Wambi's Wavebreaker

Thank You

Debbie Hodgson would like to thank the school and the community for the amazing send off she received on Friday. She will miss you all.

The P&C is seeking volunteers to assist in the successful operation of the canteen. No experience is necessary and we would welcome parents, carers or grandparents who have as little as an hour free to help in the canteen, either with lunch order preparation or counter service. If you are able to assist or would like further information, please email president@wamberalpandc.org or phone Damien on 0400 761 976. 

Attention Year 6 Families

Each year 6 student is being asked to participate in a fundraising project for the year 6 formal to ensure we can keep lower ticket prices for all. All year 6 students have been issued with a unique barcode that can be scanned when depositing used cans and bottles at any Return and Earn collection point. If you haven't received a barcode or your family would like more than one, please send a private message to the Wamberal P&C Facebook page and we will make sure you get one asap. Please get involved! Rope in neighbours, family and friends to help get the dollars coming in for this fundraiser. We appreciate any and all help. Every can or bottle will help. If any other members of the school community would like to assist with fundraising with your own barcode, please message us at facebook.com/wamberalpandc.

Shop and Support our School

Did you know that buying groceries at a Ritchies IGA Supermarket can help support our P&C? Wamberal Public School P&C is one of the recipients you can elect to support when you register for a free Ritchies card or download the free Ritchies Card App for your mobile phone. Our P&C has been fortunate to receive more than $8000 since the inception of the program.

Spread the word to family and friends. If they live far away and shop at a Ritchies IGA near them, they can still select our P&C as their nominated recipient

How often do you check in with your children about how they are feeling? Or check in with yourself about how you are feeling. It can be easy to go (or rush) through a day and feel happy, sad, stressed, excited, worried and any other number of feelings without even batting an eyelash. Or maybe without noticing. Or maybe even only noticing the yucky ones, leaving us feeling less than content. 

One of the factors that enable humans to build resilience is being able to identify how we are feeling. Subsequently, we can do something about it to support ourselves. Whether it’s making a phone call to share wonderful news or taking a walk to calm the stress. Doing something about it becomes much tougher though when we don’t identify what is actually going on. Our children can be left at the mercy of big emotions when they don’t learn how to identify them and develop positive coping skills. That often means that families can be left at the mercy of a child’s big emotions. Often that is unpleasant at best and at worst it has a lasting impact on family relationships.

Today, I’d love to point you to a great article with a free Mood Tracker resource for kids by our friends over at Very Special Tales. The author does a great job digging into many different uses and benefits of using a Mood Chart and provides some varied tools for free at the end of the article to suit your potential needs. 

To me, some of the great benefits of using a mood tracker are:

1. Creating an opportunity to reflect on how one is feeling in the moment and raising awareness and mindfulness about one’s emotions.
2. Tracking patterns in mood, especially if someone is getting stuck in ‘always’ experiencing a negative emotion. For example, you might notice that morning is difficult every Monday, but every day after school is positive as they’ve had a good day.
3. Increasing conversation about emotions in a safe and healthy way. This can sometimes be an avenue to children communicating more about their day/experience with an adult.
4. Being able to reflect and make changes. If we refer back to number 3, over time you can look at patterns and talk about why that might be and what can be done to make typically difficult times better. This can give individuals a sense of empowerment that they can do something about the situation.
5. Raising awareness of a variety of emotions, especially if one is stuck in thinking things are bad all the time. We can highlight positive emotions and remind our children (or ourselves) that nothing is bad all the time. We can look for the moments of light.

Noticing our own emotional responses gives us a lot of information and power. Mood trackers are one tool that help us to be deliberate in developing resilience. And if you using a mood tracker doesn’t resonate with you, I encourage you to find other ways to develop emotional intelligence and resilience.

If you do try out a mood tracker (for yourself or your children) and you find there are patterns that indicate concern, please reach out for some support. A visit to your GP can help with referrals to appropriate services and, as always, our wonderful friends at Kids Helpline (1800 55 1800), LifeLine (13 11 14) and 13Yarn (13 92 76) are there to help.

The Tuggerah Lakes Zone Athletics carnival was in August, Term 3 and we had a large group of students represent our school ever so proudly. We would like to congratulate all the athletes that attended Zone for their enthusiasm and wonderful spirit on and off the track. You did Wamberal Public very proud!

A special congratulations goes to Dane H who was awarded the Tuggerah Lakes Zone Junior Boys Age Champion! Well done Dane.

The following students then went on to proudly represent our Tuggerah Lakes Zone at the Sydney North Athletics Championships late in September.  Congratulations to:

Big thanks to the Wamberal teachers who helped out at the Zone Athletics carnival - Mr Raft, Mr Smith and Mrs Tyson. Your efforts were greatly appreciated. And to our amazing parents - thank you for all your support!

Yours sportingly, 

Mr Bennett