Principal and Assistant Principal's Page

Acting Principal's Report

Winter has certainly arrived! The days have been very chilly recently! Please make sure your child has a warm Huntingdale jumper or jacket. Our uniform supplier PSW has a great range of items you can purchase from their store in Ormond.

National Reconciliation Week

27 May to 3 June is National Reconciliation Week. 2017 marks two significant anniversaries- 50 years since the 1967 referendum giving indigenous Australians the right to vote and 25 years since the landmark Mabo decision giving back to indigenous Australians rights to their land.

Huntingdale Primary School has participated in two events to mark National Reconciliation Week. Our Visual Arts Teachers- Mariko Hioki- Walker, Eiji Nishikubo, Yukiko Shoya, Tomoko Smith, Keiko Harada and Hisae Hatigan, submitted students’ work as part of the ‘Billabong Dreaming- Youth Art for Reconciliation’ exhibition at The Highway Gallery in Mount Waverley. Mariko and I, along with a couple of Huntingdale families attended the opening of the exhibition on Saturday 27 May. I am very proud of our students’ art work and we were amazed at the top quality of the students in the City of Monash. The exhibition is on until the 11 June, with the gallery open from Wednesday to Sunday from 12-4.00pm. Thank you to our wonderful teachers and students supporting this event.

Yesterday I took Captains Callum, Jolene, Jessica and Elsie to the City of Monash Reconciliation Gathering at the Clayton Community Centre. Whilst there we experienced a ‘Welcome to Country’ and “smoking “ ceremony by Wurundjeri Elder Aunty Di. She told us the story of her family and her hopes that in the future National Reconciliation Week won’t be needed as we will all walk ‘hand in hand’ each day forward.

We had Sing-a-long with musical group ‘Kinja’ and Jessica even got to perform with them. We had Sing-a-long with musical group ‘Kinja’ and Jessica even got to perform with them.

We participated in the ‘Tape It’ interactive art workshop. Lots of interesting things can be made using tape. Our final activity was with the ‘Indigenous Hip Hop Project’ where we partook in one of their dance workshops. We also enjoyed a bush tucker lunch of kangaroo. This was a great experience for our students and a chance to learn more about reconciliation.

Curriculum Day- Change of Date to Friday 28 July 2017

Just a reminder that our Term 3 Curriculum Day has changed to Friday 28 July 2017. The focus of our Curriculum Day is Bilingual Teaching and Learning. If you have any questions about this please come and see me.

Homework Survey

Thank you to the many families who have completed the homework survey. It is still open and we are interested in hearing your point of view. We ask all families to complete our homework survey at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RKK7FNR

Student Achievements

A reminder that we ask that any parents who have a child who has achieved something special at any time to please take a photograph and write a short sentence or two about what the child did, when it happened and what it means to the child and send this through to the school account at huntingdale.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au Achievements could be getting an award from the local footy team or ballet performance or library book club or gaining their Grey Wolf Award at Scouts or any other hobby your child pursues we’re here to celebrate Personal Best in whatever form that takes.

ICAS English and Mathematics Competitions

There is still time for Year 2-6 students to enter the ICAS English and Mathematics Competitions. It costs $9.00 to enter each competition. Entries must be in by Friday 16 June. Please see Gill at the office for more information.

Please enjoy reading the Community Captains report on the following pages of the newsletter.

Have a great fortnight and keep warm!

Ruth Biddle

Acting Principal

Acting Assistant Principal's Report

The last couple of days have been a reminder that winter is literally just around the corner. We hope you are all staying warm.

Japan Festival

The annual Japan Festival in Box Hill was held on Sunday 21st May. Our Taiko Club started the opening ceremony and our students did great job with confidence and played with synergy. Well done Taiko Group. A pecial thank you to Hanazono.T sensei for organizing the group to attend.

We had our school’s booth in the Town Hall as well as the activity booth in the TAFE building this year. Children enjoyed making bookmarks, colouring Japanese writing scripts and Origami. Thank you so much to all the parents who volunteered to help out on the day. It was so nice to see so many families from our community at the venue.

Education Week

We celebrated Education Week from 22nd to 26th May.

Children enjoyed the lunchtime activities (Reading and Mindfulness) and Maths activities during the class time.

As part of Education Week and to promote the Premier’s Reading Challenge Miss Small held a lunch time activity where she read “Busting” by Aaron Blabey and “The Koala Who Could” by Rachel Bright. Students talked about the texts, compared them and chose their favourite. Most students preferred “Busting” as it was really funny! Students then made a bookmark and enjoyed colouring in activities provided by the Premier’s Reading Challenge.

