Mansfield Primary School Newsletter

DON'T FORGET that TOMORROW FRIDAY 5th MARCH is a CURRICULUM DAY - NO STUDENTS required at school

Dear Families,

Curriculum Day Tomorrow

Whilst our students get a lovely Friday holiday tomorrow, our staff will be completing the second day of our Mental Health First Aid Training.  The first day gave staff the skills and confidence to support students and each other with regards to mental health.  I look forward to building on that work tomorrow.

International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is Monday 8th March.  The theme for 2021 is Choose to Challenge.  Challenging stereotypes, behaviour and bias is important as is celebrating successes and achievements.  So, to all our girls, female staff, mums, aunties, grandmas, female carers and community members, Happy International Women’s Day.

Library

Our Library has moved over to Nobian (which comes from the Tuangurung word for learn or ‘drink in knowledge’).  Moving all of the books over was a huge job over the holidays but sorting out the space and turning it into a functioning Library was even bigger.  Thank you to all the volunteers and staff for their help.  Most notably thank you to Elspeth Wagstaff and Narelle Stevenson for endless hours of support and Robyn Robinson for her direction.  Robbie will show staff through the new library during our break tomorrow and classes will be able to use the library from next week.

School Council Elections

Thank you to those family members who nominated for School Council for 2021-2022.  Our new school council members are Sarah Anstee, Rachel Parsons, Lisa Bennett and Michelle Hutchinson.  Joel Olver and Rachel Wolfe have nominated for another two-year term.  I look forward to working with our new school council for the year. 

Next year we will be seeking nominations from 3 parent and 1 community member.  Please consider nominating next time.  If you have any questions, please contact me tom.macmunn@education.vic.gov.au.     

Parent Teacher Meet and Greet

I hope you had an opportunity to meet your child’s teacher this week.  It has been lovely to have parents onsite and able to chat to staff.  Regular contact is important to support students with their learning and wellbeing.  Teachers can be contacted by email or a phone message.

New Families Pizza Night - Wednesday March 10th.

New Families to MPS – lock in this date.  The New Families Pizza Night is a great chance for new families to meet each other.  If you are a new family to MPS please come to the Shade Tree at 5:30pm on Wednesday March 10th and join us for some pizza and a chat.  Bring a chair, snacks and (non-alcoholic) drinks.

Swimming

The Regional Swim Carnival in Shepparton was a great success yesterday.  Jen Driessen took 17 swimmers with her and they all did a fantastic job.  Thank you Jen for supporting the kids and well done to all our swimmers.  A special mention to Kesi Wolfe (Breastroke), Seb Walker (Butterfly) and Jarrah Jackson (Butterfly) who will all be representing Mansfield Primary School at the State Championships in Melbourne on the 22nd April.

Like always, please get in touch with us with any questions or concerns.  Call or email your classroom teacher, call the front office or email me tom.macmunn@education.vic.gov.au.

Have a lovely long weekend.

Take Care,

Tom  

March 5th - Curriculum Day - Student Free Day

March 8th - Labour Day HOLIDAY

March 8th - 12th SSG Meetings

March 9th Grade 3-6 Swimming Carnival

March 10th - School Photos 

March 10th - New Families Pizza Night 530-7pm NB. rescheduled

March 11th - World's Greatest Shave

March 12th - Whole School Buddy Day

March 15th - School Council Meeting

March 17th - Last day to order uniform at school using paper forms

March 19th - Bully No Way Day / Ride to School Day / Assembly

March 25th - 28th - MacRob Camp

April 1st - Last Day Term 1 / Assembly

 SKOOLBAG

Don't forget to update GROUPS on your phone so that you are receiving whole school and whatever grade group (& other group) notifications that are relevant to your family

ABSENCES

When notifying school of a student absence please use the Skoolbag app. or phone/email. Please DO NOT use the SENTRAL PARENT PORTAL.

