Forest Primary School eNewsletter

What a wonderful start we have had to Term 3. We are all working very hard to ensure that we are providing quality teaching and learning opportunities for our students. We have a busy and exciting term ahead of us!

The Cluster of Circular Head Schools Principals and QTC’s (Quality Teaching Coaches) met yesterday morning to strengthen our ‘why’ and our direction of working together with a focus on the DECYP Reading Priority.

Pre-Kinder

We have held two Pre-Kinder sessions in our Kindergarten room with Mrs Hills and Mrs Bransden. It has been wonderful to meet our new children for 2025 and their families. More information with dates are included on our Pre-Kinder flyer. We hope to see you all next week ?

Potato Olympics

Miss Pop and the Year 5 and Year 6 classes have been busy organising events for our Potato Olympics to be held on Tuesday 6^th of August. Students have created Potato Olympians and profiles that will be shared next week. We are so lucky to have Heather Innes past Olympian to open our ceremony, speak to our students about her Olympic experience and show the blazer she wore. This is a wonderful opportunity for our school to listen to an Olympian from Circular Head. Thankyou to Miss Pop for co-ordinating this event for us.

Science Gig

Students have been working hard in our classrooms to share our science learning at the Circular Head Science Gig to be held at the Smithton Recreation Ground on Monday the 12^th of August 5-8pm. Please come along and look at our displays from Prep/1 - Mrs Cox, 1/2 - MrsHills & Miss Poke, Year 5 - Miss Ollington and Year 6 Ms Cuthbertson & Miss Popowski.

Winter Sport

Tomorrow our 5/6 students will be heading into the Smithton Recreation Ground to participate in a variety of sports including Basketball, Taekwondo, Netball, Football and Hockey. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students to engage with students from other schools within Circular Head and to have the opportunity to play a sport. Following the conclusion of winter sports, students have the opportunity to participate in tryouts for Country Gold teams in Football, Netball and Hockey.

SRC Term 3 and Term 4

Congratulations to all of our students who have been elected for the Student Council for Terms 3 and 4. Badges will be presented to these students tomorrow at morning meeting.

Congratulations to the following;

Montie Thorp, Judson Hills, Kyra Coates, Amber van Norden, Charlie Payne, Layla Thorp, Tex Walker & Isabelle Heald.

Bake Sale and Coin Line

Our Year 5’s have been busily working to provide a bake sale and coin line On August 8th to support the Operation Christmas Child project organised by Samaritan's Purse. Operation Christmas Child is a wonderful initiative where students fill shoeboxes with gifts, school supplies, and hygiene items for children in need. Year 5 students will be filling and sending off shoeboxes and will also have the opportunity to track the journey of our shoeboxes and see the impact of their generosity firsthand.

Book Week Activities

On Thursday August 22^nd our school will be having a dress up day and parade. Families are welcome to join in the fun and to watch our students from 9am in the Multi-purpose room. Whilst you're here enjoying the morning please come along and check out our wonderful displays in our library and Multipurpose Room. Don’t forget to vote for your favourite class display!

SHS Transition

Our Year 6 students will engage in a transition day experience to Smithton High School on Thursday 12th September. Letters have been sent home today to our Year 6 families with all of the information.

Parents & Friends Association

Our P&F are planning a major fundraiser event for our community, at this stage "Save the Date' - Saturday 19th October is all I can say - watch this space!

Please always remember that my door is always open, and I appreciate any feedback that will contribute to making Forest Primary the best place for our students to learn and grow.

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In English 3/4 are continuing with our narratives that we started towards the end of first term. We had put them aside so we could go back and reflect on our writing, add more descriptive language, conjunctions and speech to create a second draft that shows our learning to date.

In Maths we have been looking at partitioning specifically fractions and what they mean. We may have even used yummy, sweet treats to help develop our understanding and boy did it work!

But most exciting of all we are beginning a HASS project on the First Fleet. We know there were 11 ships in the First Fleet and have looked at what the ships were for and are researching the history of our chosen ship.

All of this happened before the 3/4 students became one class. Fortunately, we have been doing the same things and therefore have had a smooth transition. On our first day as one class we looked at our book week book, did some maths, a team building activity and designed our potatoes for the Potato Olympics.

Big congratulations to the following students who have been elected for the Student Council for Term 3 and 4.

They all wrote speeches and presented these to their class and were then elected by their class mates.

Montie Thorp, Judson Hills, Charlie Payne, Layla Thorp, Kyra Coates, Amber van Norden, Tex Walker and Isabelle Heald.

I look forward to working with you all and planning some exciting activities for the school.

Miss Pop.

Today’s fun activity is Matching Games!

This activity helps your child develop thinking (or cognitive) skills.

We use these important skills every day to help us make decisions, think, plan, read, do maths, concentrate, and understand things.

How you can help at home?

Play this game (and others like it) lots of times, it helps your child learn and practice these skills.

Ask your child’s teacher for more ideas!

#BrightLivesPositiveFutures

Our Orphan Lambs Rambo and Sissy Girl: Our success story

We are thrilled to share the wonderful progress of our orphan lambs, Rambo and Sissy Girl. These little champions are now weaned and happily feasting 24/7 on grass, grain, and sneaky bread scraps from our breakfast club. Their friendly nature is a result of being so well hand-raised. The bond our students have formed with Rambo and Sissy Girl is heartwarming and a true testament to the care and dedication of our Year 5 class, well done grade 5.

Publishing Picture Books: Narrative Writing Unit Our budding authors are hard at work preparing to publish their very own hardcover picture books! This exciting project is a key part of our narrative writing unit, where students have been focusing on their rich descriptive language, storytelling skills, creating imaginative plots, and developing vibrant illustrations. We can't wait to see the final products and share these creative masterpieces with you.

Science Spotlight: Protecting the Tasmanian Devil In our science lessons, we've been focusing on the protection of the Tasmanian Devil in preparation for the Circular Head Science Gig. An exciting highlight was a Zoom call with experts from the Save the Devil Appeal, which provided invaluable insights and inspiration for our project. Our students are eager to contribute to the conservation efforts for this iconic species. We also had an exciting opportunity alongside prep/1 Cox to plant seedlings in the wetlands for ‘world tree day’ with the guidance of Sustainable Timbers Australia, which will help to protect and grow our wetlands environment for our wildlife.

Mathematics: Partitioning Fun with Chocolate We have started the term with a bang in maths, focusing on our partitioning unit in mathematics, and what better way to learn than with chocolate! We have discovered hands-on activities are highly successful for this cohort, so we have started by breaking down and sharing chocolate blocks, making concepts concrete and delicious.

HASS: Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes In HASS, we're combining Geography learning with a heartwarming project: creating Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.. To support this cause, we will be hosting a Grade 5 bake sale to raise funds for the shipping of these boxes. Students will also have the opportunity to track the journey of their shoeboxes, seeing the impact of their generosity.

In celebration of International Friendship Day, our kindergarten class enjoyed a heartwarming and educational day focused on the importance of being a good friend. We started by listening to a story about a "not-so-friendly" friend, sparking a lively discussion about what it means to be kind and how we can show friendship to others. Each student contributed to creating our own class book, filled with ideas and illustrations of ways to be a good friend. We also made a colorful chain of paper people, each one sharing a unique example of kindness. To end our special day, we made hot chocolates, symbolising that friendship feels like a warm hug in a mug. It was a wonderful day of learning and bonding, reinforcing the values of kindness and community in our classroom.