Hello everyone,

The weeks are now flying by, only a couple more until we reach the end of the school year! There continues to be a lot happening in preschool including new families visiting most mornings for pre-enrolment interviews. It’s heart-warming to see everyone welcome new children and their families into the Currambena community.

Hopefully by now you’ve received your invitation to the Preschool Thank You Afternoon Tea that will be held on Thursday 12th December from 2 to 3 pm. Apologies if you haven’t as it may have been misplaced between preschool and home. We’re asking all families to RSVP by Friday 6th December for catering purposes.

In preparation for the afternoon tea, we’ve been focusing on greeting and serving each other pretend afternoon tea. The children have been relishing in taking on the role of server (child) as well as pretending to be a parent being served. We’ve had lots of discussions around the menu. We hope to start cooking for the event later in the week after we clear out the school freezers to ensure we have ample room to store them until the big day.

Earlier last week I emailed all families in preschool to let them know that due to a restructure in the preschool Anna Swan won’t be continuing with us. Her last day will be Friday 6th December. We wish Anna well for the future and would like to thank her for all her efforts and work in preschool over the last couple of terms.

Thank you to Maya, Isabelle’s mum who joined us for our visit to Lane Cove Library on Wednesday. It was a scorcher of a day, thankfully we enjoyed the air-conditioned library once we got there and then the air-conditioned preschool when we returned to school.

We’re gearing up for another big week!

Love,

Katrina, Lisa, Abi and Anna

 

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Hi all,

Our time is flying by! We are really enjoying our last few weeks together.

We spent our time this week with lots of water play, turning on the sprinklers and splashing in containers of water and sand. We used the school’s collection of capacity resources to mix and experiment with water. We took some of these to the pool on Tuesday and did some more activities on Thursday looking at full, half full and empty containers.

The children were excited to keep adding to our crystal growing experiment, we added more crystals on Monday, drew some scientific diagrams and cut open our Geode on Friday to check our hypothesis.

This coming Monday we will walk up to the library and Tuesday morning to the pool again.

I have got one parent confirmed for our aquarium excursion. I have booked a bus with limited space – so email me if you can come help and want to ride on the bus or if you can meet us there.

We will leave here before 9:30 arrive at the aquarium around 10 for 10:15 educator led tour. We will aim to get to the water park playground near Darling Square around 11:30 and play for an hour and a half. Departing around 12:30/1 back to the school.

All the best,

Vinnie

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Dear parents,

The weather has been challenging this week and the children have been a combination of both tired and excited. I’ve taken some time to remind the children of classroom agreements particularly in relation to the way we move, speak and behave in the classroom. We’ve also reviewed some breathing techniques that can be used to settle ourselves when we’re feeling excited. During our discussions, we discovered that our number one insight is to ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’.

We’ve almost finished learning about measuring mass by comparing the mass of various objects and finding objects that we could compare to 10g, 20g and 50g weights. We’ve been doing lots of spelling and writing with the children showing very pleasing growth when comparing their work to the beginning of the year.

Summerhill day was lovely, but it did have a slightly subdued vibe this term given the extreme heat. A morning walk to the park, pancake making and an afternoon ‘Knitting Nancy club’ were just the medicine.

Although the walk to swimming was hot on Tuesday, the plunge into the cool water was a welcome reprieve for most. Some children are visiting the 25m pool now to practice some deep water skills.

We’ve also begun reviewing some child protection concepts so you may hear language around body clues (early warning signs), private parts and safe adults in the upcoming few weeks

Happy weekend
Jess

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Hi everyone,

It has been a big week with the group, especially after I was sick for a few days last week. The children are obviously all very tired, with lots of emotions and excitement over the end of the year, beach day, and the Kris Kringle.

This week, we spoke about early warning signs and identified how our body tells us that a situation is unsafe or needs an adult’s support. The children reflected on how their body expresses feelings of worry, fear, or anger, such as sweating, fast-beating heart, tears, fast-breathing, butterflies in the tummy and more. When we feel these things, it’s’ important to STOP, GO and TELL.

To support this learning, we also discussed physical play during break times and Free Fridays. We spoke about how when we are tired or overwhelmed we can have less patience and feel less in control of our bodies. It is important to listen to how we feel, and take lots of breaks if we need to, communicate with our friends or safe adults, and engage in lots of calming quiet activities. The children spent a lot of their Free Friday doing watercolour painting, mindful colouring in, and playing monopoly together.

We had a beautiful Summerhill Day with a range of activities including castanets with Carolina, chess games, pickleball, pancake making, and water and sponge play for the hot weather. The children were very busy all day with their chosen activities, and did well staying inside and staying cool with the heatwave.

Amelia x

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Hi everyone,

Apologies for the lack of entry last week but I am sure that (by now) you’ve had a good run down and recount on all the shenanigans which happened while we were away at CAMP. I was so impressed with how well all the children managed themselves but especially with a few stand out individuals, who crossed milestones and personal 1st time challenges to make it through to the end with a smiling face!! It is really sad that Mowbray Park Farm will no longer be available to Currambena children but I feel so lucky to have been able to take so many children to this magical place (over the years) and observe them learn so much about themselves and their peers. School camps are an amazing opportunity for our little humans to learn about their limits, ability for resilience and patience, and to gain greater understanding of empathy and appreciation for all that they have.