CONVEYANCE ALLOWANCE

Parents /Guardians who drive their children in excess of 4.8 km to board a school bus or travel more than 4.8km without passing a bus stop when driving to school are entitled to apply for a conveyance allowance.

The payment is calculated on the distance travelled (subject to Government notification) and is paid quarterly. 

If you believe you are entitled to this allowance please ask at the school office for a Conveyance Form (see file attached)

If you already receive conveyance allowance there is no need to complete another form.

Please ensure that this form is received at the school office by Friday 12th March, 2021.

LIBRARY 

A huge thank you to Narelle and Elspeth for all the work they have done getting our new library set up. It is anticipated that it will be up and running next week.

As of Term 2 Uniform Orders will be ordered online through Spartan School World. Paper orders will still be accepted until Wednesday 17th March. Following this all of our uniform items currently stored on campus will be returned to Spartan to supply online orders.

So if you think you may require uniform items before the end of term please get your orders in ASAP.

NB. There will be a slight delay before on-line ordering will become available. We will let you know as soon as this service is available online. 

Preps first visit

On Thursday a group of preps got to harvest some of the potatoes from the school garden. It was super interesting. The potatoes were planted in 2020 by last year’s Preps. We all enjoyed it very much. We thought it was exciting when we found the potatoes, and everyone took some potatoes and rosemary home. Some Prep families roasted them, and some plan to make mash. Overall, success! By Claire Horneman.

Respond Community program

The Mansfield Gardening Club have continued their association with the Mansfield Fresh Food Drive. The Gardening Club gladly donated nutritious produce to the Respond organisation who will give it to those in Mansfield who don’t have access to enough fresh food.

If you would like to become involved with the Fresh Food Drive, please contact Pamela at psdalgliesh@bigpond.com. By Crystal Born

6C were learning to read non-fictions texts. We followed a procedure to build some shelves for the books in the new library. 6 sets of shelves were made. We are all excited for when the new library opens. We would like to thank everyone who has helped set up the new library. By Lucas Mennen

On Friday 26th Feb, 25 student’s travelled to Seymour and competed in Division Swimming. 17 student’s from MPS made it through to Regionals, which will be held on Wednesday the 4th March! WOW!

The day was fantastic, full of cheering, swimming and fun. Great job to all the kids that competed and represented our school. A big thanks to Ms Driessen and all the parents and teachers that helped out on the day and made sure we were ready and pumped!

Overall the day was great.

Written by Kinsley Wilkinson & Eva Clydesdale  

Qualifying students who swam at the Regional Swimming in Shepparton this week:

Katie Ferguson, Kezi Wolfe, Rowena Creighton, Josephine Taylor, Jarrah Jackson, Ben Gough, Reeve Purday, Taj Walker, Toby Gerrans, Archie Dunn, Seb Walker, Reiley Gibney, Amy Cash, Kinsley Wilkinson, Keira Thornton, Olivia Riches & Eva Clydesdale.

Crazy Hair Day was a HUGE success last Friday! The kids’ and staff hair looked great! A few Grade 6 leaders ran a competition for the best crazy hair. The winners received a certificate and small prize. Here is a list of the winners:

Prep – 2: Morgan Kent and Indy Price

Grade 3/4: Coby Hodge and Kiran Ranjit

Grade 5/6: Billy Barnett and Emma Snell

Teachers: Renee Kent and Jess Walsh

Principals: Dean Bush

Thank you to everyone who showed their support and a special thank you to all the families who donated money to Variety – The Children’s Charity. If you would still like to donate, please click the link below.

Some photos of our Grade 1 and 5 Buddy afternoon. The buddy families worked together to draw a portrait of their family.

The Year 3 and Year 4 classes are working on tuned percussion skills at the moment. We are having fun finding the correct notes to play for the songs; how to roll very fast; how to strike and stop a note and how to play on a range of tuned percussion like marimbas, xylophones, glockenspiels and Boomwhackers! Lots of noisy fun.