Newsletter

Issue 14

Term 4 

Thursday  14 November, 2019

If you have not yet paid the School Contributions a Reminder of Unpaid Billing Items will be sent home with your child this week.

While the payment of the $60 Contribution is voluntary, the total outstanding amount of $10,260 if paid, would enable the school to purchase a considerable amount of classroom or playground resources that directly benefit all students at Aspiri Primary School.

The P & C Voluntary Contribution of $10 will also assist our dedicated parent committee to achieve fundraising goals more quickly, once again directly benefiting our students.

Payments can be made by any of the following options.

·        QKR! (preferred method) – an App available for download for smartphones;

·        Direct Deposit to the school bank account:

        BSB 066040                       Account No 19901420

        Please use student last name as reference

·        EftPos for card payments is available in Administration

·        Cash – correct money is required as Aspiri PS does not keep any change on site

Thank you to all families who have already paid, it is greatly appreciated.

Marie McGlashan

Manager Corporate Services

On Thursday 24 October 2019, parents, students and teachers came together to celebrate Aspiri Primary School’s Multicultural Day. Multicultural Day is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our schools diverse community.

Our celebrations included an array of performances of beautiful Indian dances by our students and parents, presentations about different countries, followed by a picnic lunch with our families and a cultural dress parade.

We’d like to thank the parents, students and teachers who volunteered to perform and to everyone that came together to celebrate Multicultural Day. Also a special mention to Miss Labrooy and Miss Albertyn for organising this special event.

On Thursday 7 November, 2019 Aspiri Primary school celebrated the importance of music education in Australian schools by joining in with over 660,000 students from more than 3,000 schools all around Australia to sing ‘We Are’. All the students looked fabulous in their green accessories and sang proudly, led by the school choir. At 9:15am our school tuned in to see the live feed from Surfers Paradise and in the SkyPoint Observation Deck atop Q1!  Aspiri Primary School was also featured in the lead up to the performance on the nation-wide video montage. A big thank you to all the classroom teachers who took the time to teach the song to their students as well as Mrs Atherton for organising the event. We look forward to celebrating Music Count Us In again in 2020!

Over the last few weeks during Outdoor Agency the Kindergarten students have been pretending to be palaeontologists and engineers. They have explored buried bones and attempted to recreate the hat featured in the Dr Seuss story ‘The Cat in the Hat’, using only plastic cups and paper. In Pre-Primary the students have been testing out how different toys move and the forces used to create these movements. They have been busy recording their findings and grouping the toys according to the movements they make. In Year 3 students have been learning about heat energy and have been adding some of the new words they have learnt to their word wall. 

Pre Primary

This semester, our Pre-Primary students have been learning all about coding!

We started by playing lots of games of Simon Says as well as coding ourselves and our teachers, using pictures, to create funny and crazy dance moves. We then moved on to coding lego men around a maze, making sure they dodged any traps in the maze and finished on the pile of gold. Our partners helped by moving the lego men based on the arrows we used. Next we were able to use real robots! Once we had practised using the robots, we used all the skills and directional language we had learned to program them around a big maze on the floor. 

And now we are coding experts! Mr Kubicek is giving us different mazes where we have to reach certain points in order. We plan our pathways on the maze using markers and then write code that matches our pathway. Finally, we take our code to the robots and see everything working just as we planned! 

Please enjoy some pictures from our lessons!

Building Resilience

Resilience is the ability to cope with difficult situations and ‘bounce back’ when things go wrong.  Young people need to develop resilience in order to navigate life’s ups and down.  As a parent, you can help your child to become resilient by giving him or her opportunities to learn and practise new skills, for example:

• Arrange a fun child-friendly activity each week like a trip to the park, play date with a friend or watching a favourite movie. Regular ‘ups’ provide a bank of positive emotions to buffer against life’s ‘downs’ that may involve disappointment or conflict. 

• Help your kids to think positively. If your child is frustrated by a difficult puzzle, say, "I know that puzzle was hard today, but yesterday I saw you get a hard puzzle out. You kept trying until you found the right place to put the pieces."

• If you have a disagreement with your child, the most important thing to do is to reconnect and repair the relationship. Let your little one cool down then offer a hug or words of support. This has benefits for your child’s mental health as well as their ability to deal with relationship problems as they get older.

For more information about raising a resilient child, go to www.kidsmatter.edu.au/ or www.raisingchildren.net.au or contact your local Community Health Nurse, Jessica Wheatcroft  (08)9391 2235. 

Personal Hygiene

Having good hygiene helps to prevent illness and ensures that our bodies are acceptable to others. Here are some tips for maintaining good hygiene;

·       Wash your hands before and after touching food, and after going to the toilet, touching animals or being around someone who is         coughing or has a cold. 

·       Wash your body daily and keep your hair clean.

·       To prevent body odours, change your clothes regularly and use deodorant if necessary. 

·       Change underwear and socks daily, and leave shoes outside to dry.

·       To prevent bad breath, brush and floss teeth and visit the dentist regularly.

·       If you are ill, try not to cough or sneeze on others, clean things that you touch, and throw away things with germs on them (like tissues). 

Should you require further information about hygiene, contact your local Community Health Nurse, Jessica Wheatcroft on (08)9391 2235, or go to www.cyh.com.

Vision and Eyes

Good vision is important for learning and quality of life. Watch for any of the following in your child;

·       Covering/closing one eye when reading;

·       Holding books very close;

·       Complaining of eyestrain or headache;

·       Complaining of double vision or blurred vision with reading or board viewing;

·       Complaining of words moving on a page;

·       Losing place when reading, or skipping words and lines;

·       Inattention or short attention span when reading, or;

·       Rubbing the eyes.

Please note: Medicare covers the cost of an eye examination.

If you have a concern about your child’s vision please contact a doctor, optometrist or your local Community Health Nurse on Jessica Wheatcroft on (08)9391 2235.