News from the Hazelmere Campus

Autumn

"Come, said the wind to the leaves one day.
Over the paddock and we will play.
Put on your garb of red and gold.
For summer is gone and the days grow cold."

The cool Djeran mornings greeted us on our return from lazy long Term 1 holidays with gentle mist still swirling as the sun struggled to bring light into classrooms. The paddocks are in plentiful supply; the sheep seem to cavort about more and the geese have found new pastures away from our playing pitch, which we are all happy about. 

Fortunately, that didn't last long, and the second day of term saw the Class 5/6 students visit for the whole day as they participated in Simon Cherriman and Danielle Crichton's Re-cyc-ology workshop. They built, painted and installed nesting boxes for micro bats, birds and mammals. The students learned about the natural habitat of birds and how some traditionally make their nest in tree hollows, which have been severely reduced by land clearing. 

The workshop, which was funded from the School's Waste Sorted grant, was repeated the next day for the High School students and integrated the key learning of why each of us must minimise the impact on bird and animal life in the environment.

Class 7/8 are finishing their Revolutions Main Lesson with Karwin this week and have covered the Industrial and French revolutions. Next week they will start Acoustics and Optics with Robert. 

Class 9/10 have been immersed in understanding the elements of electronics and swinging circuits in their Rise of Electronics Main Lesson and will have a change of pace studying The Modern World and Australia's part in it with Karwin. 

While we start our Open Day cleaning and preparation, it is wonderful to watch these beautiful adolescents work and play together - not always in perfect harmony but always so magnificently as their emerging thinking, feeling and willing words and actions reflect their stages of development. 

The next big event on the calendar seems only a few short weeks away, when we will recognise the depth of winter and the light we seek inside ourselves that leads us through our inner life and journey. 

We look forward to welcoming the community to the High School campus on Saturday, or any day by appointment. The campus phone number is 0410 924 868.

Catherine Vann
High School Education Coordinator

Hi to all our parents and carers,

I can't believe that I have been here for nearly one year already and it has been a pleasure to get to know you all and the students.

The day to day running of the school is a very busy job and I ask you all to please help out in regard to our late arrival and early leaving policy.

It is imperative for the safety of our students to know their whereabouts during the school day. If you are late, for any reason, please present to the office for a late note. This is then to be given to the class teacher on arrival to the class. If the student has already been marked as absent with no reason advised, and they then present to the classroom with no late note, unfortunately I have no record of them being at school.

From time to time there are reasons why we need to collect our children from school early. Please, before collecting your child from class, come the office to record an early leaving and that the student is being taken away from the school. This is then to be given to the teacher before collecting the student. If you come onto the school grounds and take a student early with no notification, I have no record of the student leaving. This can pose some serious issues if an emergency or similar situation arose.

Thank you all for your time and patience while I navigated my way around, and I look forward to being here for you all for many more years to come.

Robyn Grills

Office Admin

The children thrive when they are gently guided by a safe and secure rhythm. We have a daily and weekly rhythm and one of the most loved days is bread day. Creating a homelike environment, doing purposeful tasks and completing activities, implicitly build the capacities the children will need as they move into their future school years.

The children wash their hands then quietly sit waiting as I sing the fairy dust song. Each child receives a sprinkle of flour and they use their fingers to create pictures in the flour. When the next song starts, they cup their hands ready for the light fluffy dough. We then knead the dough together, “push, fold, turn” the children use different parts of their hands, strengthening and cultivating dexterity. There is sometimes a little eagerness in rushing to start to make their creations, but each child knows that kneading just that little longer will give them much lighter, fluffier bread. When the bread is ready, we sing our next song and the children each manipulate their bread into a beautiful individual creation, sometimes a flower, sometimes a snail and the beauty is not really knowing how it will rise in the oven. The best is still to come when they share this experience at morning tea and enjoy the warm buttered bread sometimes with a little honey.

"We mix the dough, we knead the dough, we let it rise, we push the dough and pull the dough, it grows before our eyes.

