Principal: Jenny Lewis Cowra-Carcoar Road, Cowra NSW 2794 63422172 0458 422 000 63411247 @ holmwood-p.school@det.nsw.edu.au www.holmwood-p.schools.nsw.edu.au
Term 3 Week 9 – Week Ending 16th September 2016
Students of the Week! Congratulations to our Week 8 Students of the Week!
delivery of one rooster and 12 hens via Louise Buckley and Barb Rocavert. The chickens had a lovely week settling in to their new home and it has been exciting to see the satisfaction on the faces of the Stage 3 students and Ms Edgerton as their project has come to fruition! This week the chickens have been busy laying lots of eggs! They are certainly enjoying our fruit break and lunch scraps too!
Ruby Light (Kinder), Lilly Hood (Stage 1),
Brittney Worth (Stage 2) and William Skinner (Stage 3)
Merit Awards were presented to; Stage 1 – Micah Murphy Stage 2 – Grace Murphy Stage 3 – Mackenzie Nestor Library – Micah Murphy, Brittney Worth, Will Skinner Congratulations to all students!
Citizenship Award Week 8 – Jay Kennedy
Riley, Ruby, Jack and Daniel were the lucky four who got to collect our first lot of eggs on Monday morning! There were three big brown eggs sitting in the roosting boxes – what clever chickens!!
Gymnastics @ PCYC! All students had another marvellous week at Gymnastics! Next week will be our final week of gym and all students have had a fantastic time! If your child would like to attend gym lessons please call in to the PCYC and enrol them for next term.
Jay was chosen as the Week 8 Citizenship Award winner by Mrs Bayl. Jay is in Year 1 and was awarded the Citizenship Award for always being polite and friendly to all teachers and visitors to our school! Congratulations Jay!
“Chicken Run”! Our chickens have arrived! On Friday amidst much excitement from the students and staff, we took
Layla and Hayley scoot across the balance beam!
Anti-bullying Workshops Continue For the past two weeks the whole school has been involved in an Anti-bullying Education Program run each afternoon by the HPS staff. This week we focused on the different types of bullying; 1. Physical 2. Verbal 3. Emotional All students have been active participants in this exercise and it has been wonderful to see the leadership again shown by our Stage 3 students this week. Please take the time to talk to your child about what is being discussed at school. Holmwood Public School does not tolerate any form of bullying. Next week we will continue with this Program and look at cyberbullying.
REMINDER - Whole School Excursion: Sport & Recreation Centre at Borambola Term 3 is flying by very quickly which means that our Whole School Excursion is fast approaching – Week 5 Term 4 - 9th, 10th and 11th of November!! This is a friendly reminder to families who would like to start paying off their remaining amount owing for the cost of the excursion. Payments of any amount can be made to the front office. The total payment will need to be received by Friday 28th November. A note will be sent home early next term notifying each family of their remaining balance. In the meantime if you would like to know how much is still outstanding please phone the school. An essential requirement in attending any NSW Sport and Rec Camp is the necessary medical/dietary requirements. Please find a note attached to this week’s Newsletter regarding these requirements.
Camp Quality Tractor Trek- Woodstock PS
Kinder Transition It’s hard to believe that our 2017 Kinder students have now been attending transition for almost one full term!! We have loved having them visit us each Tuesday morning and this week it was “egg-stra” exciting as we got to show them our new chickens, fed the chooks our fruit scraps AND collected two more eggs! Kinder transition class will have their final visit for the term next Tuesday before the school holidays. We look forward to seeing them again next term starting Week 1 – Tuesday 11th October.
Our school has been invited to attend the Camp Quality Tractor Trek to be held at Woodstock PS on the last day of Term. This will be a whole day event with other activities including a puppet show, sporting competitions with other small schools, craft activities organised by Cowra Information and Neighbourhood Centre and of course viewing the amazing tractors! Students will travel to and from Woodstock by bus and there will be no cost for this excursion. Please sign and return the permission note ASAP.
