Prescott Primary Northern eNewsletter

Foundation Swimming

In Week 10 of Term 3, the Foundation classes ended a busy term with Swimming Week. We had fun blowing bubbles in the water, using the noodles to float, wearing a life jacket and going under the water to catch the rings. Our confidence and swimming skills improved throughout the week.

Bus Shelter Development

There has been quite a bit of work that has taken place over the holidays in our bus shelter development at the front of the school. Thank you to our families for your patience with our changes at this time. We look forward to being able to use these shelters during pick-up time upon their completion.

Companionship

The cherished bond of childhood that is woven together by companionship is a valuable stabilising force as a child grows, matures and moves through the phases of life. As students at Prescott Primary Northern learn and play side-by-side, they develop bonds of friendship and a deep regard for those around them. Nature play facilitates this time of shared experiences that punctuate the very fabric of their existence. Nature play allows students space and time to explore, to laugh, to love and to learn. This week, students shared in water play using funnels, jugs, containers, corks, rocks and flowers to interact with the cool life-giving water. The universal elements that support life, supported the time to create bonds with others through play.

I hope you had a bit of a break or change of pace while the school holidays were on. I want you to recall a time when you did something really hard. Something that didn’t happen easily, and even though you thought you were prepared for it, it just kept throwing up challenges. A few years ago, I did the community bike ride for the Tour Down Under. I had been training and the ride up to the Barossa went ok. Then a friend and I decided we would ride home as well. All up that day we did over 200km on the bike, quite a bit of it through the hills. I remember the cramps, the aching, the huffing and puffing, and then the tremendous sense of achievement as the 200 kilometres clicked over. The desire to call and get someone to come and pick us up was strong on several occasions during that ride, but the encouragement of a friend, a few conversations with myself that I could do this, and a huge dose of perseverance helped get me home.

Perseverance is an interesting concept. It reminds me of a news story I read recently. Imagine if you will, a place where days are 24 and a half hours long, years go for the equivalent of 687 Earth days, on September 28, 2021 (a couple of weeks ago), it had a high of -21 degrees C and a low of -78 degrees C, and that is in early summer in the northern hemisphere. The atmosphere is made up of 96% carbon dioxide, 1.9% argon, 1.9% nitrogen and traces of oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour. It has huge dust storms that at times grow so large as to cover the entire planet. That place is the Jezero Crater on the planet Mars. On February 18 this year, a rover named Perseverance touched down on Mars. It travelled 470 million kilometres to get there after leaving Earth on July 30, 2020. The rover has various instruments and equipment on board to gather all sorts of information and samples about the atmosphere, geology (on, as well as under the ground), conditions and potential life forms. (mars.nasa.gov) Now I know that this rover is not human, but I think the name that it was given by a Grade 7 student, Alexander Mather, is a very good one. If you look at the challenges that faced the people working on this project, they must have been huge, and there would have been many times when they felt like saying “Enough. I can’t do this anymore, there just doesn’t seem to be a solution,” and yet they persevered.

I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but the world in which we are raising our children (and living in ourselves) is firmly focused on making things easy, quick and convenient. The downside of this is that we are tempted make a path for our children that is smooth, free of complication and easy. It is my opinion that we do our kids and ourselves a disservice if we construct that for our children. I am not saying we lay them open to experiences and situations that they don’t have the resources to deal with, what I am saying is that we all learn at the point of challenge, whether that be Mathematics or relationships, Reading or dealing with disappointment, and one of the best character traits we can help our children develop is perseverance. That development doesn’t happen by creating easy paths, or giving up when things don’t go our way.

I love that NASA got Perseverance to take a selfie. It is almost a celebration of what can happen if we push through difficulties, uncomfortable times and seemingly unsolvable problems. As we push towards the end of another school year, let us do so with perseverance so that it becomes such a part of us and our children, that it is our standard mode of operating, rather than avoiding or pretending challenges don’t exist.

Welcome back to Term 4, and have another great week with your kids,

Mark B

Press The Elevator Buttons

Buttons are there to be pressed! Watch any toddler who encounters a button, they love to press them. Whether they be buttons on the remote, buttons in a lift, windscreen wiper buttons, or buttons on your phone. They press them because they usually get an immediate or direct response.

As kids, my brothers and I would love to press all the buttons in a lift as we were exiting, so that the lift would stop at each floor for whoever got in after us. This would have been extremely annoying for anyone who wanted to go straight to a high floor but having to stop at every level along the way.

I once read a story about an adult who would deliberately get into a lift in a tall sky scraper and then press all the buttons. They would then exit and leave a handwritten message in the lift. The note gave instructions for those entering the lift to enjoy the small break from the busyness of life, and take time to breathe.

In the Bible, Jesus would often do something similar for his disciples. No, not in lifts, but He would give them some time out to rest, away from the crowds and their hectic schedules. He knew that they wouldn’t be able to continue their great work if they didn’t take some time to rest and spend time with God.

Conventional wisdom says that busyness is necessary in order to thrive in today’s world, but sometimes our lives can get so unbalanced that things can get out of control.

At times, rest can seem like a daunting task, even a vain pursuit, when there is always something more that we need to get done. Our schedules are full, and the long list of projects is always there, waiting to be tackled.

The busyness of life can even take us away from spending time with God. We need to be intentional about scheduling ‘time out’ from our busy lives. Plan a walk in nature, read for enjoyment, sit and watch a sunset, laugh with friends, embrace a daytime nap, listen to music, but most importantly, take time to connect with God. Time with God gives us true rest, renewal, and a time to recharge from our busy, and sometimes unbalanced, lives.

I encourage you to press the lift buttons in your lives (not literally) and give yourself some time to breathe, rest and reconnect with God.

Have a great Term 4 everybody,

Chaplain Phil

Class Placement Considerations

We are currently working on class placements for 2022. There are many factors that go into making decisions about class placements and we use a program to try to balance the many competing demands. We are unable to guarantee requests will be granted, but if there is some extenuating circumstance you would like considered for your child, please email Mark Borresen (markborresen@ppn.sa.edu).