Issue 9, 17 June 2022, Week 7 Term 2

Dear Families,

With last week’s cold snap, the start of Dark Mofo festivities and the Winter Solstice, I think we can officially say welcome to Winter! With three weeks to go until the end of Term 2 we are trying to squeeze in as much learning and assessment as possible in preparation for the reporting period. This information will not only be utilised to finalise Mid-year Reports, but will also provide vital information that will inform teaching and learning for Term 3.

A huge thank you to the School Association Fundraising Team, led by Mrs Sam Dobson and the entire school community for embracing our second School Association fundraising event. Students and staff certainly enjoyed our first BBQ lunch for the year. It was fabulous to see so many students warming their cold hands with a cooked lunch. At our next School Association meeting scheduled for Tuesday 5 July at 6.30 pm, we will discuss school-based projects, including deciding what we want to achieve for our students with the school community’s fundraising efforts. As always, your parent/carer voice in these decisions is critically important and all community members are welcome to attend. If attending in person is difficult, we also run our meetings online and a link can be provided. Alternatively, feel free to raise any potential project ideas with a member of the Association prior to this meeting. We look forward to sharing our 2022 fundraising projects with the entire Kingston community. Watch this space!

Mid Year Reporting 2022

A reminder to all families that Mid-year Reports will be distributed on Thursday 23 June. The new look report will show your child’s learning achievement differently. A new 9-point visual scale replaces the former A–E rating style for students in Years 1 – 6 (and for Prep students at the end of the year). The 9-point scale will show specifically where your child’s learning achievement is against the expected standard for their year level.

There will be no written comment on the report. Parent/teacher conferences will be held in Week 9 of this term. You should have already received a letter asking for preferred time slots. If you have not yet made a time to speak with your child’s Teacher, I encourage you to do so. Parent/Teacher Discussions are a great opportunity to speak with your child’s teacher and celebrate the achievements made so far as well as discuss the next steps for your child’s learning.

Covid-19 and Assemblies

With Covid-19 numbers on the decline, Public Health and the Department of Education have eased restrictions on schools. These include:

• Lifting of capped numbers on families attending our Launching into Learning sessions.
• Allowing staff to meet face-to-face for meetings and professional learning.
• Having parents at Assemblies.

However, we must still remain vigilant and some restrictions are still in place. This includes only coming on site if you are feeling well, maintaining high levels of hygiene and ensuring physical distancing. As such, we will host our assemblies both in the GP Room and virtually for this term to ensure all parent and community members can be part of this event.

Whilst it is our aim to run Assemblies vertically across the school, due to swimming we will be unable to follow this structure until Term 3. However, despite the busy tail end of Term 2, we are incredibly keen to welcome our parents back on site for an Assembly. Therefore for Term 2 only we will run an Early Years (Prep to Year 2) and Middle/Upper Primary Assemblies. The roster below will advise when your child’s class will be attending and presenting. Classes highlighted on the roster below will present this term. Our Assemblies for this term will be held on Thursday 30 June (Week 9) and Thursday 7 July (Week 10) for Middle and Upper Primary. Each Assembly will begin at 1.45pm in the GP Room and will finish prior to the end of the school day.

Prep - Year 2 Week 9, Thursday 30 June 1.45 - 2.30pm	Years 3-6 Week 10, Thursday 7 July 1.45-2.30pm
Prep Steele	3/4 New
1/2 Holmstrom	3/4 Rickus
1/2 Wood / Dobson	3/4 Rumley / Dennis
1/2 Cai	3/4 Barker
1/2 Schreiber	5/6 Stafford 5/6 Munday 5/6 Leppard / Best 5/6 Clifford

All parents/carers of children from classes presenting are encouraged to attend and follow Covid-19 regulations in place. If you are attending an Assembly in person, please ensure that you do not park in the drop off and pick up zone. This will guarantee a smooth end to the school day.

Ange Crane
Principal

This year’s Year 3-6 Swimming and Water Safety Program will be held at Collegiate Pool from Monday 20 June to Friday 1 July. The program supports our students to become competent swimmers and to be water safe.

Unfortunately Collegiate is still not able to allow spectators within the centre due to Covid.

