Curtin Primary School Newsletter

We at Curtin Primary acknowledge the Ngunnawal people, past, present and future.

We would like to thank the traditional custodians for nurturing this precious land where we live, learn and play.

We promise to protect plants, animals, earth, water and sky and care for everyone in our community.

Dear Parents and Carers,

We are straight into another busy term and our first week back was complete with another fantastic Athletics Festival. Thank you to Mrs Beresford, Curtin staff and all parent volunteers for a great day of sport, team building and fun. Well done to all students who participated – it was great to see your skill development, enthusiasm and sportsmanship on the day. Congratulations to our house winners, Ainslie.

On Monday, students in years 3-6 were visited by guest speaker Cal Bruton. Cal is a former player and coach in The Australian National Basketball League who works with kids and volunteers in the community. Cal spoke to Curtin students about mindset, resilience and the dispositions that are needed to navigate through hardships and succeed in life. He also spent time working in small groups and with individuals playing basketball and discussing his sayings and acronyms to live by. Have a look at some of these acronyms and photos below – they are really inspiring! Students will also be creating their own acronyms which will be displayed in the foyer. Thank you to Cal, and also to Kate North for organising this excellent opportunity for our students. 

Also on Monday, our preschool Possums and Wombats went on their excursion to Birrigai.  The students made shelters for stuffed toy Australian animals, made damper and went on a bushwalk up to a rock shelter. They saw many interesting things on the way including a wombat burrow and an ant’s nest. An enjoyable day was had by all. Our preschool children demonstrated safe, respectful and learner behaviours while on the excursion and showed everyone that they are ready for ‘big school’ next year!

What a great day our Year 6 Market Day fundraiser was on Tuesday! Students from each grade had the opportunity to buy all sorts of goodies and services from stalls run by our year 6 students. There was a wide variety of stalls this year, ranging from ice-cream sundaes, popcorn, donuts, cakes, tropical juices, jelly, sideshow alley games, face painting, coloured hair spray, haunted house and much more. Well done to the year 6 students, their amazing teachers and to the year 6 parents who supported and helped with supplies and organisation on the day. Money that is raised from Market Day goes toward a gift for the school and end of year activities for our year 6 graduates.

Although it is still early in Term 4, we are already working on our school planning and organisation for 2020. A part of this organisation is class placement. Please remember to send any information regarding class placement for 2020 to maryanne.hayes@ed.act.edu.au by this Friday 25 October. Any requests after this date will not be considered when classes are created. Please refer to our agreed practices for class placement document for more information. Students will be given the opportunity over the next few weeks to have input into which of their peers they would like to have in their class for next year. Please discuss this with your child, and in particular, the importance of not only selecting friends but also considering their own learning needs and choosing people they will work with productively.  

From next Monday, we will be trialling a new afternoon pick up arrangement. Please see the information below and discuss this with your child.

Good luck to our Tournament of Minds teams who are travelling to Hobart this week to participate in the international finals on Saturday. We are so proud of you and know you will do your very best!

Other upcoming events include The Think U Know presentation at the school this Thursday and next week the launch of the Weetbix ‘Tryathlon’ series, sport clinics for year 5, Preschool 2020 information night and the first of our Preschool and Kindergarten transition sessions. Please contact the front office for more information about these sessions.

Have a great week! Clare Farr

To ensure a safe and efficient flow of traffic during pick up times for our students, families and the wider community, Curtin is trialling a new traffic management system for the afternoon pickups. This will commence on Monday next week. Please share with any carers who will be picking children up from the front carpark eg. relatives, nannies.

Please be patient as we implement this plan. 

Curtin Primary School - Pick Up Traffic Arrangements

The school has developed a safer and more structured way to deal with the traffic within the school grounds at pick up time.

• Between 2:55pm – 3:15pm, there is to be no car movement in or out of the parking spaces in the front car park.  This is to ensure that there can be no incident with reversing into students or other cars.
•  If you wish to physically collect your children from school, it will be necessary to park on the street or surrounding streets in designated parking areas and walk to the playground.
• We would like to ask all families to please write their family surname in big letters and attach it to your car’s visor. When entering into the carpark please pull the visor down so that staff can identify your children to get them ready for pickup.
• School pick up areas will be designated with orange cones to guide cars into these areas.

The following rules apply:

1.       Children will only be able to board a car if it is stopped at the designated spot (see map).

2.       Cars waiting will form a single line behind each other.

3.       At school pick up time, the car lines will commence at 3:02pm.

4.       If a car enters the pick-up zone and their children aren’t there, they will be asked to do a circuit of Theodore Street and rejoin the line (see map).

5.       Children will be supervised until 3:15pm.

6.       There will be absolutely no parking or waiting in pick up zones.

7.       If you park in the front carpark before 2:55pm you will have to wait until 3:15pm to leave.

8.       Staff will be on duty to assist with supervision and flow of traffic.

9.       Car pooling and walking clubs are encouraged.

In following this routine, we are providing a safer environment for those families wishing to pick up without leaving their cars.  It is suggested that when it comes to pick up time, you simply arrive at the school a little later to ensure your children have had time to get to the pickup point.

From 3:15pm any students remaining will be brought to the front office area and parents will be rung.

The back carpark will remain closed to parent parking.

