather to cap off the week. Don’t forget to keep your SunSmart hats handy and sunscreen for reapplying at school.

Disco: Friday is the day to dress up (casual Dress Day) for the disco! Our amazing Parents & Friends have organised yet another event at the Uniting Church in Eggleston St. Gold coin donation goes towards the Year 6 graduation celebrations. Looking forward to seeing a few new dance moves by the students and maybe even some of the teachers!

Don’t forget to complete the Sentral Permission form that was sent out during Week 1 – we don’t want anyone to miss out! Check SENTRAL now.

Stranger Danger: A nearby school has sent out a timely reminder about stranger danger awareness. I have directly copied some of the correspondence as it is possible an incident like this may happen in our community.

“As we know, the warmer weather brings lots of people from outside our town. Unfortunately, on the weekend a person tried to lure one of our students into a car. This is a timely reminder to be vigilant about this sort of behaviour.”

Like this school, I will ask teachers to do a reminder about how to possibly manage these situations and it would be great if ALL families engaged in similar conversations at home to collectively keep our students and children safe.

Being organised: This time of the year sees a massive increase in family social activities as kids’ sport takes a short break and the weather improves. School activities ramp up as we race towards the summer holidays too. Being organised at home for school will certainly help students transition smoothly on a Monday, back into school. We had a large number of students away on Monday just gone and I hope that we can maximise attendance at school. I encourage families to plan their weekends so the students can get some down time and rest so they can be at their best when learning starts.

FAIL: First Attempt In Learning is often used when we hear the word fail. As adults we all know that we fail daily and learn from the experience. Last Friday was International Day of Failure and staff try to point out that failure helps us learn. It is in the mistakes and attempts that we learn and grow. Please continue to encourage your children to stretch, grow, fail and learn.

National Water Week: Bec Bradbury and the Sustainability team are promoting National Water Week amongst the teachers and students. It is another timely reminder about a precious resource that we need to look after. Barwon Water have a load of resources available if families are interested in learning more.

The Aussie Bird Count: Jo Earle and the Sustainability team are promoting this initiative and students are loving it! It has been fantastic to see so many students out counting the different species of birdlife around the school. We hope that with all the planting we are doing and by keeping the grounds clean and litter free, we continue to attract more and more birdlife to the area. If you and your family are interested to learn more about birds, there is a great show on the ABC (iView) called the Secret Lives of our Urban Birds.

Have a great week everyone.

Scott McCumber

Principal