Students will need to bring their swim wear, a towel, a swim cap and a plastic bag each day for wet items. Students are also welcome to use goggles however there will be some water safety activities where students will be asked to remove them.

Swim caps can now be purchased at the school office for $2.00 a cap.

We are a newly formed sub-group from the School Association Committee. Our main purpose is to raise money for our wonderful school. To make this accessible, we have now set up a FB Messenger chat group https://m.me/j/AbYjhsPl82HE1Udl/ (It is called KPS Parents & Friends Fundraising, and has the school logo as the profile picture).

We would love for you to be involved – and best of all there is no pressure, do what you can, when you can. You can check in on the progress as an observer, share your ideas, identify challenges, assist with planning or undertake delegated tasks – you choose. Our next discussion will be looking at what other fundraisers to undertake in terms 3 & 4. Got some ideas? Email KingstonPSassociation@gmail.com or join our chat!

The Australian Government eSafety Commissioner have a parent/carer webinar in June.

Do you have children aged between 8 – 13 years old?

Would you like to learn more about online gaming and keeping your kids safe online?

This webinar covers:

• the games young people are using and how they are engaging with them;
• the benefits of gaming and how to mitigate the risks;
• practical strategies to use at home and where to find help and support if things go wrong.

You can register here:

https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents/webinars

They also have great general eSafety resources online:

https://www.esafety.gov.au/parents/resources#videos

On the topic of online games, have you seen The eSafety Guide?

You can learn about the latest games, apps and social media, including how to protect your information, report harmful content and minimum recommended ages of use.

Find it here:

https://www.esafety.gov.au/key-issues/esafety-guide

The next School Association Meeting is on Tuesday 5 July at 6.30pm in the School Library. One of the agenda items is to begin discussions about how we spend the money we raise, and in particular, what our first $10,000 will be spent on. We are keen to make sure the money is spread across the school to benefit a broad range of students and add to the learning and social experiences at our school.

If you are unable to attend, but would like to contribute ideas, please send them to our School Association email address and we will table them at the meeting - KingstonPSassociation@gmail.com, or see Miss Crane or Mr A to share your ideas. 

1/2 Cai has been learning about water. After sharing what we already know about water, we conducted experiments to explore the properties of water, understanding how water can exist in the three states of matter—as a solid, liquid or gas. We practised the predicting, observing and explaining during the process.

Kingston Primary now has a FOGO bin which is for food organics and garden organics.

The idea of this bin is to try and capture some of our organics that can be composted commercially rather than going to landfill and to help educate our students about this.

Since the Canteen reopened in 2018 we have been using sugar cane packaging and paper bags where we can rather than single use plastics and foil. However our compostable packaging has still been going to landfill and this packaging takes about 120 days to break down in domestic composting.  In a commercial facility it will break down in just 28 days.

Organic materials in landfill create methane which is a major contributor to green house gases and climate change. The more we can keep out of landfill the better for the planet. Our FOGO bin will be kept locked away so it does not get contaminated with general waste, but there will be a smaller bin clearly labelled outside the Canteen on Fridays for packaging, food scraps etc.  We encourage students who purchase corn cobs, bolognaise, etc. from the Canteen to place their empty containers in this bin. We can also include the bamboo forks and spoons.

If you have ordered via the Qkr App and your child is sick on Canteen Day please make sure you notify the school so the order can be held over for the next week.  If the school has not been notified of your child’s cancelled order and it has been made up on the day, the order cannot be fulfilled the following week.

A reminder that we are now again offering counter sales.

On Wednesday 25 May our school Cross Country team competed in the Huon and Channel Carnival held in challenging conditions in Huonville. We arrived at Huonville to very cold conditions and a blanket of fog, however a good day was had by all and our team achieved some great results.

Congratulations to our Grade 3 boys team who achieved equal points with Snug Primary to be equal winners of the pennant!