Hot white loaf, in a little ball, it rises up to feed us all."

Claire Parker
Bilya Mia Kindy Teacher

We are excited to share with you the recent incursions that our Class 5/6 students have had, which have focused on sustainability and creativity.

Firstly, we had a Recycology Project with Simon Cherriman and Danielle Crichton, where our students worked together to create nest boxes for local wildlife using recycled materials. It was amazing to see the students use their problem-solving skills and creativity to design and build these homes for our furry and feathery friends. We are proud to say that our School is now contributing to the conservation of local wildlife in our area. Thank you to Birds Australia and Woolworths Junior Landcare for making this possible.

In addition, we had Sammy Wyborn, an Aboriginal artist come in to work collaboratively with our students to design a waste-wise poster for our School. The students learned about Aboriginal culture and the importance of caring for the environment. They were then able to contribute to a beautiful painting that will help remind everyone in our School to minimise their waste, reuse, recycle and do their part to protect the environment. A special thanks to WasteSorted Schools for providing a grant to the Primary School for this activity.

These incursions have not only provided our students with valuable knowledge and skills, but also an opportunity to connect with their community and to make a positive impact on our environment.

Thank you to all of the parents and carers who support our School in these initiatives. We look forward to continuing to work together to make our world a better place.

Emily Jansen
Class 5/6 Teacher

There is a lot more happening on the new school site than just the establishment of classrooms for the High School. As you may know, the site used to have both a home and horse training facilities. This gave us the opportunity to study the changes to the Helena River as we rehabilitated its banks and floodplain. To this end, the School has applied for several grants and is about to start on a major revegetation programme along a section of the riverbank. Another grant the School received was from Birds Australia to extend the nesting and breeding habitat for Australian native birds endemic to this area.

This allowed us to purchase resource books and binoculars to facilitate regular surveys of birds which are being added to a national database. We were very fortunate to host Simon Cherriman and Danielle Crichton, owners of Re-Cyc-Ology, who travel across Western Australia to build nesting boxes for native birds and animals using recycled materials. Simon gave presentations to Class 5/6 and the High School students about the interaction between termites and mature trees to produce the tree hollows required by most of our endemic species for raising young.

After their presentation, each group built nesting boxes suitable for a variety of animals and birds. These were placed in suitable nooks at the end of the days, geolocated and will be monitored for signs of nesting over the coming years. In fact, it took only one night for one of the boxes to become occupied by an enterprising possum and we have seen signs that others have been noticed too.

The next feature to be built is a permanent watering station for the birds. We have some initial ideas but would welcome input from anyone in the community. Please contact Robert Gillman if you wish to contribute.

We would like to sincerely thank Bronwyn Scallan for her work in securing this and other grants and look forward to the next steps in making our Helena River frontage a long-term teaching resource.

Robert Gillman
Class 9/10 Teacher

School woodworking program receives $350 donation.

Our appreciation goes to Tez Hamer and the team at Bunnings Midland for their donation of $150 to purchase 4 woodworking aprons, 7 rulers and 2T-squares for the school’s amazing new woodworking room.

The School is also grateful to Jason Holloway, Store Manager at Woolworths Centrepoint, for his donation of $100 worth of store products (3 hammers, knife, precision tool kit, nails, screws, nuts, bolts, masking tape, disposable gloves and matches).

These donations have been made possible through both Bunnings’ and Woolworths’ community involvement support programs, which aim to assist local community organisations and initiatives.

The P&F has kindly matched the Woolworths donation and provided a further $100 which has been used for donation for hinges for “woodwork jewellery”: jewellery boxes, earrings, key rings and necklaces.

• Weekly Craft Group - Mondays, 9.00am - 11.30am - Bolt Cafe.
• Anthroposophical Study Group - Tuesdays, 7.00pm - 13 Stirling Crescent, Hazelmere.

Edstart is an organisation which provides families with flexible payment plans to help them manage their education costs. They have payment plans designed to fit around family budgets.

The Edstart brochure and payments plans can be found on our website.