From Julie
With summer holidays coming up I want to stress to parents the importance of unstructured play that allows children to make their own fun and their own decisions. We all know how busy the year can be so I hope that the summer will offer some opportunities for everyone to just ‘chill’ together. Children learn so much from family, school and from their third educator, nature itself. What are we modelling for our children? There are huge benefits to allowing children the time to explore in the natural environment, building, chasing, investigating, climbing, rolling, sliding, lifting, …. with their experiences guided by their own imagination and curiosity rather than always having things organised for them. This way they will develop their own internal motivations and understandings in much deeper and far more healthy ways. We need to understand the importance of free play for children and not feel that we have to be giving them material possessions, explicit instructions and external directions at all times. You will not be failing as a parent if your child says they are bored and you leave that problem with them to solve. Taking the time to just sit and contemplate can be a very healthy thing to do too. If the experiences available can be child-led and play-based then the children will learn through direct experience using their senses in nature. Adults just need to facilitate the opportunities available and add the occasional ‘provocation’. It is also wise to involve children in the safety assessment in relation to any activities or use of tools so that they develop these essential risk management skills for times when adults are not around. This helps develop a healthy attitude toward risk management which is neither seeing it as a frustrating limitation or as a challenge to go beyond irrespective of the risks involved. The benefits of this sensible approach will really pay-off during adolescence when other children may be just more interested in pushing boundaries just for the sake of it despite the risks.
Recently I have had the pleasure of reading each of the reports written by teachers for our students, your children. What a joy. Our teachers have clearly nurtured each and every student to be the best they can be and we remain committed to that ongoing process. You should have received these reports on Thursday 5 December but, if not, then please contact your child’s class teacher.
I would like to say a big thank you to all families for your contribution to the school through completion of family jobs. Completion of family jobs contributes in so many ways: to the school cleanliness but more importantly to the school culture and sense of community. I understand how difficult it is for some families to manage this contribution, especially in single-parent families, where there is illness in the extended family or where both parents are working full-time, but I’m also told by other families how useful this time is as they work away for 15 minutes to clean a toilet room after school. Earlier in the year I moved to change our policy to be less harsh on families who were not able to complete family jobs. Previously, non-completion could jump to exclusion of a child from the school all too quickly in my eye; so we changed that policy to put in an intervening step after discussion and documentation of fining, similar to Working Bee, rather than exclusion. This gave me more flexibility to be lenient and understanding of families’ individual circumstances and, in fact, we have not fined any family for non-completion of family jobs. I would, however, like to particularly thank those families who arranged for others to cover for them while they could not do their family job and to those who stepped up to cover for those families who might have been travelling or incapacitated for short periods. It shows our Cottage School community at its best to see such support for each other.
I look forward to seeing many of you here next Friday, 13 December, at 11am for our Final Gathering where we will say a final farewell to our grade 6 leavers. I believe we might even get a special ‘Orthography Thursday’ on a Friday! We will finish up by 12 noon and ask that you collect your children at that time.
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