An information night regarding BYO Chromebooks will be held for current Year 3 Parents on Monday 28 October at 6pm.

Events may be viewed and added to your personal calendar on the Skoolbag app

Notes may be downloaded from links found below

In the Library starting Tuesday 5 November from 8:30am 2019 until Friday 8th November 3:30pm

Choose from 100’s of Books and Build your Home Library.

Scholastic Book Fairs is coming to our school with a Buy One Get One Free Book Fair! This special event offers a great opportunity for you to add twice as many books to your child’s home and classroom libraries. For every book purchased you receive a second book of equal or lesser value FREE to give as a gift to a friend, teacher, donate back to the library or keep yourself.

*Last year we asked for donations to our new take Home Books for Kindergarten. This year we would ask families if they would donate to the new Reading Mentor Program.

This runs before school a few mornings that week. 

Our school will be hosting a ThinkUKnow presentation on Thursday 24 October at 7.00pm and all parents, carers and teachers are encouraged to attend.

ThinkUKnow Australia is a cyber safety education program that educates parents, carers and teachers of how people are using technology, the challenges they may face online, and how to help them overcome these in a safe and ethical way.

ThinkUKnow Australia is a partnership between the Australian Federal Police, Microsoft Australia, Datacom and the Commonwealth Bank. The program is delivered in collaboration with policing partners New South Wales Police Force, Northern Territory Police, Queensland Police, South Australia Police, Tasmania Police, Western Australia Police, as well as Neighbourhood Watch Australasia.

The presentation will be delivered by a local law enforcement member and an industry volunteer. The presentation covers issues relating to children and young peoples’ privacy and security online, their relationships with other users and their online reputation. It provides insight into the devices young people are using, as well as the popular websites, apps and social networking sites they’re accessing.

This is a fantastic opportunity for you to learn more about young people and the online environment, and how you can help them to be safe and responsible users of technology.

For more information, you can visit www.thinkuknow.org.au or contact Megan Moore (megankm4@gmail.com).

Congratulations to all our students, staff and parents for their enthusiastic participation in the Athletics Festival last Friday.  The festival was designed for maximin participation, fun and engagement. 

Earlier in the year we held heats and finals for our school athletics team.  All children participated in heats during PE lessons in term 1.  In term 2, we held finals and selected our team to represent the school at the South Weston Regional Carnival in term 3.  From that carnival, we had students qualify for the ACT Regionals.  All children received House Points for the events they participated in from heats in class to the ACT Carnival.

After adding all the points up, AINSLE house had the highest score, so they are the winners of the annual Athletics trophy.  The trophy will be presented to the House Captains at senior lines on Wednesday morning shown at junior lines on Friday morning.

PLEASE NOTE: These are not 'swimming lessons' they are survival skills.

Notes have been sent home. If you need a new note, please email amanda.beresford@ed.act.edu.au

Donations are appreciated and being accepted now. Each stall is looking for donations. Please read through the notices to see what you can help with and where you can drop it off.

Books - Books of all genres, magazines, DVDs, computer programs, sewing patterns, music, CDs. Like every year, space is a premium, and sorting book donations prior to the fair is a huge task. You can help by bringing donated books in a box, sorted into genres and leaving neatly outside canteen on designated table.

White Elephant - bric-a-brac, toys, games, puzzles, homewares NO ELECTRICAL, BROKEN OR LARGE ITEMS please. Basically, anything that is in good condition and you think we can sell. If it is something you would buy, then someone else might be interested too. Items can be left outside the canteen on the designated table and will be moved to storage after sorting. 

Plants - seedlings, pot plants, vegetables, garden ornaments. Donations can be placed near the greenhouse on the metal shelving in the junior courtyard.

Raffle - anything that is NEW and UNUSED. Vouchers, gourmet food items, beauty products, toys, games, etc. Donations can be left at the front office.

Wine cage – wine bottle donations can be left at the front office.

Fairy floss – donations of white caster sugar can be left at the front office.

Handmade stall - The handmade stall at the Twilight Fair is looking for crafty sorts to help make unique and lovely items for this year's stall.Perhaps you're into beading, papercraft, knitting, crochet, sewing, felting....we'd love to hear from. We can suggest projects or perhaps you have items to contribute. Please email Clare - clarerebecca42@gmail.com

Food and drink stalls need donations too

Sausages, hot dogs, tomato & barbecue sauce, hot dog rolls, soft drinks, juice, water, ice cream, wrapped lollies, wine, beer, sugar, plastic cups.

If you or someone you know have something to donate then please let us know ASAP!

Curry stall - would greatly appreciate any donations of coconut milk, pappadums or mango chutney (chutney would be very, very good). A donations box will be left outside the canteen.

If you are able to help out cooking a curry or dhal, you will be enormously popular. Cooks are provided with the delicious Curtin curry recipe (quite straightforward) and a pack of ingredients to cook, just follow the instructions. Please email Ken - ken@taxrambling.com

If you have any questions regarding the Twilight Fair please email Louise - louisesaber@gmail.com

The uniform shop is located opposite the canteen and is open from 8.30am until 9.30am each Wednesday. 

The canteen is open from 8.45am until 1.45pm. If you have any canteen queries, Lizzy can be contacted on 6142 2581 during these hours.