Kornmehl

Terry Aizen – Director of Kornmehl

Biggest Morning Tea

The Pre-school held a fabulous Biggest Morning Tea last week on Thursday morning. It was beautiful to see the community come together to help raise money for such an important cause that impacts the lives of so many.

There was a warm, relaxed atmosphere with lots of time to schmooze and catch up with a coffee and a yummy treat. A big shout out to Justin Model from the Mugg Shot for donating his time and expertise to support this event, as well as to Jesse’s Bakery and Grandma Moses Bakery for donating the delicious treats. Thank you to Mrs Sarah Robuck for the donation of a huge fruit box and to Mrs Leia Lewis for initiating this event and her help in co-ordinating it.

In total we raised over $2000.00. A huge effort from our school community. Thank you to everyone who came and donated so generously.

Shavuot

Our main teaching intent for the festival of Shavuot is for the children to feel a connection to Israel and their Jewish heritage, as well to think deeply about kindness. This is done through the telling of the story of Ruth and Boaz.

We also explain that Shavuot marks the time when Moses went to Mount Sinai to claim the Ten Commandments from Hashem. We spent time with the children unpacking the meaning of rules and a discussion around the Ten Commandments and making our own set of rules for our classroom.

During the week, the children decorated their Bikkurim boxes and helped to pack their non-perishable items into their boxes ready for our Bikkurim parade.

Educator: Why have you brought all this food to Pre-school?
Freddy: To donate to the people who don’t have.
Ziggy: Because it’s for the people who don’t have enough money to buy it.

We celebrated Shavuot on Thursday with a Bikkurim parade and yummy milk lunch, consisting of macaroni and cheese and ice-cream. The children came to school dressed in red, orange, yellow or green. We made colourful crowns to wear on the day. We collected a generous supply of dried and tinned food to donate to Oz Harvest.

Many thanks to our parent helpers Mrs Laura Gordon and Mrs Jessica Ivany. Your support is very much appreciated.

Some comments about Shavuot:

Winnie: I liked the ice-cream.
Sofia: We bring food for our baskets. We had ice-cream and pasta. I decorated my box with flowers and love hearts.
Lexi: We had pasta and ice-cream. I liked the dancing.
Ella: I liked Shavuot because we had ice-cream and pasta.
Milan: I wore a flower dress and leaves in my hair.

Care Packs

This week all the Care Packs from many schools in Sydney have been dropped off at the Pre-school. Our foyer area has been filled with so many Care Packs. The packs will be collected during the week by Gunawirra and over the next few months they will be handed out to children in Aboriginal Pre-schools in regional and remote NSW. This project has been running since 2013 and to date we have donated over 7000 Care Packs to Gunawirra.

Gunawirra is a not-for-profit organisation working to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, families, and communities, to develop their full potential. Through their Five Big Ideas program, they reach out to pre-school children in regional and remote NSW. Gunawirra works in direct response to the needs and resources that the Centres require, with on-going collaboration and consultation. This program emphasises learning about Aboriginal culture, nutrition, storytelling, and Indigenous Art. The holistic work aims towards breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Our Care Pack drive reflects our commitment to these core ideas. Gunawirra’s website offers more details on the valuable work they do.

Having our Care Packs come in during National Reconciliation week has been extremely pertinent and a lovely way to connect this act of kindness to giving back and helping others in our community.

A huge thank you to all our Kornmehl and Emanuel School families who donated a Care Pack to this worthwhile cause.

Reconciliation Week

This week we have been reflecting, learning, and discussing National Reconciliation Week with the children. It is a time dedicated to building positive, respectful relationships between Australians and celebrating Indigenous culture.

The National Reconciliation Week 2023 theme is ‘Be A Voice for Generations‘. Reconciliation Australia is encouraging all Australians to be a voice for reconciliation in tangible ways in their everyday lives. It is a time to address the unfinished business of Reconciliation so we can make change for the benefit of all Australians.

We appreciate it is difficult for children this young to understand what Reconciliation means. However, we decided to look at the idea behind ownership and acknowledging that Indigenous People were the first ones to live in Australia.

We posed the question: “Does anybody know who was living in Australia when Captain Cook and the White People arrived in the land?”

Ella: The Aboriginal People.
Ziggy: The Australian people, the ones from Australia, the Jewish.
Hudson: I have Captain Cook in one of my books.
Alma: Before the white people came, there were black people.

We had a short discussion about what life was like for Aboriginal People, thousands of years ago: where they lived, where they slept, what they ate, how they caught their food. We discussed how well the Aboriginal People looked after the land and the animals before colonisation. We gave the example of going hunting for food and only killing one kangaroo, using all parts of the animal: the fur skin for blankets, the meat to eat and the bones to make tools.

We spoke about the White People taking the land from the Aboriginal People. We posed the question:

How would you feel if someone took your land and built a house on there?

Abbie: They could have lived here and shared the land. They were first and they had to go to another place to find food. Not fair.
Ziggy: Blue, sad. And the Aboriginal People were looking after the land.
Josh: On red, they took your land and were not strong enough to fight you back.
Oscar: They were here first.
Ziggy: Why do I need to apologise? I wasn’t even there.

Ziggy raised a thoughtful question. So, we explained that saying sorry on behalf of what the white people did a long time ago is the right thing to do. We explained we shouldn’t feel guilty for the injustice that took place at that time. Instead, we spoke about the importance of acknowledging the injustice and looking at the unfinished business of reconciliation.

We thought about ways that we can help to resolve this problem:

Alma: By taking the Aboriginal People back and give them their land back.
Abbie: By sharing the land. We can have one house and they can have one.
Freddy: We use words, we talk.

We read the book: Stories for Simon by Lisa Sarzin. The children were very interested in the book.

Daisy: That’s not nice to take her away from her family. They need to say sorry.
Juliette: I saw someone take away a boy from his family on television. It’s not nice.

We did a role play using dolls. One of the dolls was an Aboriginal doll and the other doll was nasty because it took the Aboriginal doll’s things away. It helped the children understand why we need to say sorry. The children are learning about the word respect.

We are learning some Indigenous songs. Inanay and Ngaya Nana. The children played their tapping sticks to the music. They watched a YouTube clip of people playing tapping sticks and singing the songs on our new interactive big screen. We are learning what the Aboriginal words in the songs mean.

Year 11 Hospitality Tea

The Dolphin group were invited by the Year 11 Hospitality students at Emanuel School to attend an afternoon tea on Tuesday. We arrived to find the table outside the hospitality rooms set beautifully for their guests. The children sat down and were very excited. The Year 11 students were the waiters and waitresses, making, serving and delivering yummy milkshakes, babychino’s and orange juice and offering the children a choice of yummy afternoon treats – fairy bread, choc chip cookies and watermelon. Thank you to their teacher Mrs Lara Ephron and their Year 11 representative Timothy Simon (an ex Kornmehl student) for organising this wonderful collaborative event.