Primary

As term 3 draws to a close, I think it is safe to say that we are all looking forward to a well-earned break. It will be good to put all of the ills of winter behind us and begin to enjoy some more pleasant, warmer weather. I hope you take the opportunity to spend some quality time with your families and recharge the batteries. 

It has been another busy term with lots of events taking place. Our Preps celebrated their first 100 days of school on 1 August with a fun day of activities. These included, sharing their interesting collections of 100 items. We had all manner of things from leaf collections to coffee beans, match sticks to pom poms and pasta to lego. The children came to school in their pyjamas and had a very memorable day together. 

The year 4, 5 and 6 students have been involved in interschool sport this term. They represented our school in soccer and bat tennis. It has been a challenge some Fridays to field teams due to lots of illness over winter, but the students did their best and participated with enthusiasm each week. They showed wonderful sportsmanship and developed their skills in their respective sports. We were proud of them all. 

These students also went off to camp this term, attending Camp Manyung at Mt Eliza. It was our first time at this camp, and it was well received by the students. The camp is run by the YMCA and provides students with fun and challenging activities including a giant swing, initiative activities to promote team work, a beach discovery walk and tree rolling which requires students to be harnessed to a zipline, as they move through an obstacle course up high in the trees. 

The children faced lots of new challenges during their 2-day experience and developed some new skills with a big helping of resilience, as they participated in their activities with their groups. It was wonderful to be able to get to do these sorts of things again with our students, after the last couple of years without them. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of Anna Collins for organising this camp for our students. 

One of the highlights of this term was Harry Potter Day on 1 September. It began with the students taking part in a parade of costumes, where we were all able to show off our Happy Potter dress ups. This was followed by a scavenger hunt around the Primary playground. The students ran around finding letters to form the message: Happy Book Week! The year 5/6 students worked with their P/1 buddies to solve the puzzle. Their reward was a chocolate frog. 

Mrs Egan, our library manager, organised some amazing activities for the primary classes throughout the day. These included a ‘potions class’ which was conducted by our wonderful helpers, Professors Grobbelaar and Lavcanski. There was also wand making which involved copious amounts of glue, glitter and ‘unicorn tears’. Many of the students are continuing to use their ‘quills’ which were made from grey lead pencils decorated with feathers and washi tape, in class. The day wrapped up with a whole school ‘Quidditch’ match which was like dodgeball on broomsticks (pool noodles between players’ legs). Mrs Egan was also instrumental in organising the Harry Potter movie night which was attending a small but enthusiastic group of Harry Potter fans including some parents of our Prep – Year 2 students. 

As I write this report, we are going through the process of selecting our primary student leaders for 2023. I am impressed with the quality of the students’ written applications so far. They will all be asked to sit for an interview with myself and some of this year’s student leaders to talk about their application, and they will be rated on their responses. The results will be scored, and hopefully we will come to a consensus on who will become our 2023 leaders. I wish all of our applicants the best of luck and commend them for putting themselves forward for this opportunity. 

Stay safe over the break, and we look forward to seeing everyone back for the final term of 2022. 

STEM