The Grapevine

The P&C Newsletter from Narrabeen North Public School

Week 2, Term 3 Thursday, 29 July 2010

From the P&C President… Three cheers for the kids of Narrabeen North Public School! Your efforts at this year’s walkathon raised a whopping $14,000, after expenses! You exceeded our goal of raising the average amount per child from $24 to $40. You achieved an average of $44. This means that the library and the new class room will both get new “Smart-boards.” K-2 class rooms have also been supplied with some new “Edumax boards”. Your gift vouchers will be presented in class next week, and for the kids who raised over $300, they will be presented with their awards at the next Banner Assembly, on Wednesday, 4 August at 2pm. An extra special thanks needs to go to Treasure Island Toys for offering their assistance with some wonderful prizes and to Yolanda who almost single-handedly organised the event. A pat-on-the-back also, to all the wonderful parents and friends who came along on the day. The kids loved it and assisted the teachers greatly. Thanks also to our guest speakers over the past two P&C meetings, Fin Mackenzie with her talk on Natural Therapies, Mr Barry Miller, Principal from Narrabeen Sports High and MJ Peel who gave an overview of the Peninsula Community Of Schools, all the discussions were informative and appreciated. A reminder to all families who are intending on coming along to the camping trip, please hurry with your bookings, time is running out and places are almost full. As you already know, next Wednesday, 4 August is a special Banner Assembly and picnic day to celebrate Education Week, we need a couple of volunteers to help from 1.30pm in the canteen to help serve tea and coffee. Please contact me if you are able to help. Please look out for an envelope being sent home next Thursday. It will include some important information concerning After School Care, The trades and services directory and other useful information. It will also contain an invitation to our Adults Only Halloween Party. So get ready to put on your dancing shoes and have some fun! Gay

After School Care Update A huge thank you to all the families that attended our ASC Disco on Sunday @ Pittwater RSL it was a wonderful turn out. The kids all had such a fabulous afternoon and many thanks to Jan Patterson, Annie, Emma and Jeanette. Congratulations to the winners of the colouring competition of the “Disco Ball” sponsored and judged by our good friends at Treasure Island. Treasure Island Vouchers - $ 50.00 per winner 1st Prize - Luka McRitchie 4- 6 years 1st Prize - Kirra Jackson 7-9 years 1st Prize - Catlin Cimarosti 10-12 years Runner up prizes: Lochie Sinden, Jamie Palangio, Sean Bosscheiter, Holly Gibson, Oliver Gordon, Chloe Arathoon Well done to all the entrants we have such amazing artists at our School and you all were truly outstanding. ASC House Keeping: Is your child booked in for ASC and absent on the day? It is important that our staff are advised of this absence. When children are missing our staff are chasing these missing children and it’s not fair to them. When the child cannot be located they also have to make calls to the parents to make sure the child is safe. So please be mindful. We are introducing a fee of $5.00 if you have not notified the office on the day before 1pm that your child is not attending on top of their normal day fee. Please just call and leave a message on 9913 2846 . Regards Megan Catterall- ASC Chairperson

Dates to Remember - Term 3 Fri 30 July

Fri 6 Aug

PSSA vs Elanora Hgts

PSSA vs Wet weather catch up day

Mon 2 Aug to Friday 13 Aug

Special Swim School at Narrabeen Sport and Rec.

