Kornmehl

Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

Parent/Teacher interviews

We have now completed all our Starfish and Dolphin Parent/Teacher interviews and just have the Seashell interviews next week. We hope the parents found this chance to meet with the teachers informative and enjoyed hearing about their child’s progress and development.

We trust that parents are also enjoying the posts on Educe, our online communication and e-portfolio system. This system helps parents to connect with their child’s learning on a daily basis and to provide feedback and comments to the educators, thus creating a partnership for learning.

Collection of pre-loved toys and books

Our toy collection has started today and will continue Monday and Tuesday next week. Please bring in all your pre-loved toys and books in good condition to send to the Aboriginal Pre-schools in outback Australia. These schools are in desperate need of quality resources and materials. Through our book and toy collection each year, we have been able to help these pre-schools and bring a touch of happiness and learning into these children’s lives.

The toys will be collected by Gunawirra, a not-for-profit organisation in Redfern that will distribute the materials to these Pre-schools.

Buddy reading

Over the past few weeks we have been having Buddy Reading on alternate Tuesday and Thursday afternoons with the Year 2 children. It is so exciting when the children, especially siblings and previous Kornmehl students, come and read to us. This is a lovely program, encouraging both a love of literature and a strong sense of belonging within the school community.

Vitamin N (for Nature) – The essential guide to a nature-rich life by Richard Louv

Below is some information on a wonderful book for parents and educators about encouraging nature play and how to do this. Vitamin N is a complete prescription for connecting with the power and joy of the natural world. It’s a one-of-a-kind, comprehensive, and practical guidebook for the whole family and the wider community, including tips for parents eager to share nature with their kids. It is a dose of pure inspiration, reminding us that looking up at the stars or taking a walk in the woods is as exhilarating as it is essential, at any age.

Louv (The Nature Principle) proclaims the many advantages of reconnecting with nature, both for children and adults. For support, he points to studies that have found many potential benefits of spending time outdoors, such as reduced symptoms of ADHD, alleviation of anxiety and depression, decreased obesity, and improved immune system functioning. Many physicians are on-board and some are even prescribing nature time for their patients, but Louv sees parents as the most essential factor. Suggestions range from the most basic, such as hiking or building sand castles, to more adventurous activities, such as camping or horse riding.

Louv includes a superb chapter on building resilience and the importance of taking small, manageable risks; this section is a must-read for all parents. He also includes suggestions for grandparents, advice on how to “create your own nature gym,” and ideas for building nature-rich classrooms and communities. This book provides the tools to reclaim the wonders and health benefits of nature. The book promotes the following:

Grow outside: Make time for free, independent play for children, allowing them to explore and find answers on their own. Explore hundreds of traditional and new ways to connect your family to nature, including games that will not be digitised.
Create a restorative home or workplace: How to use native plants, indoor living walls, and a variety of other biophilic design techniques to make your home, yard and garden a place that improves the health of your family.
Explore nature, nearby or far: Whether you live in an inner-city neighbourhood, a suburb or in a rural area, you can enhance mental, physical and spiritual health at any age. Learn how other cultures connect with nature.
Reduce stress: Use nature time as healing time to escape the pressures of daily life. Learn how to calm a crying infant through nature, designate an outdoor sit spot as a place to read, think, and meditate.
Enhance fitness: Calorie for calorie, exercising outside offers more psychological and physical benefits than an indoor workout; how to build your own natural gym in the backyard or find a green trainer.
Raise resilient children: Fear of strangers and the outdoors is rooted in reality, but can be overcome. Learn how to be a “Hummingbird Parent.” Be a “weather warrior.” Don’t cut down that tree, build up the kid.
Build family bonding: How to connect more deeply with your children, teenagers, grandparents, spouse and friends through the power of the natural world. Learn how to join with other families to create a family nature club for safety and family connection.
Boost creativity: Playing and learning outdoors, building forts and tree houses, turning on all the newly discovered human senses (as many as 30 of them) helps children develop their problem-solving skills and creative thinking.
Balance the virtual with the real: Children who spend more time outside use more of their senses and develop “hybrid minds” – maximising the skills that come from both the virtual and the natural world.

Movie night

Movie night was a great success and we had a wonderful turnout of Kornmehl families.

The children arrived very excited and so happy to be attending what they see as the highlight of the year.

Toby: I liked watching the movie and coming to school in my pyjamas. I loved playing with the glow sticks.

Jordan: I liked watching the movie and seeing my friends.

Eden: I liked watching the birds in the movie. I ate all of my popcorn and all of my hotdog. It was yummy. I liked the way the glow sticks glowed in the dark.

Zella: I liked the lights on our hands. I watched the movie. I liked the blue bird.

Aria: I liked the bird movie. I ate sausage, popcorn and juice.

Micah: I liked the food and the movie. My favourite part was when the boy rode the motorbike.

Jessie: I liked the raffle present. The movie was good.

Ellie: I liked the popcorn and the apple juice.

Maddy: I liked the pictures for sale. My favourite was the Dolphin one with dots all around.

Sam: I liked the show and I had one glow stick. It shined in the stormy night.

Aya: I liked the show too. I just ate my sausage and popcorn.

Nadav: There were glowing up things. I watched the movie.

A big thank you must go to all our wonderful Parent Club organisers without whom the evening would not have been possible.

To Gail Stein, Sharon Miller and Lissa Prosser – Kol Hakavod. You all put in many hours to organise the event, and we appreciate all the effort that went into ensuring it was such a success.

Many thanks to Geoff Golovsky, our resident auctioneer.

Thank you to all the parents who helped on the night in so many different ways. We really appreciate your support and your help was invaluable.

This was our best movie night ever. We raised an amazing $2900!