Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Days!
All Christian College campuses will open their doors on May 2 in the first of our Open Days for 2023.
This is an opportunity for parents/guardians and families who are considering Christian College as an option for their young people to visit one or more of our campuses, meet students, teachers and campus leaders, tour facilities, visit classes in progress and have their questions answered. It provides an authentic insight to how our College operates on a day-to-day basis. For those considering either Junior School-Belmont or Surf Coast Campus, please note our Early Learning Centres - Williams House in Belmont and Butterfield House in Torquay - will also be open for visitation at the same time as the campuses.
No booking is required, with campuses open at the following times:
Junior School-Belmont: 9:30 – 11:00am
Bellarine Campus: 9:30 – 11:00am
Surf Coast Campus: 9:30 – 11:30am
Middle School-Highton: – 11:15am – 12:45pm
Senior School-Waurn Ponds: – 11:30am – 1:00pm
If you have friends or acquaintances who are considering schooling options at any level, from Prep through to Year 12, please encourage them to take this opportunity to visit our campuses on May 2.
Any interested families who are unable to attend on May 2 can book a tour at any campus at a time that suits them by visiting our website and clicking on ‘Book a Tour’.
From The Chaplain – Jesus in the Storm
Mark 4:35-41
That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
As the term is in full swing and the days are often very full, I am reminded of the big days Jesus and His disciples had during Jesus’ teaching. One of these days is recounted in Mark 4, a day full of Jesus chatting and sharing parables with people and at the end of this day, Jesus hopped into a boat with his closest people and sailed across the Lake of Galilee, planning to see a man on the other side. During this journey, a big storm rolls in and as Jesus sleeps from exhaustion on the boat, the other people are terrified for their lives, thinking the boat is going to sink.
In this moment, when Jesus was woken by the disciples in fear, Jesus could have done many things, and in fact, He also could have disregarded their worries and returned to sleep. Instead, what Jesus chose to do in that moment was hear His people and calm the storm, an action that shows that Jesus sees, hears and cares for people.
There are many storms in life, and this story can bring many questions with it – why was there a storm? And why is my storm not calmed? These questions are not answered for us in this story; however it does paint us a picture of Jesus sitting in the boat with His people and journeying that storm with them. In that moment, when Jesus could have done many things, Jesus chose to care for His people and hear them in their time of concern and need.
What’s On at Junior School
Week 8 –
Monday 20 March – Harmony Week
Monday 20 March – NAPLAN Year 3 Conventions of Language
Tuesday 21 March – NAPLAN Year 3 Numeracy
Tuesday 21 March – Lunchtime Concert
Friday 24 March – Casual Dress Day, Colour theme of ORANGE for Harmony Week (Gold Coin donation not required)
Week 9-
Monday 27 March – Prep AFL Coaching Incursion (Please refer to EdSmart notification) Thursday 30 March – Year 2 Excursion, Geelong (Please refer to EdSmart notification)
Friday 31 March – Assembly, 3G Class Item
Friday 31 March – Prep Discovery Learning Excursion, Prep B, G, and R
Week 10-
Monday 3 April – Year 4 students to attend Concert Band performance, R. Gibson Centre for Music Performance, Senior School (EdSmart notification to follow)
Tuesday 4 April – Lunchtime Concert
Wednesday 5 April – Year 4 Students attend Middle School Athletics – Middle School Campus
Wednesday 5 April – Preps at school in lieu of Friday
Thursday 6 April – Easter Bonnet Parade – 9am, Junior School Roundabout
Thursday 6 April – Easter Service – 11:30am
Thursday 6 April – Conclusion of Term 1 – 2:30pm Dismissal
Term 2 Week 1 –
Tuesday 25 April – ANZAC Day Public Holiday
Wednesday 26 April – First day Term 2
Wednesday 26 April – Junior School ANZAC Service, 9am, front roundabout. Families welcome!
Friday 28 April – Junior School Cross Country running event, (details to come!)
Project Care
On 6th February 2023, an earthquake struck southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria. As blessed as we are in our country, we feel it is our mission to give to different communities and the news of a nation in need really resonated with all of us.
Our Christian College community always comes together to support people and charities raising money to provide relief for the individuals and families affected so we have been busy creating handmade items to raise money. We managed to raise a grand total of $600.95, which is incredibly generous of our Junior School Community.
We are so grateful for our community in the way they have given to those in need – Thank you everyone so much for your generosity and visiting our stall!
Pieper, Maya, Remi, Ebony, Hannah and Elodie
The Project Care Team
Building our Muscles!
Did you know that you need a strong core and gross motor skills to be able to have effective fine motor skills? In Prep we do lots of things to build our core and gross motor skills so that we can draw and write with more accuracy and precision.
Gross motor skills help with coordination, big movements, muscle endurance, balance and strength in the core. This then leads into our fine motor skills such as grasping, pinching, object manipulation, drawing and writing.
