Head of Preparatory School

Head of Preparatory School

Welcome to Term 4

I trust all our Redlands community enjoyed a rest and change to routine and are ready for a term that will fly by incredibly fast but not without our learners having many opportunities to be creative, challenged and have fun learning. We welcome the Joyce and Healy-Smith families to Redlands along with Mrs Clinton (Dean of Students) and Mrs Richardson (Acting Head of Junior Campus Music).

Mr Webber’s community letter that was sent out in the holidays outlined updated COVID-19 guidelines that Redlands will be following and my term letter to the Preparatory School outlined the changes and procedures that will be remaining in place throughout Term 4. Please ask me if you have any further queries surrounding COVID guidelines.

Book Week

Curious Creatures and Wild Minds is the theme for Book Week next week. Mrs Roberts and the Lucy Hill Library staff have organised a variety of fun and engaging activities for our learners. We have many visitors including authors Kate and Jol Temple, a husband and wife team, and Mr Webber, Ms McGarry, myself and other staff members will be reading stories to students in Library lessons. The students will be engaged in reading literature associated with the theme. We will also have a Zoom session later in the week with David Campbell who will be sharing how to write a book!

There is also much excitement around the P-2 Book Parade on Thursday morning. I am enjoying hearing the conversations around the characters that will show up on Thursday! The message to our learners is that is really important to know that while dressing up as a book character is fun, it doesn’t have to be perfect and it isn’t a competition.

It is okay if your child needs to change into sport clothes or change back to their uniform for a reason.

Seven Steps to Writing Update

Sizzling Starts have dominated the writing process this week in Prep. The engagement and enthusiasm for writing this week has been so pleasing and our students have loved the new way of approaching a writing task. Please have a look at the photos to see some of the examples from this week. Gone are the boring ‘on the weekend’ introductions, we welcome action words that engage our readers immediately. I can’t wait to share more of these examples as we progress.

Wednesday Storms

Wednesday Storms is a group of brainstormers who come together on a Wednesday lunch time to brainstorm ideas. What do you think we are brainstorming about? Well, anything goes in Wednesday Storms. It could be thinking about our school charity or how we can help our community. It might be thinking of ways to preserve our environment or making the world a better place. We also encourage our classmates to give us ideas to help our school. Some people have already had some fabulous ideas like getting more spades for the sandpit or more recycling bins for the playground. (Our favourite suggestion is a free canteen food day for everyone – but we don’t think we’ll pull that one off.) Every class has a special book to record these ideas and bring to each Wednesday Storm’s sessions. There are no limits in our thinking or what we can do. We are an action group through and through.

Watch this space. We’ll keep you updated as we go. 
From Pax and Sophia from Two Yellow

Vacation Care

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank our Vacation Care leaders, Trishna and Trinetta and their hard working team for the activities and care that they provided our students with over the two week holiday period. They climbed, painted, played, created and enjoyed friendships together. Our Christmas holiday Vacation Care program will come out shortly so I encourage you to see if your child would like to attend some of the fun activities.

Redlands Spirit of Christmas Card

This year Redlands will be celebrate the Christmas spirit by showcasing the students’ creativity in a range of Christmas Cards featuring art from our talented Junior and Prep School students and sharing the joy with those in need. Submissions of artworks, which can be drawing, painting, mixed media and digital art together with a short description of the image, will now close next Wednesday 21 October (Week 2, Term 4). Students can hand them to Class teachers or at the Prep School Office.

Artworks are to showcase what Christmas means to our students selecting from the following themes:

  1. An Australian Christmas – bush, beach, BBQ, summer holidays
  2. Christian images – The nativity, baby Jesus, three wise men 
  3. My family Christmas– students depicting what Christmas looks like at their house/in their family/in their culture
  4. Favourite Christmas meal/food/snack 

Ten artworks (either individual or group submissions) will be selected and featured in this year’s Redlands Spirit of Christmas card set which will be available to purchase in Term 4. Please join us to create wonderful Christmas spirit for our broader community!

Mrs Ainslie Breckenridge
Head of Preparatory School
abreckenridge@redlands.nsw.edu.au
9968 9848