Nerae Preece Principal

From the Principal

The other day I had a wonderful conversation with some parents who had come along to the classroom helper training with Janet Miller. At the end of the session, we were discussing parenting things around helping your child deal with the social dilemmas they face at school. Of course deliberate physical violence never counts in this space, nor does repeated teasing, this should always be shared with you and their teacher to get the support that they need.

I shared with these parents a strategy to help with the occasional teasing problem, you can even use it with siblings when they name call. Erin Murphy and I use it all the time with the kids. It is the acronym T.H.I.N.K. When your child comes up and says that someone has been saying unkind things ask them these questions…

T- Is what the person said true?

H- Is what the person said helpful?

I-Is what the person said interesting or inspiring?

N- Is what the person said necessary?

K- Is what the person said kind?

It is very rarely that unkind words answer yes to any of these questions. So, you can then have a conversation around how to let go of the unkind words. I sometimes sing Taylor Swifts “Shake it off” to my kids… Yes I get eye rolls… but in the process we learn that we have choices. We can chose to listen and accept the things we hear, by making this a part or our self-talk (I am ugly, I am dumb). OR we can choose to ignore the unkind words and make our self-talk positive (I know I have other people in my life who think I am kind, I’m ok). As a parent the most powerful thing you can teach your child is to monitor their self-talk. These conversations are a great place to start.

A huge shout out to those wonderful people involved in that conversation on Tuesday morning… It was one of my favourite parts of that day!

Arriving before 8:45am

We are a little concerned that some students are being dropped off as early as 8:30am. As you know we do not supervise the yard until 8:45am. This gives our teachers time to prepare their day ahead. Of course as you know from 8:45 the classroom doors are open for our kids to start preparing for their day. I thought I would offer you some solutions to your problems if you are getting your kids to school too early…

Get in touch with Tristan and Amanda at CIRE. They offer a fabulous morning program that includes brekky. There are other kids to play with, and it makes a great start to the day! If your child does get to school at 8:30 we will pop them into CIRE so you know they will be supervised and safe. CIRE will invoice you.
If you don’t want to pay the money, drop your kids off at 8:30 at the Lions Club picnic area near Penny Lane. This is a 15 minute walk and that means they would arrive at 8:45 for their calm start (win-win they have had some exercise and they arrive at a time where they will be supervised)

Brekky Club

Now there is one day you can come to school early as a family and that is on Friday’s for Brekky Club. We meet at the kitchen near the gym and have toast, fruit and cereal available. The awesome Ian and Emma have kindly offered their time to run the club. They love helpers, so if you have your working with children’s check come along from 8:30 to help with Brekky Club.

Mega Zoo… Our neighbours are famous!

Channel 9 have a new series starting on Thursday March 4^th at 7:30pm called Mega Zoo. One of our favourite neighbours the Healesville Sanctuary will be part of the show. The best bit is that a few of our parents can be seen on the show! Particularly Ahren and Kaspar’s mum Dr Leanne Wicker. I do believe from a reliable source that the series is really great!

Assembly

Next week we have our second assembly for the term. It is going to be a showcase of music and awards topped off with a PFA bake sale and a parents versus teacher’s game of basketball. It starts at 2:30. Please make sure you bring your masks. We can’t wait to come together to celebrate half of our term! It will also be a great way to start the long weekend!

That’s about it for this week… I look forward to seeing you next week…

Have a great weekend,

Nerae

IMPORTANT SCHOOL DATES

Whole school dates to remember:

Thursday March 18th – 3 Way interviews (Students finish at 12.30pm)

Friday March 26th – Curriculum Day

Thursday April 1st – Last day of Term 1

Music News

Greetings to our wonderful school community

This term we are planning for our music and learning celebration assembly on March the 5^th at 2.30pm. The following classes and groups will perform and all families are invited to come along and enjoy the music:

Grade 5/6 A: Uptown Funk
Grade 3/4 B: Just a Little Bit
All Grade 1/2 students : In My Garden
Isla Larkin Flood: violin
Tegan O’Brien and Annabelle Jorgensen: Piano

If you learn an instrument and are keen to perform, please come and see Ms. Legg

Women’s Choir Back in Town!

After One whole year break, the Badger Creek Women’s Choir began rehearsing again this week. It was so wonderful to be singing together, in person. We had several new members and began learning some great new music.