You will see the Prep children lying on their tummies while they are writing, this helps the upper body strength and core muscles. The Prep children also do PMP, (Perceptual Motor Program) in their Physical Education classes, again developing their motor skills.
This week the Prep children have been practising their number formation using a combination of gross and fine motor skills. We headed outside with paint brushes and water to write our numbers above eye level, at eye level and down low. This adjustment of the body again assists in pushing the muscles to work in different ways and develop further.
Lots of fun was had as we had a go at forming our numbers correctly. Instant feedback was provided and we were able to fix those reversals or incorrect starting points straight away.
There were lots of smiling faces too as we painted the walls!
MoPA
On Wednesday 15th March the Prep children headed off to MoPA for their first excursion of the year. It was very exciting to be at school on a Wednesday and extra exciting to be off on an excursion! The Museum of Play and Art has been set up to allow children to really explore with all of their senses. There are opportunities for them to collaborate, be creative and develop their communication skills.
At the start of our school year this is such a fabulous chance for the cohort to spend more time together. We work hard to develop relationships across the year level and allow for children to learn and play together.
We were able to break up into smaller groups and participate in different learning opportunities. The children got to dress up and put on a performance, design and test a car, create a dam, climb, listen to a story and the favourite for many, paint a car!
Here are some comments from the Prep children:
I like playing because it’s fun. – Hazel
I really love playing with the LEGO in the water because you can stop the water! – Ryan
It was fun doing all of it because it’s the best time of my life! – Penelope
I like the blocks because I can build a wall. – Yohan
Painting the car was so much fun! – Lucjan
I loved everything because it was fun. – Anna
The colouring was the best because I liked the long legs of the elephant. – Annie
My favourite was the car jumping because it was so fun watching them jump to the other one. – Aarush
I like painting the car because it was a car. – Sonny
I liked building the blocks because they went so high. – Florence
I loved building because I like building stuff. – Piper
It was fun doing the building in the water because I liked making a dam. – Cillian
Year 1: A Community of Writers
During this term, the children have been working hard building and demonstrating their language skills. They have been provided with opportunities to consolidate and extend their learning as they have completed a range of activities encompassing the different areas of Literacy.
As part of our Reading and Writing program, the children read the picture book ‘Nanna’s Button Tin’ which explores the sharing of family memories between a young child and her grandmother, as they search for a ‘button’ to mend a teddy bear. During our class discussions, the children were encouraged to share their special memories in order to make their own connections with the text.
The picture book is filled with adjectives and great detail. The children were then set the task of writing their own descriptions about a favourite toy. They were encouraged to add lots of information so that their audience would be able to build a picture in their minds of the special toys as they read the descriptions. The students enjoyed sharing their written pieces and illustrations with their friends.
When children can make links in their learning, this helps them to build their understanding and develop strategies to problem-solve, as they are presented with new concepts and ideas. In Year 1, we are looking forward to continuing to make connections between our reading and writing…helping to build a community of readers and writers.
I am Proud of… I am Working on…
The Year 4’s have made a positive start to the year and have been engaging in their learning through goal setting. We have been linking our goals to our ‘essential learning’, the Australian curriculum and what skills we want to grow. This has been an encouraging process where students have been able to take ownership of their learning and display their goals in various ways. Students then seek ways to develop their skills and participate in learning activities that help them achieve their goal. This is a great way for students and teachers to target certain abilities, while encompassing all learning outcomes.
In 4G we have also begun looking for certain elements that we are proud of in our tasks and explaining why we have highlighted these areas of our learning. This visible thinking skill helps us identify the essence of ideas from reading, watching, or listening in non-verbal ways by using a colour, symbol, or image to represent the ideas. This routine also facilitates the discussion of a text or event as students share their colours, symbols, and images. Check out some of the goal setting we have begun to do in 4G!
‘Unplugged’ Activities in Digital Learning
Did you know that not all learning taking place during Digital Technologies classes involves using an actual computer? We call these activities ‘unplugged’, and they are designed to help support students with their understanding of general computing concepts or development of specific skill sets.
Unplugged activities are ‘hands-on’ activities that assist with re-enforcing the subject content that the class is working through and assist students with demonstrating their knowledge acquisition through multi-model means of participation and engagement.
Year 1 students this term, have been learning about Online Safety this term, combining both computer based and unplugged activities into our weekly sessions. We have discussed safely using the internet, when not to go online and what rules we should follow to keep us and our families safe while exploring the difference between our public and personal information, and what is safe and unsafe to share.
Year 2 students this term are in awe with how technology has changed over the years. It’s a strange concept for our young learners to grasp, a world without the internet and its conveniences. We have explored and compared ‘old fashioned’ rotary phones, television sets, computers and laptops as well as VHS and cassette tapes for music, while making predictions for where technology may lead to in the future.
