Term 3 Week 3

E x c e l l e n c e I n E d u c a ti o n

Principal: Peter Halloran l 59 Burringbar Road Burringbar NSW 2483

09 August 2019

B u r r i n g b a r P u b l i c S c h o o l

Book Fair and Book Parade 2019 Books are great and we want them to be a huge part of our students’ lives.

We want them to have a love of reading and enjoy getting into books.

This is why we have the Book Fair and

Book Parade.

This week we had our Book Fair and our

Book Parade. The Book Fair raised over

$1000. A huge effort for such a small

school. Thank you so much for your efforts

everyone. I would like to especially thank

Mrs Levings and Miss Sophy for helping to

coordinate this event.

Dressing up in costumes is always lots of fun. Some students like it more than

others but it was great to see most students participating. Thanks so much to

our parents for helping students to get dressed for this event.

125 Year Celebration As we all know the 125 Year Celebration is on October 26th which is the second

Saturday back in Term 4. I have been asking around for volunteers to help out on

the day with special things and it has been wonderful to see people willing to help

out. In the upcoming weeks there will be opportunities to nominate something you

might like to volunteer for. Thank you in advance for your support.

Last week, we had our P&C meeting where we discussed the 125 celebration. Thanks

to everyone who could attend this event. We had 10-15 people in attendance. Things are rolling along.

It should be a fantastic day.

The most important thing about the day is to celebrate our little school and it’s history over the last 125 years.

Our History Committee is working hard to ensure we remember the past and much work is being done in this

space. Gates will open at 10am and we will have a formal component at 11am. We will have a few speeches

and take time to dig up the time capsule which was put down 25 years ago.

On the day we will also have opportunities for kids to have fun. For the older kids we are looking to have

some exciting rides including a huge 24 metre Ninja Warrior style blow up ride, a bucking bull and a blow up

duelling ride. Students will be able to buy individual tickets on the day or get a wrist band giving them

unlimited rides. There will also be a jumping castle, a dinosaur dig and much, much more. To remember the

day we will set up a photo booth and we will have free musical entertainment. There will also be local

community markets and lots of great food to eat. So come along for the day. It will be a day to remember.

District Athletics

We had some great performances at the Small School’s Athletic Carnival. We have 14 students going on to the

Murwillumbah-Tweed District Carnival and we wish them all luck this Friday 9 August. It was apparent at the

Small Schools Carnival that we as a school are definitely gifted in the area of running especially the 100m where

we won two out of the four relays.

A special congratulations to Jaxon Jones who on the day ran the 100m in 13.88 seconds. I have my scouts out and

apparently I think no one at the District is yet to go under 14 seconds. A huge thanks to John Lingwood who has

spent a lot of time preparing our students for the Athletics Carnival. John has helped our students greatly and

offered another opportunity for all our students. The following students who will be attending include Hunter,

Lonnie, Abigail, Holly, Donita, Olivia, Olive, Jaxon, Tex, Radha, Kapalu and Harper. Good

luck kids.

4/5/6 Camp to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast

Camp will be occurring this term for students in Year 4/5/6 in Week 9 from Monday to

Wednesday. The students will be travelling to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. They will

have the opportunity to have a variety of experiences. The trip will begin by visiting the

Botanical Gardens/Mt Cootha, the GOMA Art Gallery and we will stay in Mapleton where

students will have an Aboriginal Tribal link activity. The following day we will visit Australia Zoo and stay overnight

at Underwater World. This will be an exciting evening where the students will sleep under a tunnel with live

animals like sharks, fish and manta rays swimming above them. On our final day we will visit the Planetarium and

the Science Centre. It should be a fantastic experience for the students.

Camp permission slips and payments are now due with final payment appreciated by Friday 6 September. We do

need to arrange payments to our service providers as soon as possible. Please let us know also if your child is not

participating. Finally, please do not hesitate to contact me if you need to discuss payment arrangements.

If you have any questions please contact the school through the front office.

Community Project Update The last two weeks have been amazing. We have met 15 very interesting people from our community,

interviewed them and started to get ideas on what stories lie in what they shared with us. The project

began at the start of the term, when we met Donna Harper from the ABC who shared with us what we

need to remember when interviewing people. Last Thursday three groups met up with people from

Greenhills Aged Care and this week we have had opportunities to work with the other people from our

community.

It will be so exciting to see what the students learnt about these community members from their

interviews. They will share moments from their lives but also things they have learnt in their life. I think

the learning will be extremely enriching. Students will complete some high quality writing but also learn

much more than that about their world through the people they have met. We look forward to seeing

this wonderful project evolve.

Saint Renee Hat Festival

The Saint Renee Hat Festival was a sacred tradition. Every year, the residents of Saint Renee

collected their hats - the streets were filled with children playing, the smell of food and so many

people you could hardly move. People from all around came to see the wonder from as far away as

Norway. For one week, the island would be popular, and then everyone would forget about it. A few

days before, everyone would suddenly get really serious about preparing. Grown women would be

seen rushing into shops, with as much money as they could carry and exit with bags of decorations,

hats and as much stuff as they could carry.

