1

From our Principal

From our Office

Friday 20th September 2019

PH: 4733 0388

Dear Parents, Carers, Family and Community Members,

End of Term 3 already! We’ve enjoyed Education Week, Pirate Day and amazing learning in each and every room, we’ve welcomed more families to the community. Finally, farewelling a staff member, Kerry H, who is off to enjoy a new experience with her family. Go well, Kerry – good luck and best wishes to your family! AWARDING TIME On Wednesday, Kimberley and Alyssa, on behalf of the team leading literacy across the school, accepted an award from our Executive Director, Cathy Brennan. The award was to acknowledge the tremendous work that Kimberley, Alyssa, Alison and Betty have led to ensure each and every student at the school is engaging in literacy, learning to read and write. It’s a tremendous achievement that was acknowledged by our Director, Kay Rigas – who was there cheering on the team as I was on a short break. Thank you everyone – what a wonderful acknowledgement, and I hope you enjoy seeing your child’s literacy in action on Seesaw.

WORKING BEE Tracy (GA) and I are looking forward to our working bee on Saturday 28th – the bike track has some work that we need to complete! We’re looking forward to all the wonderful men in the children’s lives meeting and connecting too – see you there! Sausages will be sizzled and we hope the weather is kind to us this time! STAY AND PLAY Our holiday Stay and Play is on again – it’s a great opportunity for families to meet and enjoy each other’s company with some great activities to keep everyone entertained. Do let us know by Monday if you are coming. Currently we have a fabulous turn out with 58 attending on Wednesday and 45 attending on Thursday.

CAR PARK

Thanks everyone for being safe, driving at 10kph and looking out for children while driving in our car park. We’ve had a few issues with the automatic gates this term – hopefully, all back to normal ready for the holidays.

Have a safe and happy holiday everyone – bring on Term 4

Kind regards,

Julie

PIRATE DAY:

HUGE thank you for all your support. Students looked amazing. This has been our 2nd biggest gold coin fundraiser yet-raising $215.00 . That’s a fantastic effort and we couldn’t do it without your help, so thank you all.

PAYMENTS:

With school holidays nearing we need to finalise our banking arrangements.

With this in mind—any CASH Payments for outstanding fees , excursions uniforms etc etc must be paid to office by Wednesday 25th Sept 9:30am at the latest, however beyond this date you can still pay via our online option or eftpos at front desk.

FEES:

Term 4 can be an expensive term for all, so please try to

have any outstanding fees paid so there are no surprises before the xmas break– again, if you need to pay them off, just visit our lovely ladies in the office and they’ll be happy to chat and arrange a payment plan.

Thank you to all the families who visit us regularly at our office.

We thoroughly enjoy your visits and love to have you as a part of our community.

Further in our newsletter you will see there are so many local school holidays activities, including events happening at our school.

Enjoy what’s available– wishing you a happy and safe holidays.

Regards

Kisane, Angela, Elisha & Chris

2

Welcome to Yellow Block News

HOMEBASE YELLOW

Wow! We are already at the end of Term 3! What a fun term it has been! We have had a blast at Gymnastics from weeks 4-8. Yellow block got to have a go first, what a great way to start the day, letting go of some extra energy so we are ready to learn when we go back to class and learn some new ways to move our bodies.

We also got to enjoy the toy library incursion – Thank you Julie B for organising. We got to play with toys connected to switches, puzzles and cool sensory items too!

We celebrated Pirate day this week and enjoyed some yummy cupcakes to fundraise for our first formal – How exciting!

Next term we are looking forward to our sports carnival and another incursion for science day. Have a happy and safe holiday everyone and see you next term!

Also a big thank you to Kerry for all your hard work, you will be missed! Enjoy Sunny Queensland!

Leanne, Jodie P, Jodie C, Lorette , Julie B, Shayal, Donna, Sam, Kimberley C, Rebecca L, Kerrie H.

3

HOMEBASE BLUE

It does not seem possible that we are already at the end of Term 3! What a busy and exciting term Blue Block have had. One of our most exciting things this term has been our weekly gymnastics sessions. It has been amazing watching the students’ gross motor skills grow over the weeks, and even better seeing how much all of the students enjoyed gym. There were a range of activities on offer at gym – balancing on the balance beam, swinging from the bar, practising somersaults and jumping on the trampoline, just to name a few. The gym instructors made sure everyone got to participate, so all of the kids had a chance to develop their skills. A big thank you to the instructors for all of their hard work, and Julie Bennett for organising. We had so much fun!

