ISSUE 15
Things to Know
Important Dates
- 25 September Year 6 excursion to The National Museum of Australia
- 26 September Kindergarten excursion to the National Zoo and Aquarium
- 27 September Awards Assembly
- 27 September Last day of Term 3
- 14 October First day of Term 4
Chris Shaddock
Principal
Principal's Address
Dear Kaleen Community,
I can’t believe we have nearly arrived at the end of term. Time flies when you’re having fun! Hopefully you are able to spend some time during these school holidays connecting with your families while enjoying the warmer Spring weather. Good luck avoiding swooping Magpies when you’re out and about! Please read on to hear about some initiatives happening in and around the school.
Learning Expo and Grandfriends’ Day
Thank you to all members of the school community who came to our Learning Expo and Grandfriends’ Day celebrations. It was great to have the support of so many of our parents and grandparents and a wonderful opportunity for our students to showcase their learning. This initiative reflects our commitment to work with families as partners in learning. We appreciate the support of all who were able to attend. A special thanks to all our fabulous staff and students who shared their teaching and learning. We have already had loads of positive feedback from the community about the concert and classroom activities. Well done!
PBL News
Congratulations to our magnificent students for achieving their PBL target of 8000 W@K tokens! The PBL Student Leadership Team have decided that we’ll be having a “Uniform Free - Fun Friday” on the first Friday of Term 4. On top of not having to wear uniforms, students will negotiate with their teachers to receive an additional 30 minutes of fun at some point throughout the day. A fantastic team effort from all our Safe, Respectful, Responsible Learners!
Worm Tea
This week we launched our very own Worm Tea, produced from castings sourced from our very own worm farm. The Green Team worked with Cid from Global Worming over several lunchtimes to harvest castings and brew the tea. As a part of our PE@K program, a group of students formed a team to create an advertising campaign to ensure our Worm Tea successfully reaches our community. This team is responsible for the Worm Tea label and information brochure given to each customer at the time of sale. We look forward to the launch of the team's Worm Tea web page, early next term.
Our Worm Tea was on sale during our Learning Expo and Grandfriends’ Day and it sold out! We will have more Worm Tea for sale at the whole school assembly on Friday, September 20 and we encourage all keen gardeners to purchase a bottle to use over the holiday period. Congratulations to the sustainability team on this achievement and thank you to our community for supporting this initiative. All monies raised will go back into our sustainability program to make it more sustainable.
I hope you have a wonderful break!
Bye for now,
Chris Shaddock
Principal
Family Reading Before School
Our library is opened each morning from 8:30am - 9:00am for ‘Family Reading’ time. This is a valuable time to read with your child before school and to keep out of the cool spring mornings while you wait for the school day to start. All children in the library must be accompanied and supervised by their parent/carer.
P&C News
Kaleen Primary School
Mini Market Day Fundraiser
Come out and help us raise money for the school as we host our first Mini Market Day fundraiser on Sunday, 27 October.
Want to hire a stall space and sell your new or used items?
Contact Krissy on christina.mccombe@ed.act.edu.au to express your interest and for more information.
Want to volunteer to help on the day?
Contact Ben Peters Jones on kaleenpandc@gmail.com or 0466 386 377
We look forward to hosting this event and hope you can make it out to support the school, local vendors and enjoy being part of our wonderful community.
Kaleen Parent Information Evenings
The P&C are considering hosting a series of parent information evenings. To ensure that the evenings are focused on topics that our school community is interested in, we would like your feedback and ideas. Your responses and suggestions will help us understand levels of interest and plan the evenings.
Thank you to everyone who have already completed our short survey about Parent Information evenings. We would like to invite more parents and carers to give us feedback about whether Parent Information evenings would be a useful addition to the P&C calendar. This 'survey' will only take 2 minutes to fill out and will help us decide what topics you are interested in learning about and how often you would be interested in attending. We can't offer a prize like 'Wheels Day' for receiving lots of responses but we would love to have feedback from as many families as possible.
New P&C Emblem and Facebook Competition
We’ve designed a new P&C emblem and it includes some Latin. We’re running a competition on the Kaleen P&C facebook page to find the ‘best’ translation.
If yours is the best/funniest/most popular answer you’ll win either a yakitori, sausage sandwich or coffee at the Mini Market Day on Sunday 27 October.
While you’re there, you can like the Facebook page and stay in the loop with all things P&C.
Bottle Recycling
The P&C has set up a bottle recycling account so that any family wishing to donate their 10c per bottle to the school can do so. The account is linked to the P&C bank account and email address but to my personal mobile number. Sometimes the account number is best and sometimes you just need a mobile number. So far we’ve raise $23!
Account number: E010182 (zeros not Os)
Mobile number: 0466 386 377
Sustainability
Nude Food Day
The Sustainability Teaching team, Green Team and PE@k Sustainability groups are looking forward to hosting ‘Nude Food Day’ on Friday 25 October.
Nude Food Day is a nationwide initiative held during the month of October to encourage kids to eat and live well and eliminate all unnecessary packaging and wrapping that goes into schools.
During Week 2, Term 4, commencing Monday 21 October and finishing on Friday 25 October, we are challenging students and their families to pack ‘Nude Food’ morning teas and lunches.
