Head of Preparatory School
The Importance of Giving Back
Teaching children the value of ‘giving back’ fosters empathy, gratitude, and social responsibility. By engaging in acts of kindness and service, young learners develop a sense of purpose and fulfillment while recognizing their privilege. Ultimately, it nurtures compassionate and responsible people who understand the importance of helping others and building a better society. This is what our Redlands value of compassion is all about. Our daily conversations and acts of kindness towards others develop not only compassion but pure kindness in our students. Our Redlands community is always looking for ways our children can ‘give back’.
One way that you and your child can do this is to join the Redlands Prep community for a Kids Giving Back – cook4good session. Cook4Good is a 2-hour activity where children contribute by cooking nutritious meals for those facing homelessness and food scarcity.
Sessions are on Saturdays from 2-4pm at Kids Giving Back Paddington, with a limit of 25 kids per session. Register for one or both of our upcoming dates:
Parents Circles: Responsive Parenting and Raising Healthy Children
A message from Junior Campus Counsellor, Silvia Roberts
Thank you to the Prep parents who joined me for the first Parents Circle on Wednesday. Our next Parents Circle will be held on Wednesday 22nd May.
Being a responsive parent sounds simple enough, but living high-stress lives, often in isolation, lots of us know how nearly impossible it can be. Recognising that the essential condition for a healthy child’s development is the child’s relationship with nurturing adults, I invite you to join me for regular Parents Circles.
The Parents Circles will draw on specific topics and will be centred on providing a space for open discussions and questions. The sessions will also equip parents with a wide range of essential practical and emotional regulation skills, and guide parents through the art of fulfilling their children’s needs which are the essence of healthy positive parenting.
The Parents Circles will take place every three weeks (Week 4,7) in the Prep Library, after school drop off. We welcome our Prep and Junior School parents to attend this session. Please feel free to bring your own coffee or tea. As this is a parenting circle of support, numbers are limited to 20 to keep it small enough for interactive discussion so please book your space here:
The topic for our Week 4 session (Wednesday 22 May, 8.30 am-9.30 am in Lucy Hill Library) is:
Family Systems – Boundary Systems: Boundaries Must Be Taught
- Small children have no boundaries and develop whatever the boundary system parents have.
- What happens when parents either wall up or lack boundaries? Or what happens when each parent has a different boundary system?
- Exploring different possibilities of families’ boundary systems and family roles. Guiding parents to help children set up functional healthy boundaries, which in turn will help children to create healthy friendships.
In Week 7, we will be exploring the topic of Negative Core Beliefs in Children – Positive Parenting
- Negative core beliefs in children can lead to them developing depression, anxiety, co-dependency, relationship issues or addictions later in life.
- How can parents prevent the onset of negative core beliefs?
- Exploring five core natural attributes of children and guiding parents to attend to those in a functional and effective way.
- This will help their children develop each separate characteristic properly which will lead to functional teens and adults who feel good about themselves rather than develop dysfunctional survival traits.
Wayside Chapel Update (from our Junior School Captains)
Thank you everybody for your kind donations on Friday, for Wayside Chapel. As well as a hefty amount of money many toiletries were brought in to school on Friday for Wayside Chapel. We raised a total of $1938.85. We have the goal to raise the most money ever raised in a calendar year by a school for Wayside Chapel, so these donations have really helped.
Our goal is $4300, we have $2400 to go!
Thank you everybody for the support.
From Amelie and Pax
Wet Weather Fun!
One of my fondest memories as a child at school was getting out in the playground and jumping in puddles after it had rained! I would love our Redlands learners to also indulge in this fun activity this year without worrying about getting their shoes or socks wet. For this fun to occur, we need the children to have a pair of gumboots and a raincoat that they can access at school. This is not compulsory but if you would like to, please send a labelled pair of simple gumboots and a raincoat to school with your child that they can put on themselves. These will be sent home at the end of the term.
Mrs Ainslie Breckenridge
Head of Preparatory School
abreckenridge@redlands.nsw.edu.au
9968 9848