Blue Block students also got to participate in the school’s toy library incursion. This involved the students engaging with a range of switch toys, puzzles, books and sensory toys courtesy of Penrith Library. Everyone loved exploring the different activities, and it was great to see the students choosing to interact with activities they wouldn’t usually choose. We especially loved seeing the kids making different structures out of wooden blocks, with many proudly showing off their creations. Fantastic effort, Blue Block!

As the term comes to a close, staff are beginning to put forward nominations for next term’s Block Leader. A big thank you to Jace in Blue 5 for all of his hard work as Block Leader this term – you have done an awesome job helping out with the day-to-day running of the block, Jace! The end of term will also see us farewell one of our students – Melanie of Blue 5. We are very sad to see Melanie leave, but we are also very excited to see what the future has in store for her at her new school. Keep in touch, Mel – we’ll miss you!

Thanks for a great term, Blue Block, and we hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

Tara D, Kimberley R, Deb, Ashleigh, Vicki N, Shania, Linda, Cheryl, Ben and Mirelle.

Welcome to Blue Block News Term 3 Week 3

4

HOMEBASE ORANGE

Welcome to Orange Block News

What a great 3 weeks we have had since our last newsletter! The students have LOVED the gym classes they have been able to attend each Thursday. They have been working on a number of skills, such as balancing and bouncing and swinging. The swinging bar is a favourite, as are the parallel bars. Congratulations to all of the students who really tried their best in their gym sessions. Thank you to Julie B (from Yellow Block) for organising such a fabulous program for the school.

While learning about our amazing bodies, all of Orange Block combined to take part in an afternoon exploring our five senses. We travelled around different classrooms to explore smell (lemons and mint and eucalyptus), sight (lots of light toys and sensory bottles were so much fun), sound (what a fun musical time) and touch (we tried lots of different textures and temperatures). We ended with most of us having a taste of a variety of different types of flavours. We enjoyed this time of exploration very much.

We have been enjoying the wonderful world of poetry in our English sessions. The rhymes are fun, as is the descriptive language. We deepen our understanding of the poems by reading books and other texts on the same subject, and we love a bit of art and craft too.

This week we had fun at pirate day as we raised money for our Year 12 formal. Thank you to the students in Green Block for the delicious treats.

Another busy term is coming to an end. Our students

are all starting to look and act very tired, so they will

be glad to have a couple of weeks to recharge for

another fun term ahead. Enjoy this special time of

rest with your families and we will be looking

forward to another fun term.

Alyssa, Kayla, Tyrone, Danielle, Jen, Naomi, Kylie, Jess and Olivia.

5

HOMEBASE GREEN

Welcome to Green Block News

Yarrrr me hearties!!! Green Block has bravely sailed the seven seas to bring the treasure of cupcakes to the rest of the swashbuckling Fernhill School! All classes got into the spirit of pirate day which has been a great help for our Year 12 formal. An incredible $215 was raised for the event and we are very grateful for all the generosity of our Fernhill community.

Can you believe we are at the end of term already? As we move towards the school holidays, some of our favourite activities are wrapping up. It has been brilliant to see how much enthusiasm and how far our student’s gymnastics ability has grown from our weekly sessions. The improvement in skills in soccer and dancing has also been phenomenal, it truly has been an active and exciting term!

Thank you to this term’s block leader- Joseph who has done an awesome job in representing Green Block and is always punctual in the delivering the notes for our classes!

Have a safe and happy holiday and we will see everyone in Term 4!

Bye for now, Nathan, Vicki S, Kirsty, Kerry G, Vicky H, Rachael, Tania, Rebecca C, Daniel, Natasha, Meredith.

6

7

FERNHILL SCHOOL P&C

On August 26th 2019 the Fernhill School P&C held their Annual General Meeting;

Our congratulations to the following people who were elected to drive the P&C and support our school:

President: Donna Buda

Vice President: Trinity Day

Vice President: Amy Rose O’Neil

Secretary: Lee-Anne Tandy

Treasurer: Enoka Silva

The P&C would like to thank our previous office Bearers for their hard work, their dedication and continual support of our School.

We invite family and community members to attend our next P&C meeting to be held on 28th October 2019 at 9.30am. The duration of most meetings is an hour and a half maximum and we aim to make them as enjoyable as possible. Joining the P&C is a wonderful opportunity to make a difference to your children’s environment and it is also a great opportunity to meet others who care about the school community.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Donna Buda Fernhill School P&C President.

8

FERNHILL COMMUNITY NOTICES

As a parent of a Child with special needs I know when I come across something that works I want to shout it from the rooftops so here goes:

"I LOVE BILLY Footwear"

For years I struggled to find footwear for Annelise that would, 1. Fit over AFO's and not be 3 sizes too big and 2. Be cool, trendy and fashionable (most specific special needs products are bland, boring and ugly). Then I came across BILLY Footwear, finally they are shipping to Australia and I couldn't wait to get my hands on our first order. It only took a week to arrive.