Coming down from the last 6 weeks, focusing on concert and camp preparation and then the events themselves, we fell a little flat this week. Everyone is super tired. So, we took it slowly and muddled through various activities and a Summerhill Day! We’ve started a new unit on Fractions and are learning about comparing and ordering them, and recognising that the larger the denominator the smaller part it is, of a whole.

Personal projects are due next week, followed by their presentations in week 9. They will most likely take place in the afternoons from 1:30 pm but I will confirm this with the children and write the days and times they will present on the classroom whiteboard. It will be up to the children to invite you and inform you of when they will present. I am handing this responsibility over to them to manage. I appreciate your understanding with this.

And that’s another rap for us!

Love, Sarah

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Many thanks to Meg for taking the group on Thursday and Friday while I spent some time helping my daughter and baby Arty (now five weeks old) manage some medical appointments. And thanks to Sarah D for helping the Year 6 kids with their leavers project.

In the past week, we completed some work on protective behaviours, mass in maths and continued individual reading and sharing Hunger Games.

Summerhill Day, even though the weather was so very hot, was a lovely day as you will see from the photos, I am sure. My algebra group tackled some year 7 work and did stunningly well. Everyone looked after themselves, staying in the shade when possible and drinking plenty of water.

On Summerhill Day, we had a visit from Cecelia, an ex-Currambena teacher, her sister and two young teachers from Taiwan who were involved in running the first APDEC in Taiwan in 2016. They spent an hour or so with us and loved seeing Summerhill Day in operation. See elsewhere in this Newsletter for information on 2025 conferences.

Camp is high on everyone’s agenda now. We have started discussions about tents and I’ve asked everyone who is bringing a tent to share to have a practice at setting it up with the people sharing the tent. Please make sure the children start gathering all the personal items needed, make sure those raincoats are waterproof and name everything! Please also make sure that the permission note is returned and the camp money paid into the school account. Thanks!

Next week, Year 6 are off to print T shirts on Monday (permission slip and money must be brought to school on or before the day), then most of them are off to high school orientation days on Tuesday so on Wednesday we will decide on our camp menu and bring all the camping gear out from under the building. Please let me know if you can help by doing any of the jobs I listed in the note I sent home by email this week. As always, many thanks to the parents who are coming with us or helping to drive us there or back. We couldn’t have a camp without you!

Have a great week!

Love,
Wendy

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The next ADEC conference (Australasian Democratic Education Community) is currently being planned by two schools, Gold Coast Village School and The Small School in Murwillumbah from 29th September to 3rd October, 2025. More information will be available early next year. It would be great to have a strong Currambena presence there so please save the dates if you are interested!

2025 IDEC (International Democratic Education Conference) – Brussels 1 to 7th August. This IDEC will include the Europe group, EUDEC

2025 APDEC (Asia Pacific Democratic Education Conference) will be held in Indonesia 18 to 24 July on a farm outside Djakarta. The organisers are keen to involve as many children as possible so are planning a range of child friendly activities at the site along with sessions about learning and education. They are also keen to create a pre-conference connection for kids (eg an art project) for display at conference. Check it out if you are interested!

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Hello everyone,

Now that the concert is over, we’ve spent some time reflecting on it. Our actual performance didn’t go to plan which happens sometimes. The concert is live and there are no second chances if things go awry, which unfortunately they did though, as the adage states, “The show must go on.” We had told the children no matter what we needed to keep going and we did. We were all a little shocked and very discombobulated when a few rouge performers got overexcited, though we managed to keep going and by the third and fourth performance pieces we were back into the swing of things. I know we have some upset families, and for that I am truly sorry. By most accounts the children and their families enjoyed the night. The experience in its entirety had some great opportunities for learning. A massive and heartfelt thanks to Jess, Zahli’s mum, for all the work and time she did in assisting us all with the performances. We truly appreciate all her efforts.

A huge thank you to Abi for her amazing work with the children in creating the video and very capably doing the instrumentals for the Rattlin Bog piece. Everyone involved has a copy of the video posted on their Storyparks to be able to reminiscence. Thank you to Nate, Dash’s dad, for splicing the songs the children had chosen to perform to numerous times, as we worked out how the dance would come together.

Now we are back into the grove of our preschool day. We have begun planning for the afternoon tea which will be on Thursday 12th December. Keep a look out for the invitation which your child will be bringing home shortly.

Lastly, thank you to Judy and Lilith (in Wendy’s class) for the large donation of toy dolls that the preschool children have been relishing in using!

Have a great week everyone.

Love

Katrina, Lisa, Abi and Anna

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Hi all,

We have had a nice chill week unwinding after the all our concert preparation.

The pool has been lots of fun, we have been finishing off some swimming assessments as well as having lots of fun playing.

For Maths this week we have been:

  • ordering numbers from largest to smallest
  • sorting collections into halves or two different groups
  • learning about position by drawing shapes and mapping the school’s buildings.

We have continued with our persuasive writing about Gems and Crystals. We were lucky that Charlotte brought in an extensive gem collection with some fun science experiments that we have started too.

I’ve managed to book the Aquarium visit for Tuesday the 10th of December. Please email me if you are interested in joining us. You will need a current working with children check.

I hope you have all had a wonderful weekend.

Vinnie

 

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