Thursday 23 May

Foundation 2025 Enrolment and Term 2 School Tours

This term schools across the state begin the enrolment process for Foundation in 2025. New and existing families are invited to tour the school by making an appointment.

2025 Enrolments are now online, click here to register an account and enrol at MCPS.

National Reconciliation Week

Next week we acknowledge National Reconciliation Week. This year’s theme is Now More Than Ever. Our School Captains and some students will be attending a Welcome to Country smoking ceremony next Tuesday at 1:30pm at Worrell Reserve in Emerald. This event is open to the whole Cardinia Shire community.

As part of our commitment to the Marrung Aboriginal Education Plan our staff have recently participated in Community Understanding Safety Training presented by Department of Education staff and Indigenous Community Agencies.

Marrung is the Wemba Wemba word for the Murray Cypress pine tree representing branches of education and knowledge.

I enjoyed hearing about what schools in the region are doing to implement the Marrung Plan and at the same time celebrated the threads of Indigenous Culture that we weave throughout our MCPS school curriculum and community. We will continue to work in this space.

Community Connection

Book Fair

Last week our community enjoyed the school's annual Book Fair. This is a great opportunity to expose children and families to texts and continue to promote a love of literature and reading. Thank you to Kate Keys for ensuring the event was a success. Money raised from the Book Fair will go straight back into the resourcing of library and classroom reading materials.

National Volunteers Week – something for everyone.

This week is National Volunteers Week and it was wonderful to see so many of our students wearing orange yesterday to celebrate Wear Orange Wednesday, a national day of thanks to the thousands of SES volunteers who serve their communities 24 hours a day, seven days a week through storms, floods, road crash rescues, and so much more.

To all our wonderful volunteers on school council, helping in classrooms, supporting our literacy program, breakfast club, sports days, looking after chickens, assisting with excursions, working bees and lots more – we also say thank you.

We all are appreciative of all of the volunteers within our community and the positive impact they have. Our students benefit from enriched experiences, our staff benefit with additional support, and our community benefits from the positive climate they create.

Biggest Morning Tea – 8am to 9am on tomorrow morning

In honour of people impacted by cancer everyone is invited to the multi-purpose room at Menzies Creek Primary School, for The Biggest Morning Tea. If you're attending, it would be greatly appreciated if you could bring a small plate of treats (e.g., muffins, scones, biscuits, etc.). A donation can be made via the QR code around the school, via the link or we will have a collection box. During the school day, students are encouraged to wear blue or yellow to support the Cancer Council and donate a gold coin to this charity. This will contribute to our raised funds.

Hills MND Big Freeze – Sunday June 2 from 1pm – Paradise Valley Hotel

You might start to notice some Beanies and Socks around the school in support for MND. We have these for sale at the office or on Qkr. Over the past 10 years FightMND has invested over $90m into Research, Technology and Drug Trials. We have staff at Menzies Creek who have friends on trials for MND and they are showing amazing results. By purchasing Big Freeze 10 merchandise, or by making a donation you contribute vital funds towards finding effective treatments, care initiatives and ultimately a cure.

Foodbank Food Fight Fun Run prizes

Collectively we raised $2559 for our Foodbank Food Fight last term. Students have received their prizes this week which we hope they enjoy. Foodbank provide our school with the opportunity to run our breakfast club and they have allowed to purchase goods to support our Plot to Pot program.

Congratulations

Last week we had 25 students represent our school at the EDEC Cross Country at Lillydale Lake. These students should all be proud of their efforts. We have 6 students (Heidi, Eilidh, Lilly, Kai, Mirabel and Archie W) who have qualified to run at the Yarra Valley Racecourse in the School Sports Victoria Dandenong Ranges Divisional Cross Country event – a wonderful achievement.

Our Marathon Club continues to run each Tuesday morning before school. So far, we have combined to run 679.5km. This is open to all community members – students, staff and families.

TheirCare reminder

We are fortunate to have TheirCare as our OSHC provider and it is great seeing the interactions with Jade and the students before and after school. This is a reminder that bookings are essential as staff/student ratios must be maintained as we are receiving notice that some families are forgetting to make a booking but still expecting their child/ren to attend.

Assembly

We do have Assembly tomorrow at 2:45pm.

Upcoming dates to be aware of

At last night’s School Council meeting we approved some student free days for you all to be aware of.

Thursday 25 July – staff will have professional learning in the morning and then conduct three-way conferences from 12pm – 5pm with families
Monday 4 November – this will be an assessment and reporting day

We have plenty of activities to look forward to in the next couple of weeks so I encourage everyone to check compass and calendars for upcoming dates.

Regards,

Dale McInerney

Ritchies IGA