The Women’s Choir is a Community Choir to which all are welcome. We sing an eclectic mix of music including pop, soul, Celtic and music from diverse cultures. It is relaxed, fun and we occasionally eat chocolate biscuits. All welcome to come and have a go.

I hope you have a great week. Hope to see you at assembly next week.

Instrumental Music Lessons

Instrumental music lessons have begun again and it is WONDERFUL to have our teachers back at school live and in person! At Badger Creek, students are able to learn the following instruments:

Woodwind (flute, clarinet, saxophone, recorder and Jsax)
Drums
Guitar and ukulele
Strings (violin, viola and cello)
Piano

Instruments are run on a private basis and parents pay their child’s teachers directly. Please fill out the attached expression of interest form if you would like your child to be involved in private music lessons.

Jenny Legg

Music Teacher

In P.E this week…

Hi Badger Creek Community!

Looking ahead for Term 1, our grade 3-6 students have concluded building their strategies and teamwork challenges unit and are about to start an Athletics Unit, to build up their confidence and proficiency in all events in preparation for the upcoming Athletics Carnival at the start of Term 2.

The Foundation students have continued to develop their running skills and catching skills, focusing on bringing their hands together in the correct catching position ( pinkies together) and keeping their eyes on the object. The foundation students are loving all the new activities and skills they are learning!

The grade one and twos have also been working on their running skills through lots of games and some peer coaching. Next week we will be doing lots of games to practice the skills for catching. I have been very impressed with the team work they show and the support they show their peers.

Kayaking:

It has been a wonderful event for over 30 lucky students who were able to participate in the kayaking at Lilydale Lake.

A big thank you to Ms Drill who attended the event and for all the parent helpers that transported students to and from Lilydale Lake.

District Swimming:

We had 13 students represent Badger Creek Primary School in the District Swimming Carnival at Healesville Pools on Friday 19^th February. By all reports, it was a fun filled day with all our students giving 100% in all their events and cheering on their fellow peers!

Congratulations to the following students.

	Toby	Badger Creek
	Huxley	Badger Creek
	Monty	Badger Creek
	Archie	Badger Creek
	Pearl	Badger Creek
	Chelsea	Badger Creek
	Mika	Badger Creek
	Henrietta	Badger Creek
	Raff	Badger Creek
	Grace	Badger Creek
	Tegan	Badger Creek
	Keiran	Badger Creek
	Lily	Badger Creek
	Thomas	Badger Creek
	Lynch	Badger Creek
	Katie	Badger Creek

Congratulations also go out to Archie G and Raff M, who finished in the top 2 in their 50m events and will now proceed to the Division Swimming Championships on Monday 1^st March at Aquanation in Ringwood.

Good luck to both students!!

AROUND THE GROUNDS

This week in Prep…

Preps have been busy writing this week!

On Monday, we wrote and drew pictures about the story ‘Do your ears hang low?’. We made connections between the story and our own experiences.

On Tuesday, we wrote about “My melon”. Our pictures matched our sentences.

And on Thursday Dinosaurs came to school! AAAHHHH! We explored, wondered and recorded our ideas. The Preps pictures and writing were amazing.

Don’t forget to check out our writing wall!

This week in Grade 3 / 4…

Well, the last fortnight was really a rollercoaster ride.

We have been so busy in Grade 3/4!

The development of fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination continues to be of vital importance throughout the Primary School years. In Grade 3/4 we continue to work on these skills by engaging in drawing, handwriting, crafts/cutting, use of manipulatives and play.

Visualisation during Reading is a 3/4 literacy focus at present.

VISUALISATION is one of the comprehension strategies, engaging the reader in constructing deeper understandings. It is the creation of a movie or images in the mind, while reading or listening to a story.

Children, through exposure to rich text and imagery, along with their bank of real-world experience, are able to call upon this knowledge base while reading. It helps them to form connections, use imagination and creativity and to fill-in the missing information, while reading.

This week in Grade 5 / 6…

We have had another busy week in 5/6! We have continued to explore space, collecting information to begin our first presentation for the year. In literacy we have been focusing on our CAFE reading strategies, checking our understanding as we read new things about space. In maths we have been exploring the proficiencies (Problem Solving, Understanding, Reasoning and Fluency), a new concept to our 5/6’s, and learning how we use these every day in maths without realising.

We are very excited about our upcoming Open Water Learning Experience on Wednesday 3rd March, so don’t forget to hand in your permission notices on QKR, or let your teacher know if you need a hard copy. Packing lists will be sent home on Friday.