Head of Preparatory School

Head of Preparatory School

Wellbeing Wednesday

A big thank you to Mrs Clinton, Miss McKenzie, the Music Department, the PE Department, Mr Squires and Madam Merlot for making Prep Wellbeing Wednesday a huge success this week. The idea was to provide our students with some well-deserved self-care and fun activities.

The Redlands Zoom Airwaves were alight as Wellness Wednesday got off to a flying start with our school captains, Alex Heller and Caroline Brown, leading the Prep students on a Scavenger Hunt. This fun and engaging activity had students scrambling on and off screen to find “anything with wheels”, “what makes you happy” and “show us your furry friend, real or not!”  Keeping with the theme of building connections across the school community, three of the Year 6 Technology leaders, Chloe Howard, Jessica Jackson and Eva Simpson, ably coordinated and led a design your own magnet session. Yr 2 students worked in chat and create breakout sessions with one of the Technology Leaders to create and share their designs. Our specialists ran a variety of workshops with our specialist teachers from baking cupcakes, to juggling, practicing yoga, taking the survivor challenge, exploring music and movement, finding their inner superhero and creating French impressionist inspired artworks.  

Thank you to Mrs Clinton who coordinated the planning and running of the day, our specialist teachers, the Yr 6 student leaders and our wonderful parent community for supporting your children to enjoy this day of celebrating community and learning.

Come Zoom Dine with Us

Monday 6 September, 6pm. Register here.

Redlands Head of Catering and Chef Joel Squire will demonstrate and guide us through a delicious and easy family friendly recipe of Baked White Chicken Enchiladas. Cook along with your family, and have fun plating up this meal while sharing your experience with other Redlands families, all under the watchful eye of Chef Joel. Recipe, ingredients and Zoom details will be emailed to registered families in advance of this highly anticipated enchilada masterclass. his will be a dining experience not to miss! 

Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to all our Redlands dads and male carers. We appreciate and value all that you do, especially in these challenging times. The Prep students have been working away this week at different little projects to help celebrate a day just for you. I hope you all are spoilt on Sunday and enjoy a well-deserved sleep in.

Week 9 Request for On-Campus Learning for Children of Essential Workers

Parents who are essential workers can lodge a request for on campus learning support for the week of 6 September–10 September. Booking requests close again at 8pm on Friday 3 September at 8pm to allow sufficient time for staffing to be organised based on the numbers.

https://forms.gle/DD5vXjr3RTxeyNhY8

Cultivating character strengths – Finding our Inner Superhero

 A message from our Counsellor, Mr Alessandro Digiacomo

I hosted a workshop yesterday during Prep Wellbeing Wednesday which focused on helping students to find their character strengths (aka inner superpowers!). By character strengths, we mean the inner strengths that hold moral value, such as courage, kindness, bravery, fairness, curiosity, honesty, etc. It was lovely to see so many of the students engaging in conversation and I especially enjoyed seeing the superhero outfits!

As a follow up to the session, I have posted a task on Seesaw that includes a sheet with all 24 character strengths for you to have a look to help you familiarise yourself with the language that we used. As a parent, focusing on your child’s character strengths can help them to see their positive qualities and future potential, which can lead to greater wellbeing. How can we do this? Here are some tips! 

  1. Spot the strengths of your own child. What activities do they do just because they love doing them? It’s more than likely they are using a character strength such as creativity. 
  2. Get your child to think about the character strengths of characters in books and films, for example, if they like Bluey, you could watch an episode and ask, “Was Bluey brave?”; “How did Bluey show love and kindness?”.
  3. You can use their superheroes too, for example, “How did you show bravery like your superhero?”; “How will you show kindness like your superhero does?”.
  4. Learn about your own character strengths. There’s a survey through the VIA Institute you can complete as an adult on this link here: https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register

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