The end of Term 1 is fast approaching but our learning journey in Digital Technologies is just warming up.
Middle School House Swimming Carnival
Last Friday, March 10, Year 4 students attended the Middle School House Swimming Carnival at Kardinia Aquatic Centre. Students had opportunities to swim in freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly events, participate in the novelty events and go on the waterslide. It was pleasing to watch the Junior School students support their peers and students from Middle School and contribute to the carnival atmosphere.
Penman house were the overall winners, closely followed by Burrows, Flynn and Taylor. Congratulations goes to all our students who participated contributing valuable house points. At Year 4, medals were awarded to the first three places for both boys and girls who accumulated the most points in the swimming events.
Girls Boys
1st – Remi Welsford 1st – Xavier O’Brien
2nd – Maya Brenner 2nd – Ned Simon
3rd – Isabelle Hughes 3rd – Alex Upham
It was great to see the number of Year 4 students participate in the dress up competition, with Myles Wheate winning the Penman House dress up competition!
We thank the Middle School staff, particularly the HPE and Sport faculty, for including our students in the carnival. Thank you to the Year 4 staff members who made sure students had an enjoyable day.
Lastly a huge thank you to all the students who attended, participated and supported their house at this wonderful event.
Year 4s get Into the Groove in the Music Classroom
In the Music classroom Year 4 students have been collaborating in small groups to create rhythmic compositions. These songs are performed using a mixture of traditional percussion instruments, body percussion and everyday objects such as chairs, boxes, bins etc. Students have been exploring different elements that can be used to enhance their music such as dynamics, texture and timbre and are using these elements to help make their songs interesting and evolving.
Many of these rhythmic songs have been composed based on a contextual idea or theme where the students are acting and performing their song in a specific setting. Some of these include a classroom setting where a teacher tries to maintain order as their class continues to misbehave by tapping the tables, an office setting where workers start to have fun playing music while on their coffee break and a football team who are drumming and chanting on the bus on the way to their match.
It is wonderful to see the students using their creativity and passion to create truly unique pieces of music.
Spotlight on Clubs – Computer Club!
Computer Club at Junior School is held every Thursday during lunchtime, in the Digital Technologies Room. All students are welcome to attend.
The schedule for students to attend is on a rotating fortnightly basis, with Prep and Year 3 students attending together (odd weeks) and Year 1 and Year 2 students attending together (even weeks), where students have the opportunity to learn from and with, other students who share similar areas of computer interest, across the campus.
Year 4 students have the option of attending each week, bringing their own device and setting up in the special ‘Yr4 only’ room next door to Digital Technologies.
During our sessions, we explore learning activities on the devices to further develop our digital literacy capabilities and progress our digital learning skills. Students can choose to focus on activities involving keyboard familiarisation, mouse familiarisation, touch typing, digital drawing, coding and of course, Minecraft Education.
Camp Australia Newsletter
Families with a Newly Enrolled Child This Year: Qustodio Parent App
Activate or add new students to your Qustodio parent account.
An important element of the College's Cyber Safe Schools Program is our commitment to supporting families and parents with managing their children’s digital devices in the home, especially the College laptop.
This week, families that have one or more children who are new to the College this year received an email invitation toactivate their Qustodio parent account or add newly enrolled students to their existing Qustodio account, as part of our school program.
Qustodio is a parental control and monitoring app that we offer our parents as part of our school program. This app provides parents monitoring on personal devices and the school laptop, as well as the ability to pause internet as desired outside of school hours. Use of Qustodio is optional, and parents can learn more information about Qustodio on our Online Safety Hub.
The Qustodio parent app is available to all College families, and families with existing students in 2022 were invited to activate their parent account in November of last year. Families that have not yet activated their account and wish to, can do so by using the College’s activate now link and entering the assigned primary email for the family (as detailed in the invitation sent last year).
More Information
- Parents can learn more about our broader Cyber Safe Schools Program that the Qustodio parent app is a part of, via this information brochure.
- Parents and guardians can access technical support for the use of Qustodio on personal devices at home, via Qustodio’s Help Center.
- For support with Qustodio and school devices at home, there is a useful help page on our Online Safety Hub.
Make a Vertical Garden at Back Creek Café!
Back Creek Café in Meredith proudly presents the first of several planned craft workshops – come along and discover how to create your own vertical garden. Two workshops are running on Saturday May 6 – at 10:30am and 1:00pm, conducted by Kathy from Coburg nursery, TD2M. Build your own standing or hanging frame, create a vertical garden to take home and learn about soils and mosses used in the process along the way.
Cost for the workshop is $90 per person with all you need provided. While you’re there, enjoy some of Back Creek Café’s delicious fare!
To book for the workshop, contact the café on 5286 1166.