Welcome back to Term Two. I hope that everyone had an enjoyable holiday break and that you got to spend some quality time with your children. I am looking forward to continuing to get to know your children throughout this term.

Mother’s Day
I hope that all our mums had a wonderful Mother’s Day on Sunday and your children had the opportunity to show you how much you are loved and appreciated.

Last Friday we had a wonderful group of parents from our Parents and Friends committee volunteer to run the Mother’s Day stall. All children had the opportunity to buy a small gift for their mums and it was wonderful to see how excited and delighted the children were to be given this opportunity. Wonderful opportunities like this don’t happen by chance and the Mother’s Day stall takes a fair bit of planning and organisation. Without the support of our volunteer parents, we would not be able to offer these opportunities for our children. I would like take this opportunity to thank all of the parents who assisted at our Mother’s Day stall:

Simone Zoontjens, Emily Harris, Lucy Koppes, Giuliana Agostino, Katie McMillan, Nadia Anderson, Stephanie Price-Austin, Francine Schiller and Jodie Fitzgerald.

It was also great to be able to have our Reception parents onsite for a Mother’s Day pamper morning. The children in Reception got to colour in with their mums, give their mums a manicure, do their mum’s hair and have photos with their mums. I would like to thank the Reception teachers for their wonderful work in organising and running this event.

It was a shame that we could not have more mums from a variety year levels onsite all at the one time. Our hope is that in the not too distant future COVID restrictions in schools will ease so that we can host bigger community events.  

COVID
At the beginning of this term you would have received a letter from me on the SZapp about COVID restrictions and how they relate to schools for the first few weeks of Term 2. I thought I would just remind parents of a few key points in dot point form:

• If your child tests positive to COVID then they need to isolate for 7 days in line with SA Health requirements and can not attend school during this 7 day period.
• Close contact rules have now changed. If someone in your household tests positive to COVID, children can still attend school if they are asymptomatic and test negative on a RAT test. Children are expected to undertake 5 RAT tests over a 7 day period.
• School’s no longer need to send home notifications about classroom contacts, however out of courtesy the school will still send a Seesaw message to parents if someone in your child’s class tests positive to COVID, so parents can monitor their children for symptoms.
• Parents are still required to wear face masks when they enter the school site.

I thank all of our parents for your ongoing support of our staff in navigating these COVID measures.

I will update the community when COVID restrictions in schools change.

Building Works
We are continuing to work on the planning for the next stage of our building. Unfortunately the completion of some of our building works have been slower than we anticipated due to a shortage of labour and some supply issues. We have been planning to establish a large vegetable garden and a replacement of the play ground in the area outside our new classrooms. We were informed earlier this week that whilst the first drafts of these plans have been developed, we will most likely be unable to secure the necessary contractors to undertake the work until later this year. As a result of this we have made the decision to tidy up this area and roll out some lawn as a temporary measure, so this space is usable for the children. During this time we will undertake some consultation with the children about their ideas for the new play space and engaging a landscape architect to develop the plans for this area.

We anticipate that the building of 2 new Reception classes and a new Music teaching space will commence in July. I will keep the community updated on our building works.

New Website and Photo Shoot
Over the last week we have had a professional photographer at our school taking photos of different aspects of our school operations. I have learnt very quickly during the photo shoot that our children are not camera shy and we had no shortage of volunteers for our photos. Over the coming months we will be updating our School Website and I will let you know when the new website goes live.

60^th Anniversary Dinner – SAVE THE DATE
We are planning to host a 60^th Anniversary dinner on Saturday the 27^th of August at the Marche Club at Paradise. Old scholars, and all current and past families and staff members will be invited to attend this event. After 2 years of not being able to have community events for our parents due to COVID, we are looking forward to a wonderful 60^th celebration. Please spread the word and stay tuned for further details in the coming weeks.

Little SPARX Playgroup resumes:
Last week we were able to restart our Little SPARX playgroup. Playgroup will be held in the Activity Room (OSHC) every Thursday from 9:00am – 10:30am. Sarah Tirimacco and Laura Baohm will be running our playgroup for the remainder of this year. All children from 0 -5 are welcome to join our playgroup. Parents coming to playgroup can enter through the OSHC gates and sign in at the activity room.

Just One Thing
Early next week I will be sending home a letter titled “Just One Thing”. I encourage all parents to read this letter as we attempt to start reinvigorating our community and increasing parent events and participation around the school after two years of isolation due to COVID.

God Bless

Ashley Keane