BILLY Footwear incorporates zippers that go along the side of the shoes and around the toe, allowing the upper of each shoe to open and fold over completely. Thus the wearer can place their foot onto the shoe foot bed unobstructed. Then with a tug on the zipper-pull the shoe closes and secures overtop the user's foot. It's simple! It's easy! For the first time I was not getting up a sweat trying to get a pair of shoes on Annelise! BILLY Footwear comes in a huge range of Colours, they now have sizes from toddler to adult and they have high top boots and a shoe. I just wanted to add a little background about the co-founder of BILLY Footwear, Billy Price.

Well, after breaking his neck from a three-story fall In October of 1996, our co-founder, Billy, became paralysed from the chest down and lost the ability to move much of his body, Including his fingers. Not only did he suddenly face mobility challenges, but daily tasks that he took for granted, such as putting on clothes, became much more difficult. Throughout the years he learned tricks for getting dressed more easily but that said, the one piece of clothing that always eluded him was shoes—he never found a pair of shoes that he felt were both attractive and that he could put on Independently.

Fast forward half a lifetime later, the solution was born. Between Billy’s propensity for problem-solving and Darin’s spark for business innovation, they created a prototype that fulfilled Billy’s personal needs. But the solution Billy was seeking for his own challenges grew into something bigger it became a mission to create mainstream shoes that are functional, fashionable, and inclusive for everyone.

It is clear that the world is ready for greater inclusion in fashion. Everybody is unique and we all want to express ourselves and feel confident. BILLY Footwear is proud to be a part of this movement.

Check out their website: www.bIllyfootwear.com.

Annelise's Mum- Donna Buda

9

FERNHILL CARERS AND FAMILIES

To all of our wonderful Fernhill Carers and Family Members, you are in our thoughts. Your hard work and selfless efforts are truly cherished and recognised.

10

Turn the River Pink Raising funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation

One in seven women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. NBCF has an aspirational goal of zero deaths from breast cancer by 2030 and they rely on the support of the community to help achieve this goal. Come join us for a fun filled morning and get behind such a great cause.

Details:

Join us for our third annual pink run/walk around the Nepean River to create awareness and raise money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Dress in your craziest pink outfit!!!

A BBQ breakfast will be available at the end of the run for a gold coin donation and the event should finish no later than 11:00am

Registration can be done online at ttrp.com.au

Don’t forget to click “going” on our Turn The River Pink 2019 Facebook Page!

Registration: 7:30am

Start Time: 8:00am

Date: Saturday 12th October

Where: Nepean River – Tench Reserve - Tench Ave, Penrith

Distance: Approximately 7km

Cost: Under 12 years are FREE, 12 - 18 $10, 18+ $25

Please look for Pink Balloons

FERNHILL COMMUNITY NOTICES

11

FERNHILL COMMUNITY NOTICES

12

HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

13

HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

14

HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

15

HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

16

HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

17

HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

18

Kylie’s Kitchen Budget Tips

FERNHILL COMMUNITY NOTICES

19

HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

20

FERNHILL SCHOOL l 12-40 Ridgetop Drive, GLENMORE PARK NSW 2745 l PRINCIPAL: Julie Raciborska l

PH: 02 4733 0388 l FAX: 02 4733 0644 l E: fernhill-s.school@det.nsw.edu.au l www.fernhill-s.schools.nsw.edu.au

CONTACT US

FERNHILL School - Term 3 2019

Term

3

MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

9

16th Sept

P&C MEETING - 9.30

17th Sept 18th Sept

PIRATE DAY & Cupcake

Stall

19th Sept 20th Sept

10

23rd Sept

PARENT CUPPA AND

CHAT 9.30

24th Sept 25th Sept 26th Sept

P&C RAFFLE DRAWN

27th Sept

LAST DAY OF TERM 3

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

Hols

FERNHILL School - Term 4 2019

Term

4 MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

1

14th Oct

15th Oct

16th Oct

17th Oct 18th Oct

2

21st Oct 22nd Oct 23rd Oct 24th Oct

25th Oct

SPORT CARNIVAL

PARENT CUPPA AND

CHAT 9.30

3

28th Oct

P & C MEETING - 9.30

29th Oct

30th Oct

31st Oct

1st Nov

4

4th Nov

SCIENCE WEEK

5th Nov

MELBOURNE CUP

6th Nov 7th Nov

PARENT CUPPA AND

CHAT 9.30

8th Nov