Foundation students were involved in National Simultaneous Storytime on Wednesday 24 May. They watched a video of author Tony Wilson sharing his new book, “The Cow Tripped Over The Moon”. The story is based on the famous nursery rhyme and is about the cow’s perseverance to get over the moon after many failed attempts. The story also explores friendship and how to support others to reach their goals.

Book Fair

Thank you very much to all our parent helpers at our recent Book Fair. We know it is a huge commitment to come before and after school to help out with the Fair. Students were able to write out their wish lists during their library time and many were so happy to receive new books.

Our Book fair Sales came to approximately $5,550- and we were able to purchase books to the value of almost $2,000- which is a great effort by our school community.

Also thank you to our families who “adopted a book” for our library. Our students and teachers are very appreciative of your contributions.

We are planning to have Japanese Book Fair during Literacy week (28th August to 1s September) in Term 3. I hope many parents can come and help for this event as much as successful as this one.

Books for donation

Thank you very much to Mr Dougal MacPherson, father of Felix in Grade FS, who donated his book. Mr MacPherson is an illustrator and has had his “Introducing Teddy” and “くまのトーマスはおんなのこ” (translated in Japanese) in English and Japanese. It is wonderful to have an expert in our community for our children’s learning.

Thank you also to Mr Tetsuta Watanabe who has also donated his newest book ”ぱくぱくはんぶん”to our library. He is an author of picture books who lives in Melbourne. He has previously come to our school for Author’s talks a couple of times.

Reading

World of Maths

On Friday 26th May, children from Grade 1 to Grade 4 enjoyed participating in Maths activities and were very busy applying lots of different Maths skills to the various hands on tasks.

Thank you to Mrs Matthews for organizing this great incursion.

Buddie session

Grade 5/6 children made Maths games for Foundation children. They enjoyed the time to play games together.

Parent Workshop for Artists in Schools Project

We have a very exciting project starting in Term 3 - a whole school art project around the concept of SUSTAINABILITY. As part of this project, we want to create a sustainable connection with our wider school community - which includes our FAMILIES!

We had a workshop facilitated by artists, Dylan Martorell and Chaco Kato, who will be collaborating with students and teachers next term for the art project, on Tuesday 23rd May. In the workshop, parents learnt and experienced a sample of what the students will be exploring - techniques of weaving, macramé pattering, and creating a large scale Archi-Loom that generates sound from organic materials. It was nice to see our children enjoyed the structure building activities with their parents. Teachers also had a workshop with artists after school and they enjoyed the activities as mindfulness activity.

Thank you very much to all the parents who joined the workshop. Artists, Dylan and Chaco were very pleased to meet with you and they commented it was really lovely working with teachers and parents. The workshop indeed gave them a really good insight for the actual project with students.

Donation required

As part of the project, we would like to ask for any donations of materials such as old sheets, ribbons and ropes and plants. Any materials will help children be creative and create their imaginably cabby. If you are able to help out, please bring the items to the office. Thank you for your support.

HPS is very fortunate to be part of the Artists in Schools Project - A Victorian Government Initiative, and we hope that you can come and join the first step of our collaborative project!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to talk to Hanazono sensei or Miss Koyama.

Mindfulness activities

Around 30 children from Foundation to Grade 6 joined the “Mindfulness” activities with Mr. Thomas in his classroom. Children enjoyed the quiet time while listening to Mr. Thomas’s guitar playing and they talked about why we need mindfulness and how it will help us. Children actively asked lots of question. They layed down and learnt the breeze strategies and felt the sensory to calm down. You can find information about mindfulness from this website:

https://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/mental-health-matters/mindfulness

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a whole body-mind state of awareness that involves ‘tuning in’ to the present moment, with openness and curiosity, instead of ‘tuning out’ from experience. Mindfulness is a state of being fully awake to life – being aware and undistracted in the present moment. It is about focusing attention on the present, rather than thinking about the past or worrying about the future- which is often our brain’s default mode.

Mindful awareness is something that we all possess and that can be strengthened through practice. Mindfulness can be developed through formal sitting meditation practices, or through informal everyday mindfulness activities that use the senses to anchor the attention: such as mindful walking, listening to music, eating or conversation. Mindfulness is a clinically proven tool to support wellbeing and mental health by reducing stress and allowing life to be experienced more fully.

Why practise being mindful?

The way we interact with our kids has a huge impact on the way they think about themselves and their levels of personal resilience. Ellen Langer and team, a world-renowned mindfulness researcher found that children not only prefer to interact with mindful adults, but actually devalue themselves following interactions with mindless adults (Langer, Cohen & Djikic, 2010).

The benefits of mindfulness with children

Research shows that mindfulness training increases connectivity in the frontal lobe of the brain, which is linked to improved attention, memory processing and decision making abilities.
Mindfulness training involves tuning in to internal and external experiences with