World Peace Day Forum Year 6 students have been invited to attend the Cowra Council World Peace Day Youth Forum NEXT Tuesday 20th September. This is a wonderful opportunity for our school leaders to meet and listen to guest speakers’ talk about how our school leaders can encourage peace within our school, our community and the world. The Forum will be held in the Theatrette at the Cowra Civic Centre and a light lunch will also be provided. Mrs Kiely will be accompanying the students on the day and they will also visit the Cowra Council Chambers and Art Gallery. A permission note was sent home with last week’s Newsletter. Please ensure these are returned as soon as possible.
Regional Spelling Bee Congratulations to our Regional Spelling Bee entrants – Brittney, Layla, Akiko and Christian who competed at Calare Public School in Orange on Tuesday. Mrs Skene accompanied our students in Orange and reported that the words were VERY tricky, however all
students gave it their best shot and thoroughly enjoyed the experience!
K-2 Post Office Excursion Last Thursday K-2 went on an excursion to see behind the scenes at the Cowra Post Office! This excursion was part of our HSIE unit called "Workers in the Community". All students, teachers and parents had a wonderful time seeing how the mail is sorted and delivered, checking out the postie's motorbike and asking lots of great questions! After our Post Office visit we went to Brougham Park for morning tea and a play. Thank you to Manager Rod Boatwood, Anne, Shane, Jackie and all the post office staff for being such great hosts! Thank you also to Mrs Lewis, Miss Thompson, Cheri and Macey's mum Katie for accompanying us today! We had a great time!!
Akiko and Christian competed in the Stage 3 Section at the Spelling Bee. Akiko’s tricky knock out word was “cellist” whilst Christian’s was “notion”. All Aboard!! K-2 heading off to the Post Office on Thursday!
The Post Office was such an interesting place to visit!
Hayley and Brittney enjoyed the day at the Regional Spelling Bee. Brittney’s knock out word was “buy” and Hayley, who made it to Round 3 was eliminated on the word “arena” – great job girls!
Jack, Alana and Mia LOVED having a play at Brougham Park after our visit to the Post Office!
Tree-planting Day
Manly Selective Schools’ Band Visit
Last Friday our school held a special tree planting day with help from Sarah, Nikki and Robyn from Cowra Bunnings! New seedlings were planted in the vegetable gardens, native trees were also added to attract more bird life to our playground and the whole school was given a general tidy up! Thank you to Cowra Bunnings for generously supporting our school and thank you to Mrs Kiely for organising this annual event.
Next Wednesday 21st September we will be hosting a visit from the Manly Selective Schools’ Performance Band. The Band is on a tour around regional NSW and will be making a special stop at Holmwood PS as part of their tour! We will be attending a Concert performance by the band from 1:30-2:30pm after which they will enjoy afternoon tea and answer any questions the students have about performing or the instruments they play. If any parents would like to join us for this Concert you are more than welcome!
End of Term Assembly Next Thursday 22nd September will be our End of Term Assembly. All classes will be presenting an item – drama from Stage 3, music and singing from Stage 2 and two Pamela Allen plays from Kinder and Stage 1 – it is sure to be an entertaining afternoon! Start time is 1:45pm sharp under the COLA – all welcome!
United Fusion “Mystique” Production
Stage 1 students loved getting their hands dirty planting new vegetable seedlings in our veggie gardens!
NAIDOC Regional Public Speaking Congratulations to Lily Lawler and Lara Collins who competed at the NAIDOC Regional Public Speaking Competition in Dubbo yesterday! The girls came up against some very tough competition from all over the Western Region and delivered their speech “Songlines; the living narrative of our nation” with confidence and style! Thank you to parents Tania, Naomi and the support crew who came along to cheer the girls on!
Late last term you may remember Stage 2 and 3 students were filmed playing the Marimbas by the sound and lighting crew from the production company “United Fusion”. This recording is to form the backing soundtrack to United Fusion’s production titled “Mystique”. The live performance of this show will be held on Friday 14th October (end of Week 1 next term). Attached to this week’s Newsletter is a permission note for students to attend. There is no cost for this excursion. Please sign and return notes to school by the end of Term 3.
