From the Junior School

From our Head of Junior School

As we head into the holidays, we wish you all a safe and happy break from the routine of online learning and the school day. We know that these are challenging times as we’re unable to travel and enjoy adventures with our loved ones as normal. However, these holidays provide a chance for our girls to stop, relax and re-energise ready for Term 4. Being bored is a powerful spark for creativity.

Creativity was evident in our Junior School Assembly last week when the girls joined together to create a rousing accompaniment of Happy Birthday with their musical instruments or with instruments they created. Whilst this may not have been the most polished performance, it was a fun and joyful way for us to come together as a community and celebrate. We will have a repeat performance this week!

There have been some wonderful, polished performances this week from all our Bands. These individual and group performances are always impressive, but never more so than this term when we remember that all lessons have been online. Our girls should be extremely proud of their commitment to their music and their passion for practice and growing their skills. Listening to them all play and watching them perform was a magical way to end the term.

Creativity has also been evident amongst our Robotics girls as they’ve engaged with challenges posed to them throughout the term including designing and making a catapult and designing, building and coding a robot housekeeping assistant for a family. Watch the video below to see Jessica Persson’s robot delivering rocky road (made by Jessica during her Year 5 Mind, Body, Spirit Day) to her family.

This week I have ‘handed over’ the newsletter to our outstanding Kindness Captains for Term 3.  Our theme for the term has been ‘Kindness is our Superpower’ and these girls have shone as superheroes; working collaboratively to keep us all, and our community, smiling and feeling loved throughout the isolation of lockdown.

Kindness Club ‘takes over’ the newsletter – Sophie Chiang, Zoe Chong, Anika Verma, Melanie Xu, Feifei Wang, Julia Zhu and Eliza-Rose Griffiths

“This week we reflected on all the initiatives we have led this term. We also reflected on how kindness is a superpower and how we have felt as the Kindness Captains for the Junior School this term. Here are our thoughts:

I loved celebrating Heidi and her kindness superpowers. It was fun to draw pictures of Heidi that showed her many different kindness superpowers. We hope we can make the drawings into a book which we can then give to children in hospital or quarantine to show them kindness.

We have written letters to our elderly Pymble alumni as we worry they are lonely whilst in lockdown. We hope that our letters will bring them joy and cheer them up. When you are in lockdown you can feel really isolated, so we hope that our letters help these ladies to feel connected to us all at Pymble.

We loved designing cards which we were able to use within our community. We also loved making our messages in a bottle against COVID-19. Kindness is our superpower.

We have also surprised our teachers this week by organising thank you messages from our classes. We set up private chats and organised how our class would say thank you for all our teachers have done for us this term.  

Being a Kindness Captain is a wonderful opportunity. I feel really proud to be a Kindness Captain. We get to do things that are important; we give to others and help them. As a Kindness Captain I feel like I am making a difference.”

Mrs Kate Brown

Head of Junior School

Compass Check in

Mind Body Spirit Days

This week the girls have embraced being kind to self by engaging with their Mind, Body Spirit days. Cooking together and chatting was a lovely way to learn a new skill and to share stories. Designing our own gratitude containers helped create a calm space within the day to stop and reflect on the people, things and values we are grateful for. The challenge of designing toys from recycled bits and pieces inspired some outstanding STEM thinking. Working with our counsellors and Reverends, we learned how to self-care with a guided mediation and then we ended the day by being very active with a scavenger hunt, some fitness and some physical challenges led by our PDHPE team. This was a fantastic day for the girls to learn together as a year group and share some laughter and new learning in this final week of the term.

Mrs Nerissa Davey

Acting Deputy Head of Junior School Wellbeing

Links Day – 22 October

This year Links Day looks a little different. However, our staff members have been working to create activities and connections that ensure this day is fun for all our current girls whilst online. Keep an eye on your post box as invitations to this day will be arriving soon. Thank you to Mrs Inchbold for her fantastic creative skills and for helping to package the envelopes and resources for each girl for this day.

Junior Ignite

Each week throughout our online learning, a group of girls has come together with Mrs Clutterham and Rev Bent at lunchtime on Tuesdays. This is a wonderful opportunity for our girls to read the Bible, engage in conversation around faith and pray for those in our community.

Class Captains’ Corner

The girls have done a fabulous job this term of sending in quotes and photos of their weeks to share in Digital News. This video of photos is the highlight of our week as it showcases all the wonderful learning the girls have experienced. This week our quote is from Sophie Harris who has chosen a quote from the legend that is Dolly Parton:

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”

From our K-6 Psychologist: Having fun and staying safe in the school holidays

After a long and challenging term, the spring school holidays are finally upon us! All the girls have been working so hard and it is now time to unwind, recharge the batteries and have some COVID-safe fun. Even though we are unable to do the things we normally would do, there are still lots of great activities to keep kids occupied and combat “I’m bored”.

You might like to think back to your childhood and the things that stood out for you as a guide in coming up with ideas. As an example, I enjoyed spotlighting for possums when I was a child and so will be heading out to the bush one evening in the holidays to do this again. If you are a bit stuck or need more inspiration, the following are some tips:

1. General tips: divide the day into sections, such as morning after breakfast, mid-morning, after lunch, afternoon and evening after dinner. Work out what your day is going to look like, print out the plan and pop it on your fridge. This is especially helpful when, as a parent, you are continuing to work or study throughout the holiday period. Another way to mix things up is to have a lucky dip for picking activities.
2. Indoor activities: we have all no doubt become experts in coming up with creative and fun indoor activities that can be done at home! There are so many options including making a pillow fort, playing with cardboard boxes, making a Stop Motion video and LEGO challenges.
3. Outdoor activities: likewise, there are lots of fun outdoor activities that can be done from home. Options include creating chalk cities, backyard camping, making s’mores, shadow drawing, or going for a bushwalk.
4. Quiet time: board games, reading, yoga, smiling mind and drawing are all great options for when some down time is needed or if it is a rainy day.
5. Chores: that’s correct, even chores can form part of holiday activities! It helps in the running of the family and some chores can even be fun, like washing the car.

For lots more fantastic ideas, check out: https://www.danielaminns.com/mega-list-of-screen-free-activities. If you feel you are needing extra support throughout the holiday period, the Parent Helpline is available on 1300 1300 52.

From the counselling team, we hope you have a wonderful and safe break.

Dr Danielle Ellis

K-6 School Psychologist

From the JSPG

It’s hard to believe we are at the end of Term 3. Although it has been a completely different term to the one we had planned, we hope you and your daughters have been able to make the most of this time at home. It has been amazing to see the work and effort the Junior School teachers have put into online learning for our girls and we are so appreciative. We would like to wish you all a peaceful and enjoyable break and we look forward to the start of Term 4 with the girls hopefully returning to campus later in the term.

We hope the girls found the magical hour of power last week with Tracy Tam from Trace of Magic fun and entertaining. Thanks to all of you who registered and attended this JSPG event.

Just a final reminder for anyone who hasn’t had time to watch the JSPG meeting from earlier this term.  We would really recommend you watch this as it gives such a comprehensive overview of what our girls have been working on throughout online learning. Please click on the link below:

JSPG Quote of the Week:

‘We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.’ Anon