Congratulations to the following students who finished in the top 20 in their race:

Arthur W 3^rd, Cedar W 10^th, Tony L 11^th, Mya W 2^nd, Amy G 19^th, Weston E 2^nd, Daniel O 11^th, Jordan T 15^th, Lily W 12^th, Emily S 19^th, Toby A 4^th, Asha M 5^th, Kenzie S 7^th, Eliza B 9^th, Aaliyah W 12^th, Luke G 2^nd, Mohammad T 4^th, Jarrah W 19^th, Jade D 5^th, Dakota A 17^th, Emma W 19^th.

Our team is now preparing to compete at Symmons Plains on Tuesday 21 June at the State All Schools Cross Country Championships. Best of luck to everyone!

Our BBQ Lunch has been organised through our KPS Parents and Friends Fundraising Facebook Messenger chat with support from our wonderful Admin Team, Sharon, Michelle & Maree, our Canteen Manager Mary, and our Groundsman Rodney. The BBQ was run by parents Sarah & Bonnie, Class Teacher Sam D, and school friend Occupational Therapist Fiona Scott, with support from school leaders; Emma W, 

Pictured: Fiona, Bonnie & Sarah

Our profits have been boosted with thanks to a range of donations organised by Claire & Sarah, as well as family donations from Thea C, Claire J, Sarah D and Mark D. With your support, we have raised approximately $870.00.

We are very appreciative of the generous donations from all our business supporters, including Charlie’s Supermarket Takeaway (20 icy poles), Mark Dance (8 Vegan sausages, $24 Beef sausages), and also:

John Street Medical:  www.johnstreetmedical.com.au

$100 worth of Beef and Vegetarian Sausages

Mount Nelson Store: www.facebook.com/MountNelsonStore

112 Peters Lemonade Icy Poles

12 Loaves of bread

Banjos Bakery Kingston:  www.facebook.com/banjosbakerykingston

Simon Parsons – Property Consultant: www.facebook.com/simonparsonsproperty

$48 worth of Beef Sausages

Our first Wacky Wednesday Free Dress Day was loads of fun. Lots of students and staff had fun dressing in their brightest clothes, bringing in the first day of winter.

By donating what you can, together we managed to raise $380 towards Target10,000! That is an awesome effort!

Our next Wacky Wednesday is on Wednesday 6 July – the last week before holidays. We have realised that this is ECE Swim week, so the theme is now:

‘You Choose’ – Show us your style with your comfiest clothes!

Remember, donate what you can, online or in cash. Together, we can make a huge difference to the students at our wonderful school.

Online donations to:

Account Name: KPSPFA  BSB: 067026 Account Number: 28004484 Reference: Wacky Wednesday.

Target10,000 Tally Update

Wacky Wednesday Free Dress Day   $  380.00

BBQ Lunch                                          $  870.00

Total so far                                         $1250.00

Public Health has advised that from Monday 27 June 2022, face masks are no longer mandatory in schools and Child and Family Learning Centres. This is because of reduced COVID-19 cases in our community.

It’s important to continue to:

• stay at home if unwell, and get tested
• practise COVID-safe behaviours such as frequent handwashing and sanitising
• be up to date with your COVID-19 vaccinations.

Students, staff and visitors are supported to continue to wear face masks if they choose to. Face masks are still available at school if you need them.

When face masks are required

If you’re a close contact, you are still required to wear a face mask indoors as per current Public Health advice.

From time-to-time our school might identify activities or situations where masks are required to be worn. We ask for your support when this happens and know that it is in the best interests of our students, staff and our school.

Our staff will continue to wear masks when working closely with students who are vulnerable to COVID-19.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us directly to discuss.

For more information about COVID-19, please visit the Tasmanian Government Coronavirus website or contact the Tasmanian Public Health Hotline on 1800 671 738, or Department of Education COVID-19 Support Hotline at COVID19support@education.tas.gov.au or on 1800 816 057.

If you need support translating or interpreting this information, contact the Translating and Interpreting Service on 131 450.

We are all so excited to be back together in the classroom at LiL once again. We have been enjoying stories, songs, sensory play and practicing our fine motor skills.

Our LiL families have had fun participating in swimming lessons at the Kingston Pool and gymnastics at the Kingborough Sports Centre. 

Our new Book Worms sessions have focussed on developing oral language and pre-reading skills through songs, nursery rhymes and picture books.