Calendar Term 3 Week 10 Mon 19th Sept
Tues 20th Sept
Wed 21st Sept
Thur 22nd Sept
Lara and Lily pictured with special guest; actor – Luke Carroll
Fri 23rd Sept
Ms Edgerton – Leave (Mrs Kiely Stg 3) GYMNASTICS @ PCYC AECG AGM – Cowra High School at 2pm (Mrs Lewis) KINDER Transition Class - 9:3012:00pm. Year 6 – World Peace Day Forum – Cowra Civic Centre (Mrs Kiely) Year 5 – with Mrs Lewis Manly Selective Schools Band visiting Holmwood 1:30-2:30pm Ms Edgerton – Leave (Mrs Lewis Stg 3) Mr Duncan Auld – Director of Public Schools NSW visiting HPS – 10am-1pm (Mrs Lewis) Ms Edgerton – Leave (Mrs Knight St 3) End of Term Assembly 1:45pm Camp Quality Tractor Trek Excursion to Woodstock PS – K-6 – whole day! Last Day of Term!
School Holidays! Saturday 24th September – Sunday 9th October Term 4 Week 1 Mon 10th Oct Tues 11th Oct Fri 14th Oct
ALL students and staff return – first day of Term 4! KINDER Transition Class - 9:3012:00pm. United Fusion performance of “Mystique” - 1pm (K-6)
HOLMWOOD SPRING FESTIVAL!!! 4pm-8pm Kind Regards, Jenny Lewis Principal
Attachments
United Fusion performance; “Mystique” Permission Note (K-6) Information notes regarding Medical Forms required by NSW Sport and Rec for the Whole School Excursion. PCYC Flyer
Kinder Class News Another week has flown by and Kinder continue to consolidate the many skills they have learnt this term in their reading, writing and maths work. This week the new HPS chicken coop featured strongly in our story writing and it is pleasing to see how well Kinders are structuring their sentences when writing! Maths this week was all about multiplication. Kinder students are learning the concept of having equal groups and placing these in rows or arrays (see picture). We have been working hard to describe our arrays e.g “2 rows of 4 which equals 8” and are doing very well with this concept! . Today Mrs Knight taught us and we looked at the book “The Jolly Postman” which was a lovely follow up to our Post Office Excursion last week. We also did some cooking today and made “Cat in the Hat” Kebabs! Yum! We hope all parents can come along to our end of term assembly next week as we will be
joining with the Stage 1 class to present TWO Pamela Allen plays – “Inside Mary Elizabeth’s House” and “Alexander’s Outing” – we are so excited about this performance, we can’t wait! Don’t forget homework is due tomorrow – this will be the last homework sheet for the term. Kind Regards, Mrs Jenny Lewis Kindergarten Class Teacher
Stage 1 Class News A little over one week until Term 3 is finished and the students begin a well-earned break. During week 9, the students in Stage 1 worked diligently on their Literacy activities. Spelling lessons this week encouraged the students to think about and determine the meaning of a range of selected words from their list. This was achieved through sentence writing and “write-anddraw” activities. The children also produced some FANCY writing from their list words. With Miss Thompson this week the children wrote a catalogue poem about a colour. They discussed how a colour may smell, taste and sound. Stage 1 have published their works, which will be displayed in the classroom. The 1/2 classroom will be covered with an array of colours. Our book of the week was “Edwina the Emu” by Sheena Knowles. This is a rhyming book about an emu named Edwina who seeks work to look after her 10 little emu eggs! Edwina tries her hand at varying jobs until she finds the perfect one!! Stage 1 used this text to match up rhyming words as a whole class. Our focus for this week, and this will continue next term, was comprehension. Stage 1 are beginning to read in a more fluent and expressive manner. Comprehension gives students the opportunity to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding of a range of text types. This will mean students will read for meaning as well as enjoyment. In Maths, Year 1 and 2 have worked on multiplication this week. We brainstormed various terms, operations and strategies associated with this. The class created arrays using counters and online games. All of the students worked extremely hard on this topic and are developing fantastic number skills. Stage 1 are fabulous at working out ‘groups of’, or multiples of 5s. We have a busy week coming up. We will continue the anti-bullying sessions, K-6. The end of term
assembly will be held next Thursday with the Tractor Trek on Friday. Until next week… Mrs Amylee Knight and Miss Chloe Thompson Stage 1 Class Teachers
Stage 2 Class News
each scene at various points around the school, and so far we have filmed about half the play. We will continue filming into next term. Students will then use the footage to construct their own movie using movie maker. They are also excited to be performing their play at the end of term assembly.
