Harmony Day Celebration and Parade

What a wonderful celebration today for Harmony Week! Many of our students came to school in clothing reflecting their cultural heritage or wore orange or other bright colours (orange is the official Harmony Week colour as it signifies freedom of ideas and encouragement of mutual respect).

Our wonderful Grade 6 JSC representatives Jack, Xavier, Frances, Lily, Ayesha and Ned expertly ran the parade this morning and interviewed a number of students who shared their own cultural heritage. Thank you to the JSC for running the parade and to Brad for his work behind-the-scenes organising today’s events.

I interviewed Ayesha (6BA), one of our JSC leaders, to find out more about Harmony Day and hear about her cultural heritage:

“Harmony day is about uniting people and celebrating everyone’s culture. Today we had a parade where everyone had a chance to show off their culture - and we interviewed students to find out about their outfits, their culture and who they are.

My cultural background is Indian. I do traditional Indian dancing, which includes wearing makeup, flowers and buns. My Indian family live in South Africa. I went over there last April; I got Covid so it meant that actually got to stay longer! It was Easter so there were chocolates as well as lots of curry - my Ba (great-grandmother) made lots of yummy food for me. I have another Ba who is 101 years old - she still walks up and down stairs, and helps prepare food!”

I also sat down with Abubakar (34JQ) to hear about his cultural background:

“My family is from Somalia. I was born in Australia; I’m 99% Somalian and 100% Australian. I’m proud to be both Somalian and Australian. At the moment it is Ramadan which is a holy month for Muslims, and after Ramadan it is Eid.

My favourite part of Ramadan is when you fast for a month and wake up at 4am or 5am to eat. So you’re not so hungry because you can still eat. Then you fast - for kids my age we just fast on Saturday and Sunday. We break our fast later in the day - doing this is based on writings in the Quran. There are actually benefits in fasting; it helps us to understand the poor. During Ramadan we also give charity; charity is very important in our culture.

At Ramadan people around the world from different countries gather and go to a holy place, where they pray, eat and celebrate. After you pray, you say Allahu Akbar ten times. This means that god will give you ten blessings, which is about increasing your kindness and what making sure you offer good things to the world.

I speak Somalian and Arabic as well as English; we speak Arabic when we do cultural and religious things.”

I also chatted with Abubukar’s younger brother Bilaal (12CW):

“In my culture we do lots of parades. Ramadan is a special thing where we fast. This means we don’t eat anything. Then we feel like the poor people feel, who don’t have enough to eat. We give charity to people who need help. I think charity is important because other people need food and it’s very good to give people food who need it or they will starve.”

I spoke with William T (5KF) about his background:

“My family is from Vietnam and I was born in Australia. My dad is actually half-Chinese but he lived in Vietnam. He speaks Chinese, Vietnamese as well as some English.

I feel like being Vietnamese is about being kind to everyone - treat them like you would treat yourself.

I went back to Vietnam for five months last year. It was really cool, everyone was riding motorbikes. I saw my grandpa, my eleven uncles and aunties and my cousins. It was really hot there - it was hot every day! I speak fluent Vietnamese - I do classes on Saturdays.”

I also spoke with Anna (34DB) about her cultural heritage and family:

“I am from the Ukraine; I was born there. I moved to Australia when I was two and a half. I went back again to Ukraine in Prep and I saw my aunty, cousin and my grandparents. It was really fun. I saw lots of famous landmarks.

At home we speak Ukrainian or Russian, because my dad can’t speak Ukrainian. My favourite food is called Vareniki; it’s dough with a little piece of potato or meat inside. That’s basically it. You have it with cream sometimes.”

Mindful Monkeys Incursion

On Monday our Preps had their first-ever incursion. The focus of the activities on the day was around building wellbeing, resilience and a sense of self through mindfulness-based activities. The students explored how to manage emotions and they also did some yoga.

I spoke to some of the Preps about their experience:

Manu (PTJ) “Mindful Monkeys was where you made these puppets - and also a human dressed up as a monkey!

Ruby (PTJ): “Yeah, the human was wearing a monkey costume! It was really fluffy! We a potion - and when you’re angry and sad you can shake it and it helps you feel much better.”

Manu: “There were purple colours, green and blue colours.”

Ruby: “Yeah, I chose blue and Manu chose purple.”

Manu: “We got these sticks had to make something; it was pretty hard. We wrapped some string around the stick. What was it called?... They were called god’s eyes. I think it was for our parents.”

Ruby: “It was fun.”

And there’s more…

There was plenty of other things happening this week, including the Year 5 excursion to Scienceworks on Wednesday and Ride to School Day today.

With Kathleen and Sarah absent this week, Tristen and I were lucky enough to accompany the Grade 5s to Scienceworks on Wednesday! It was a fantastic day - with my highlight being our personalised tour of the galaxy at the planetarium. Thanks so much to the large team of parent and carer helpers who came along to support the student groups as they explored the exhibitions.

Today was also Ride to School Day - well done to all the families who rode, scooted, skated, rolled or walked to school today! Stay tuned for more about today’s event in next week’s newsletter. Thanks to Tony for coordinating this event.

Naplan

This week students completed their Naplan assessments, with the Language Conventions assessment on Monday and the Numeracy assessment on Tuesday. Congratulations to all the students for their outstanding concentration throughout these sessions - and to our staff for their hard work and flexibility to manage and deliver the assessments.

I sat down with Frankie (5KF) to hear about his experience of Naplan.

Frankie said, “I like doing Naplan a lot because it was really quiet when we were working. I also liked how we set up the classroom differently and separated all the tables. It was great that the environment in the room was nice and calm.”

Wildlife at FNPS

You may have heard that some of the classrooms around the school have adopted pets in recent weeks. Both Maddi’s class and the Grade 6s have their very own stick insects to look after!

I asked Matilda from 1/2MC about their new pets: “We have stick insect pets in our classroom. One of them was eating their own skin I think! The other one was hiding from us. When Maddi was counting the stick insects we could only find three, but the other one was hiding from us under some fabric. Luckily it didn’t get squashed! Maddi brought the stick insects from school because she wanted us to have class pets. When they have babies we might be able to take them home with us to look after them!”

Picking Students Up Early

We understand there are times when you need to pick up your child early, for example if you have an appointment or if you’re going away.

As we want to minimise the length of time students are waiting at the office, Emily or Nicole will call the classroom and ask the student/s to come with their bags once their parents/carers have arrived at school. Please allow for this time once you get to school as it can take time for the students to pack up and collect their bags and get to the office.

Thanks for your understanding.

Have a great weekend.

Best wishes

Toby

Earth Hour 2023