A few years ago, two girls were standing at a popular corner that was usually very crowded at this

time of the year. They were debating about why no one was around. One of the girls, Melanie was

arguing that they had been kidnapped and replaced with cardboard cutouts.

“But how would they move?” The other girl, Florence asked. “They’re connected to robots that

move around.” Melanie replied. “But it’s been raining for several days now” said Florence. “Okay,

maybe they were kidnapped by pirates demanding a ransom of diamonds!” Melanie said.

For the next few days, Melanie was investigating the townsfolk. She had discovered that they

definitely weren’t robots, and they hadn’t been kidnapped by pirates. Florence, meanwhile,

pronounced the whole thing ridiculous and had returned to her normal life. Three days after they

were arguing, Florence was walking home from school down an alleyway, when she passed a

slightly open garage door. Curiosity getting the better of her, she opened the door.

Meanwhile, Melanie was walking home and investigating the townspeople. She had just established

that they weren’t acting odd, when she noticed that everyone seemed to go into this one creepy

alley. She followed them. Then they arrived, and ducked under a gap into a room. Melanie looked

around and ducked in after them. She gasped. In front of her was a man she had never seen

before. He had a heavily scarred face, and his mouth was twisted into what she could only guess

was meant to be a smile. “Hello Melanie.” He said.

“What are you doing?” Melanie asked. “Well you see, three months ago I was thinking of destroying

the world, and then it hit me. Start with small islands, and move on to bigger things. So I killed

everyone (except you and Florence) and replaced them with super high tech holograms. Now I’m

one person away from destroying my 24th island.” He laughed. “You are powerless against me.”

“But... you can’t do this to my home!” Melanie said. “Watch me!”

Now Saint Renee is a deserted island, and no one has been there for years. There is no hat festival

and no community. No one knows what happened to Melanie but there are rumours that she went

insane and fled to Sweden.

- Lila Cousins

Growing Strong Minds At Burringbar Public School we are keen to work on students strengths and

discuss what is great about them. This is what the Growing Strong Minds

helps us to achieve. As you know there are 24 strengths that are involved in

the program. Every week we have a focus of strength. We discuss them

with students.

We have great students at Burringbar Public School. We know that from time

to time students may have things that occur within their friendships that are

upsetting for students. We encourage all our students to talk about things

that are troubling them. Our students meet as a class regularly to discuss

things that they are happy about and things that maybe

troubling them. We encourage all students to share their thoughts and

feelings. If you have any concerns about your child please talk to your class

teacher.

Our focus next week for Growing Strong Minds is self-regulation.

Self-regulation is the ability to calm ourselves in times of stress. Here is an

extract from the program that may be useful to help your family discuss

self-regulation at home.

Fun fact: Self-control increases confidence, caring behaviour and

decreases depression and risky behaviour (Waters, 2017).

Conversation Ideas: I was op shopping with my son looking for some

glasses for his book week parade outfit. As we walked to the last one we

talked about how he could make some glasses if this shop didn’t have any as it

was the last one we would visit! He started to get upset and I reminded him to

think about using his self-regulation - take some deep breaths and remember

that this is not a 10/10 catastrophe. I also told him he could think about using

his gratitude strength and appreciate me taking him to several shops.

Tips to improve self-regulation:

1. Practice and model slow breathing with your child. Just 2 minutes of deep

breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system which lowers heart

rate and blood pressure.

2. Next time you are upset, pause, take 2 deep breaths in and out and ask

yourself “Are my thoughts helpful? Are they helping me to feel good and act

as I would like? If not, what is a more helpful thought?”

3. Research has found that spending 2 weeks changing a habit increases

self-control. Maybe you and your child could do a challenge where by you

both use your non-dominant hand to do chores for 2 weeks!

Music with Chris—

Fees due

Music fees are due in

Week 5 of Term 3.

If you can please pay

on time this would be

appreciated.

Reading For Life One thing at Burringbar Public School that we want to encourage is reading. We do

this because we know that being an active reader helps our well-being and gives us

enjoyment in our lives. We also know that students who read regularly generally

are confident students and achieve well at school. Once again we encourage all our

students to read at home each night. This term we have set the goal of reading 50

nights over a semester (Terms 3 and 4). We know life is busy but as you would

agree reading is so important.

Do you know anyone with pre-school age children looking to enrol in 2020? Taking enrolments now.

This year we are offering a unique opportunity for students in Year 4/5/6.

Students in these classes will be able to access University NSW tests in English,

Maths or Science. This test is a good opportunity for students who would like to

challenge themselves in their favourite subject area. The cost of

completing each test is $15.95 and will be completed online at school.

The test dates are as follows: Science – 4-6th September

English – 16-18th September (this will need to be rescheduled as we will be on

camp) Mathematics – 18-20th September

To sign up to this opportunity please enter

the following url into your internet brows-

er :unsw.global/parentpay.

Then enter our school code – 3830235b98.

From here follow the prompts to pay.