With the end of Term 3 fast approaching we have been ‘busy little beavers’ this week finishing off lots of units and work. Our class Recipe Book is finally finished, which is very exciting to see the final product!!! Everyone is very pleased with their finished work……some recipes were quite long, so as you could imagine this took lots of patience to get the typing done! I hope you get some use from the Recipe Book - I’m sure you will have some volunteers to do some cooking or baking during the upcoming holidays!
The students have had a great time over the past few weeks learning new skills, tumbling, tucking flipping and turning at PCYC during Gymnastics. This week also saw the beginning of our filming for the ‘RESPECT’ Concert that will be hosted at Cowra High School during Week 4 Term 4. Our students from K-6 will be participating in a mini film demonstrating their skills of Gymnastics to the song RESPECT by Aretha Franklin.
Thank you to Mrs Kiely for taking my class on Tuesday this week whilst I had the privilege of attending the Premier’s Spelling Challenge Regional Spelling Bee at Calare Public School in Orange. It was an extremely nerve wracking, but very enjoyable experience for Brittney, Hayley, Akiko and Christian. They were competing against the best spellers from schools all over the Central West! They all performed extremely well and should be very proud of their performance and positive demeanor that they displayed throughout the day.
Last Friday the entire school was so excited to see the arrival of our new chickens for the HPS Chicken Coop. We were even more excited to come to school on Monday and Tuesday to find that they had laid 5 eggs in total. The Kindergarten students have the job of collecting the eggs each day, and the students of the week have the job of feeding the chickens fruit scraps from fruit break. Thank you to Mrs Kiely and Mrs Knight for teaching the 5/6 class while I’m on leave next week. Have a fantastic holiday, see you in Term 4. Ms Heidi Edgerton Stage 3 Class Teacher
Homework is due tomorrow for the last time this Term. I can hear the ‘sighs of relief’ from everyone!! News topic for next week is again: Free Choice. Once again I would like to thank those students who take time to present their News efficiently each week and are prepared for the weekly topics. We enjoyed Jake’s news article last week, which was an article about him when he featured in the Cowra Guardian whilst at daycare…very cute indeed! Kind Regards, Mrs Fiona Skene
Stage 2 Class Teacher Stage 3 Class News We are on the count down to the holidays with just a little over a week to go! What a busy week we have had yet again, finishing off all our topics for the Term. On Monday we began filming our mini movie as part of our readers’ theatre for English. The play is titled ‘The Hidden One’. The students were given parts and have had to learn their lines. We started filming
P&C News
All families are requested to assist with the running of the Festival, which will be our MAJOR
fundraiser for this year – whether helping on stalls,
baking cakes or working behind the scenes – there are plenty of jobs to do! The P&C work very hard throughout the year to provide extra funds that benefit ALL students, so your assistance is needed!
We require one parent from each family to assist with various jobs on the night Please write your name on at least ONE time slot (or more if you are able!!) and
return the form to the school. If you
have any concerns or questions about
the roster please contact Kelly Murphy on 0455 456 543
URGENTLY NEEDED 1.
JAZZY JAR FILLERS– we have lots of empty jars that need fillers!!
Ideas
could be lollies, hair clips, textas, gel pens etc etc! Please ensure all items are new! 2.
OLD BLANKETS/PICNIC RUGS to be used for additional seating at the Festival!
Michelle Whitty – P&C Secretary
Community News