Wed 4 Aug Banner Assembly from 1.30pm & Education Week classroom visits

Thurs 19 August Kindy 2011 2nd Play session 9.30—10.30am

Tues 24 August School Athletics Carnival at Narrabeen Sport & Rec

Tues 31 August Evening information session for Kindy 2011—6.30pm

NEW CANTEEN MENU COMING OUT TODAY

Will commence on monday

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BAND NEWS It was great to see so many students (and some teachers!) wearing their PJ's to school at the end of last term. It looked like a number of teddies got to spend a really fun day at school as well. Thank you all for bringing in a gold coin donation and another huge thank you to those who purchased tickets for the raffle at the ASC disco on Sunday. Over the two events we raised nearly $1000 which goes a long way to subsidising the music programme at our school to try and make it more affordable for those that wish to take part. The Senior Band has gained a few new members- Morgan Patterson on Saxophone, Ben Hepburn on Trumpet, Natasha Robertson Hanning and Kate Berry on Percussion. Well done to them for all their hard work and keep practising for the upcoming NSW State Band Championships on Sunday, 22 August. The Junior Band starts this week with 12 students, on a Wednesday lunchtime - so expect some great sounds to ring out from Mrs Hamilton's room. They will perform at an Assembly towards the end of term. There will be blow tests in term 4 for new students to start tutorials next year, but if anyone is interested in starting now - especially, clarinet, flute or trumpet then please contact Heidi Furber on 0412317179. From the Principal...... Principal Award Winners for Week 2 Congratulations to: Charlotte Matthews KS; Natalie Connors KS; Markus Gerrard KS; Coen Harding KS; Chelsea McCabe 1/2C; Lisa Boksjo 3W; Chris Hofstaetter 6W; Liam Moir 6W; Maggie Smythe 6W; Joshua Hughes 5/4M; Kiana Waldron 5/4M; Maeve Donohoe 5/4M; Kate McKay 5/4M; Griffin Hoegee 5G; Conor Hickey 5G; Jade Conaty 5G; Georgia Waldron 5G; Mitchell Donnelly 5G; Emily Berry 1/2C; Willow Boughton 1/2C and James Sinden 1/2C. Great work, everyone! Education Week at NNPS NSW celebrates Education Week 2010 in Week 3. At NNPS we are holding our Education Week Banner Assembly on Wednesday, 4 August from 2pm in the Jasmin Holliday Amphitheatre, weather permitting. Our plans for the day are: 1.30 – 2.00 Join your child for a picnic lunch in the playground 2.00 – 2.40 Education Week Banner Assembly in the JHA 2.40 – 3.00 Classrooms open for visits 3.00 End of school bell There will be a PCS display of student work at Warriewood Centro during the week so pop over to

Kids Club News. Thankyou to all our families and friends who joined us at the Kids Club Disco, it was lots of fun. The children bopped till they dropped! It was great to see everyone catching up with their friends relaxing and having a great time. A special thankyou to Megan, for organising and ensuring the afternoon ran smoothly. Thankyou to Pittwater RSL for the venue and Treasure Island Toy shop at Warriewood Centro for donating prizes for our Colouring Completion. This term at ASC the ‘Active Sports Program’ will be delivering Basketball on Tuesday afternoons and Roller Skating on Friday Afternoons . The After School Care team would like to say a special good bye to Zena. Zena has been with us for three fun years and helped towards our ASC becoming a “High Quality Accredited After School Centre”. She has been a highly valued staff member. Zena put in a lot of her own time to organise and develop an age appropriate Jewellery Making Class, within the ASC program. The children have been developing many skills with this activity, they’ve learnt task persistence and completion skills. They learnt to sequence and design their own pieces, which also engaged the children’s mathematics, fine motor skills and most importantly their self esteem which just beamed when they presented their beautiful piece of jewellery at the end of a very productive afternoon to mum or dad. We will sadly miss her friendship and her commitment. We wish her well in her new employment. We hope Zena will be available to work with us on special occasions. Our After School Care Program runs from 3 to 6pm five days per week inside the School Library. We offer a nutritious afternoon tea and a fun ‘Child Friendly Program’. We have vacancies available each afternoon and cater for emergency care. To book in for casual or permanent care contact The ASC Office after 1.30pm. On 99132846 or pop in to the office for an Enrolment form and book in. Kind Regards Annie and the ASC Team.

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see the work from NNPS and the other PCS schools. The staff of NNPS hope that you will be able to join us on our Open Day. An Early Spring Cleaning I hope everyone noticed as they worked into school on Monday morning the clean whiteness of the domes! Both the office and the library domes were cleaned with high pressure water sprays over the weekend. The overall effect is quite amazing. With our new artificial turf, the clean domes and the ongoing hard work of Mr Mario, the school is looking great. A New School Sign On Tuesday a new big changeable school sign was installed on Jacksons Road, opposite Centro’s car park exit. This sign is a great improvement on the old one, with a ladder no longer being needed to change the letters. The new sign has a ‘drop down’ mechanism so that the letters can be changed by just standing on the ground. Hopefully, we will now have lots of parent volunteers being able to help change the sign each Thursday. If you can help, please see Mrs Conaglen. Thank you. Monday Morning Assembly For quite some time now, teachers have been concerned at the amount of class teaching time that is lost each Monday morning due to the 9am assembly. (The number of wet Mondays over recent months that has resulted in cancelled assemblies has proved a popular bonus for teachers in that they have the extra time in the classrooms to teach.) After lengthy discussions with staff, it has been decided to cancel the Monday morning assemblies from Week 5. At 9am on that Monday and those following, students will go directly to class. Principal Awards will be presented at the regular 1.50pm assembly we have on Tuesdays, weather permitting. Parents are welcome to join us on Tuesday afternoon if their child is receiving an award; however, do be aware that sometimes the assembly does not go ahead if it is wet etc. Banner Assemblies will still be held twice each term with open invitation for all members of the school community. However, they will be held at 2.30pm on the nominated day. Banner recipients will be invited to afternoon tea (doughnut and popper) in the staffroom at 2.15pm before the banner assembly.

