ENewsletter

From the Principal

Dear parents and caregivers,

Term 4 truly is such a wonderful time of the year for our students and local community as it provides us with an abundance of learning experiences and celebrations throughout. The past few weeks have been nothing less than rewarding and are best illustrated in this issue of our newsletter.

10 Storey Treehouse Spectacular

Our community had the privilege of witnessing an amazing Whole School production during last Friday’s Concert evening held on our lawns facing a colourful and mystical backdrop. Our students shone in their costumes and performed with pride on a glorious stage to an audience of over 500 proud parents and family members.

None of this could have been possible without the support of our school community. A huge thank you to our students for their dedication towards rehearsal, costume making, and assistance. Special mention to our Back Stage Crew members Dani, Lucas, and Audrey for making fantastic stage props and for their efforts in making things run smoothly on the night. A huge thank you to Troy Harrison for all the music equipment, commitment to rehearsals and hours spent in the recording studio cutting music. Thank you to Christine Cavaiuolo as the backstage extraordinaire and to all of our staff for their commitment with extra rehearsals. Our greatest thanks goes to Tamika Harrison, who spent months writing, creating, practicing and preparing our students to present such a spectacular event. On behalf our entire school community we thank her.

Snake Season Reminder

As the weather finally provides us with some warmth and sunshine, we are not the only ones who begin to enjoy it. Snakes also love the warm weather. Please be careful and make sure that you keep an eye out for our reptile friends. If you sight a snake on site, please report it to a staff member.

Sports Day

Preparations are well under way for another wonderful whole school community event to be held this Friday 28th November. Be sure to come dressed in your House Colours, and cheer loudly!

2026 Reception Transition Visits

We are all very excited to welcome our new students and families to our school with a series of Thursday morning transition visits held over the next fortnight. Please keep a friendly eye out and make them all feel welcome.

Stirling Christmas Pageant - Sunday 7th December

Our school will be participating in this year’s Stirling Christmas Pageant. The theme is ‘Christmas on the Farm’ to which we will enter three floats promoting our School Band, Pedal Prix, and School Community. Members of our Parents and Friends committee and staff are busy coordinating the creation of our entries together. Float numbers and meeting places will be advised closer to the date.

The next few weeks are once again going to be filled with many other events and experiences to enjoy including the Stirling Christmas Pageant, Community Night, Year 6 Camp and Graduation, as well as a variety of sporting clinics and events for all to enjoy. We once again welcome you all to take the time to call in, volunteer, and enjoy the many events on offer with our fabulous community.

Kind regards

Shaun Barber

Remembrance Day

Our school community had the honour of being part of two ceremonies. Our senior students were invited to participate in the Stirling service which saw our student leaders Pippa T, and Ollie read ‘In Flanders Field ‘and ‘The Reply’, as well as Minnie and Jude lay the Wreath. Our senior students led our service at school with Henry D invited to play the Last Post. A huge thank you to Sandra Ogden for creating such beautiful natural wreaths.

Lest we forget!

Change Champions Shine

Congratulations to both Kit Wong and Katie Hesketh-Smith who recently presented our School’s Wellbeing Journey thus far to an engaged and appreciative audience at the end of year Change Champions conference held in front of the Education Department’s Self-Regulation team, Mount Barker Portfolio LET, and fellow local schools involved in the program.

The feedback from the audience was overwhelmingly positive as they shared our collective story. We should all be proud of the work that we are undertaking in this space. Congratulations to all!

Staff Learning and Site Learning Plan Priorities

Our staff spent time during our recent Pupil Free Day reviewing and fine tuning our Site Learning Plan in preparation for 2026. Part of the process included the sharing of our recent staff Perspective Work Place Culture Survey results which focuses on 4 key areas; Enabling People, Driving Effective Change, Building Shared Meaning, Empowering Learning. Each are is designed to ‘pulse check’ staff engagement in collaboratively driving school improvement. Staff were extremely receptive to the results which highlighted strengths in collective goal setting, clear strategic vision, and role clarity. The report provided key focus areas to consider in our improvement planning (Site Expectations, Staff Recognition, and Empowering Practices) to which clearly now sit in our ‘Actions and Responsibilities’ timeline within our Site Learning Plan.

As part of the improvement cycle, Professional development sessions in 2026 will be mapped out across the year with an intentional focus on connecting our teaching practice to each goal in our Site Learning Plan and building on the great work already started.

2025 Sports Day Timetable

Download your copy of the 2025 Sports Day Timetable.

Download

A note from Ebony

With Sports Day fast approaching, I thought it timely that I share with you what we have been talking about in our What’s the Buzz? groups and with our reception students. We have been discussing winning and losing graciously. I believe this is a topic that many of our students could benefit from talking about. Losing is a tricky concept and provokes some hard to manage feelings, while winning feels good, but our response runs the risk of upsetting others if we don’t manage it well.

Our conversations revolved around the purpose of playing games and recognising that games are played to have fun, that games have winners and losers and how to manage when games don’t go our way.

Some of our students’ ideas to help navigate disagreements in games were:

Rock, Paper, Scissors
Re-play point/game
Engage adult help
Three big breaths to calm down before responding

Can I encourage all of you to take time to play games as a family? Children don’t become experts at winning, losing and navigating disagreements without practice and coaching. Simple games like Uno, Snap and Memory can help your children learn these essential, pro-social skills, which will be transferred to other areas of their lives.

Storybook – Magic Beach by Alison Lester

As part of InitiaLit, we looked at the story ‘Magic Beach’ by Alison Lester. The students noticed that on alternating pages within the book, the text and illustrations are from the imagination of the children in the story. Room 1 children then wrote and illustrated what could happen if they went to their own ‘magic beach’.

Guest Speaker: Mining Engineer

Room 4 have been learning about rocks, soils and minerals.

Last week we had a guest speaker, Nicole Watkins who is a mining engineer and a geologist. She spoke about the various places she had worked, about underground and open cut mines and the different types of rocks that can be found. We have an excellent display of rocks in our classroom and the children had lost of interesting questions to ask Nicole.

Children's University

This year in Children’s University, we had a small but very accomplished group of 4. They were Pippa T, Liliana M, Sarah Sand Arabella M. They all did a range of activities from visiting museums and art galleries, kayaking, playing musical instruments, doing sports and creating art pieces. Congratulations to this group who participated in extra curricular activities and had a lot of fun doing the activities.

We farewell Pippa from our group as she heads to high school next year. Congratulations Pippa on achieving 165 hours overall.

If you think your child may be interested in Children’s University, they can come along to a meeting in Week 8 to find out more.

Thank you,

Kim Atkinson

OSHC Vacation Care Dates

Families that utilise Vacation Care during the upcoming holidays, please be aware that the last day of care will be Friday 19 December, and Vacation Care will recommence on Monday 12 January.

Please mark your calendars and plan accordingly.

Crafers Primary School

Newsletter 25 November 2025