Payment and Permission

Over the last term there has been an increase in the number of extra-curricular activities offered to students at school. Preparing for and managing these activities is quite time consuming and labour intensive, but we love to offer these for the children. We are careful to select activities that are meaningful, relevant and hopefully enjoyable for the students. However, we continue to experience many challenges with receiving payment and permission back from families in a timely manner. The recently offered in-school ‘Interrelate’ program (child development and puberty) was only taken up by less than 50% of students. We would see a program like this as extremely beneficial for all students to participate in but are now unsure if it is worth offering it again in the future. It is difficult to know if the program is not seen as worthwhile or more simply that cost of living pressure is beginning to impact families and this particular program was too expensive? Payments for the overnight Stage 3 excursion to Bathurst have also been much slower than usual coming in. At this stage, I am not sure what to make of this, but I will monitor the other upcoming events to see if this trend continues.

For now, if you feel there are too many expenses or if specific opportunities are not deemed to be worth your child participating in, we would appreciate you sharing that with us via email or a call. In the meantime, can I kindly ask all families to stay up to date with what is coming up (the Skoolbag calendar is kept up to date by our office team) and to respect the payment and permission deadlines. Not having to ‘chase’ families for payment and permission helps our office and school systems to operate more efficiently and effectively.

Father’s Day

We are only one week out from Father’s Day and as is our custom, our amazing P&C will be hosting both a Father’s Day Stall on Thursday and a Father’s Day Breakfast on Friday morning. For the Dads out there, the word on the street, is that the bacon and egg rolls need to be seen to be believed! Calling them a bacon and egg roll probably doesn’t do them justice……….you may not need lunch! To be clear, we cordially invite all Dads, Stepdads, Grandads or other significant males (or females if there isn’t a significant male role model) to join us on Friday morning.  I look forward to seeing many of you then.

Regional Athletics

Congratulations to Sienna Ryan, Lola Cunningham, Lailah Emery and Bella Andrews who all qualified for and represented our school at the Regional PSSA Athletics Carnival. I’m writing this in advance and therefore do not know their results, but regardless, making it through to any regional event is an achievement in itself for which they should all be proud of. Congratulations girls.

Editor’s Note: 

Girls placed 4th in their 100m relay heat. Sienna placed 5th in her 100m individual heat, Sienna  also competed in long jump event but no results shared at time of publication.

Have a great week.

David Holland 

Congratulations to the following students who were selected as the Junior and Senior students of the week for their work during Week 6 this term.

The rescheduled parent-teacher interviews for 6CS have been scheduled for this Tuesday 30 August between 1:30-6:00pm. Bookings are filling fast but there are a few vacancies available. To book, please do so via the School Interviews website and use the event code 2q28b to login and book an interview.

If you are coming in for an interview on Tuesday, please come to the office if your interview is before 3pm, or to the 6CS classroom if it occurs after 3pm.  If you are unavailable on Tuesday 30 August but would still like to book an interview with Mr Semmens or Mrs Cooper, please contact them via the office to schedule an alternate time. 

This week's assembly will be led by Class KH. The students have been cooking up something special with the help of Mr Niddrie and Miss Jones. Families are welcome to join us to support Kindergarten hosting their first assembly.  If you are attending, please be prepared to check-in with the QR Code provided and to wear a mask.

We look forward to seeing you then.

Our staff are busy making final arrangements for our upcoming 3-day Stage 3 Bathurst excursion. Families with a balance owing  or outstanding notes should have received either a Statements of Account or additional copies of missing notes last Friday. Information provided helps teachers best accommodate your child's needs during the excursion. If your child has any specific needs associated with travel and staying away from home, please contact us as soon as possible so that we can do our best to address these needs and put plans into place to best support your child.  

Full payment must be received by Friday 23 September. Should you need additional time to make the final payment, please contact Mr Holland prior to the deadline. All conversations will be treated as strictly confidential. 

School are required to seek additional parent or carer consent as part of the New South Wales Department of Education COVID-19 guidelines.  A Consent form was sent home to all families on Friday and we ask that you please read the information on the consent form and return to school ASAP. Should you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact our friendly office staff.  

Further information regarding our itinerary, what to pack and last-minute information will be sent home in coming weeks.

When your child attends school every day, learning becomes easier and your child will build and maintain friendships with other children. Parents and carers can help foster positive attendance habits by:

• helping their child learn the importance of punctuality and routine
• ensuring their child arrives on time from the start of the school day, ready to participate in learning
• reducing disruption to learning where possible, by planning any necessary appointments outside of school time
• promptly communicating any absence to the school (within 7 days of the first day of any absence)
• working with the school to encourage and support regular attendance.

1S have been extremely busy this term. We have been learning about moving our whole body in different ways such to reflect the movement of water during Dance. We then drew some different types of water movements such as swish, swirl, trickle, flow and pour. In writing, we have been learning about inventions and how to ask questions and statements. We then wrote our first newspaper article based on the story ‘Whoosh’ by Chris Barton. The story is about a boy named Lonnie who invented the ‘water soaker’. Our newspaper articles included a headline, a lead sentence, and some pictures.  

This term KJ have been learning to innovate a story by creating story maps, drama, drawings and giving oral presentations. The students enjoyed creating their own story map of birthday parties, making pizzas, cakes, and doughnuts to name a few. It has been fantastic to see KJ being creative with their writing ideas!

KJ have also been learning about the structure of a sentence. They are now experts at using capital letters at the start of a sentence, finger spaces between words, full-stops at the end of sentences and stretching out the sounds to spell unknow words. We love sharing our writing with other teachers at LPS and we have improved our skills greatly over the term. As we say, personal best writing and always having ‘a go’ is what Mrs Andersen and Mrs Gillard love to see!

KJ hope you enjoy seeing some of our wonderful innovation stories and writing samples below.

Please remember that if a member of your household tests positive to Covid-19, household contacts are not required to self-isolate for 7 days as they were previously. If your child has no symptoms and tests negative using a RAT in the morning (each day for 5 days) they may attend school. You must still notify us in this instance (a call to the office is sufficient). 

With Fathers' Day just around the corner, this week's articles focuses on the importance for children to have good men in their lives.  We hope you enjoy this week's article.