These changes are to maximize the amount of quality teaching time for all of our students. Of course, the morning session is prime teaching and learning time and this is the time teachers want to use most effectively.

PCS

SCIENCE WEEK POSTER COMPETITION

Students are invited to design a poster

titled:

Biodiversity: The richness and variety of life on Earth.

Entries close Friday, 20 August.

Please collect separate information sheet avail-able at the office for all details.

PCS Update from Jann, Sharon and MJ PCS rocked the mountain at the Interschools Snowsports Competition Thredbo during the July holidays. Congratulations to all students who competed and best wishes to the students from Newport Public and Barrenjoey High who have qualified for the State Titles in Alpine and Snowboarding events. Students and staff from the PCS have a very busy term ahead. Events in the next few weeks include Education Week where one of the highlights will be a PCS display at Centro Warriewood showcasing some of the exciting things happening in our schools including the winning PCS Sustainability Calender Art Competition. To celebrate Engineering Week a robotics NXT challenge is being held at Narrabeen Sports High. PCS Sustainability Calender Art Competition had 14 winning entries. Congratulations to all students who entered. We were very impressed by your efforts. Congratulations to the Year 10 students who participated in the Science and Engineering Challenge held at Macquarie University this week. Year 10 Subject Selection evenings have been held across the PCS high schools. If you require further information about subjects for next year contact your local PCS high school . The Probots and NXT robots are at Avalon and the Bee Bots are at Bilgola.

Cyber Safety Following my comments in last week’s newsletter I have come across the cyber safety website ‘ThinkUKnow’ that is mentioned in the cyber safety news story on our school’s webpage. Follow the link on the homepage to explore the site. There is the possibility that we can host a cyber safety information session here at school if enough parents express interest. Please let the office know if you would like to come along to an information session and I will try to organise it with THinkUKnow. (Remember, you need to be 13 years of age to have a Facebook account and no current student at NNPS is 13!) After School Care Disco Congratulations to the ASC Committee for the successful fund raising disco held last Sunday afternoon. I have heard many positive comments from those who attended. Well done! Our TEN Project Currently our K-Y2 classes are involved in a regional numeracy program called Targeting Early Numeracy (TEN). Last Friday I attended a conference of the four local schools working on the project at Narreweena PS with Mrs Mulkeen, our TEN coordinator. It was a wonderful day with the focus solidly on the teaching of addition and subtraction skills to young students and all of our K-Y2 are to be congratulated for their commitment to the project. Student numeracy data is collected twice a term and Mrs Mulkeen was able to show very clearly the wonderful progress that our students have made during semester 1. The school’s Mathematics Committee is planning to hold a parent maths information session later this term, so look out for further details and hopefully you will be able to come along and find out how maths is taught in schools nowadays. The proposed date is Monday, 6 September. Kindergarten Students, 2011 Now is time to make sure that you have started the enrolment process if your child is starting school next year. Please check with Gail in our school office for details. Also, please pass the word on to your neighbours and friends if they have a child ready to start school in 2011. Of course, tell them that NNPS is the best school around! Robert Blanchfield A Sentence a Day by 2H – Focussing on joining words (conjunctions).

At the Cross Country carnival, Mr Good blew the whistle and I was running for my life. Zoe 2H

A cat that lives with Brian and Roger is nicknamed Spoilt Rotten, but his real name is Chester. Caitlin 2H

The day Max and Sam were supposed to get a banner a hurricane hit and everyone was forced to go back to class. Jack 2H

K-2 Thank You All the teachers from Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 would like to thank the P&C for our fabulous Edumax Boards. They are a very welcomed tool in our classroom and we had some very excited teachers on Monday when they arrived. We would not have been able to have these in our rooms if it wasn’t for the hard work of our parents and community fund raising. So a BIG THANK YOU!!!!! Tanya Russell

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PLEASE NOTE: Whilst every attempt is made to verify bonafide advertisers, the school does not accept responsibility therefore parents should use their own discretion.

REMINDER: STEWART HOUSE

CLOTHING APPEAL

NEW COLLECTION DATE: 10 AUGUST.

BAGS AVAILABLE AT SCHOOL OFFICE

UNIFORM SHOP

Stock up on winter uniforms.

Summer uniform as on sale at the end of August.

Conations of uniforms welcome.

Reminder that EFTPOS is now available.

Hours: Monday—2.45pm—3.15pm

Friday—8.45am—9.15am