Nude Food is simply food that is not wrapped in foil, plastic or commercial packaging. It can be a range of foods including yoghurt, crackers and sandwiches that are housed in reusable containers. Fruit such as mandarins, bananas and oranges are also great examples of Nude Food as they come ‘packaged’ in their own skin. While ‘Nude Food’ is terrific for the environment it also has the added benefit of providing our students with often healthy, fresh foods.
Students who are successful in bringing in waste free morning teas and lunches for the whole of this week can have their efforts recorded on a ‘Nude Food’ raffle ticket. These raffle tickets will later be drawn at both a Junior and Senior school level resulting in two prizes being awarded.
With our Resource Management system now well established and being processed by both our Junior and Senior students each week, we are actively seeking to reduce the amount of soft plastic we accumulate.
We hope that many Kaleen students will take on the Nude Food challenge this year and in doing so, provide themselves with healthy fresh food and a better outcome for our environment.
Here are two recipes that are Nude Foods and healthy foods which can be brought to school in reusable containers. We hope you will enjoy trialling them!
The Sustainability Team
Veggie Muffins
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
3 slices bacon, finely chopped
1 large carrot, grated
1 large zucchini, grated
3 eggs
1/4 cup light thickened cream
1 cup (125g) grated parmesan cheese
1 pinch salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup (60g) self-raising flour
Preheat an oven to 180°C. Grease a 12-cup mini muffin pan.
Heat the oil in a large frypan over medium heat. Stir in the onion and bacon. Cook until onion is translucent, and bacon is browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in the carrot and zucchini; cook until they begin to soften, about 2 minutes. Transfer mixture to a bowl to cool.
Beat the eggs, cream and Parmesan cheese together in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper.
Stir egg mixture into cooled zucchini mixture; stir in flour. Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared muffin cups.
Bake in preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean, 15 to 20 minutes.
Moist Banana Bread
3 ripe bananas mashed
2 eggs
1 ¾ cup self-raising flour
¾ cup of sugar
½ cup of vegetable oil
¼ cup of milk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine the oil, eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla and mashed bananas.
Add the baking soda and self-raising flour.
Combine well for 2-3 minutes.
Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake in a preheated 200-degree fan forced oven for 25 minutes or until sufficiently cooked.
Science Corner
Kaleen Primary School Science Fair 2019
This year we hosted our first ever Kaleen Science Fair. We had a high standard of entries from Years 1-6. Congratulations to all students for tackling this wonderful task.
Senior Entries
Junior Entries
Robocup
On Friday 6 and Saturday 7 September, 37 students, 8 teams it total, from Years 3-6, participated in a Canberra wide robotics competition. The teams worked tirelessly over the past 15 weeks to construct and program a robot to complete various challenges. All teams displayed resilience and persistence within all five coding challenges. There were 51 teams competing and through a lot of hard work and determination one of our teams, CJAMP placed third. Through the STEM in school’s partnership program, students were able to work alongside Carsten from the CSIRO to support and enhance their coding skills. A fantastic achievement by all students involved. Well done!
STEM Teachers
Caren Lowther and Bec Hadfield.
Japanese News
singfest.MOVThe Japanese Choir has been busy travelling around and performing at various events around Canberra.
On 9 September the Japanese Choir participated in Singfest which was held at School of Music, ANU. They sung four songs, Ode to Joy, Sakura Sakura (Cherry Blossoms, Cherry Blossoms), Edelweiss, and Do-re-mi and wowed the audience (again!) The Choir enjoyed listening to other primary school choirs sing and being coached by Stephen Leek, a renowned composer of choral music.
The Japanese Choir performed on Stage 88 on 16 September. It was a beautiful day and flowers looked magnificent. The Choir sung seven songs including "Alps Ichiman-jaku", "Zui Zui Zukkorobashi (Japanese Eenie Meenie Miney Mo)", and "Kabome Kabome". After the performance a Japanese tourist approached me to say how surprised she was to see Australian children singing Japanese songs so beautifully. Our assistant, Sairi, also gave a recital with a flutist Nodoka Fujimoto. Nodoka is the Japanese assistant at Arawang Primary. They played theme songs of a variety of animation films such as "Totoro", "Ponyo" and "Spirited Away" wonderfully.
Sports Section
On Tuesday 10th September KPS were proud to have Piper, Shanna, Ben B, Joaz, Amelia and Kika represent the Belconnen Region at the ACT Track and Field Championship. They all had top 13 results in their events on the day. Congratulations to you all.
A special mention goes to Shanna and Piper. Shanna won the girls 11yr Shot Put and broke the previous record she set two weeks ago. Piper came 2nd in the girls 12yrs Discus. Congratulations on your achievements!
Heroes' Corner
Skyla, from 3IS, cut off more than 35cm of her hair this weekend to donate it to Variety - the children’s charity. Her hair will be used to make a wig for a child who has lost their hair due to a long-term medical condition
If you would like to have your child’s achievements acknowledged here, please email a short blurb to KaleenPSAdmin@ed.act.edu.au.
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Community
Child360 App for Parents
The development of the Child360 app was a collaborative process across the National Workforce Centre, our child and family partners and health practitioners. Emerging Minds Workforce Development Officer, Sophie Guy, facilitated this collaboration and took some time to chat to us about the app’s development, her favourite features and other ways in which parents can support their children’s social and emotional wellbeing.
Why was the app developed?
The Child360 app was created as a simple guide to help parents to support their child’s social and emotional wellbeing. There is so much information out there about raising children, which can be confusing.
Download it via the app store or Google Play store now!
