Year 5 Excursion to the Ultimate Playground

These are just some of the questions Year 5 students asked and answered last Friday. As part of their Ultimate Playground task, students visited Cobbler's Creek and Golden Fields playgrounds, both great spaces just a few minutes from the school. While there was time to play, students spent their time assessing each space and how it met the needs of the community.

Their next challenge? Taking what they have learned to design their own playground. We can't wait to see what they come up with!

Playdate

At Prescott Primary Northern, building community is a focus, not only within our school, but by connecting and engaging with the wider community.  

‘The greatness of a community, if most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.' Margaret J Wheatly. 

Throughout the year, we have extended an invitation for those with little ones in our community, to come and play with us in our Nature Play space. Our final Playdate at PPN for 2022 was spent playing in the sunshine with our friends and family. The sun was shining, and the smiles were beaming on all of the familiar and new little faces that we saw come and join us on Tuesday. The weather provided the perfect summer day vibes. We played with ice and water, learnt what objects sunk and floated, built an insect hotel, and painted in beautiful water colours. We also ate some yummy summer themed fruit.  

Thank you to all the current families who have come and participated in our playdates this year. We have all enjoyed playing with you this year.

'Play is our brain's favourite way of learning.' - Dianne Ackerman  

I was reading the other day about how there are certain things we cannot just say to our children. It must be shown and modelled to them. This was particularly in the context of regulating big feelings and emotions, but I think it has application elsewhere. There is no doubt in my mind our children are constantly taking cues from us about how to deal with life – the joys, the sorrows and the challenges.

Below is a refreshingly honest article that shares one dad’s experiences and what he has learned along the way. I hope you enjoy it and find something in there to help with your own parenting journey.

“One of the big ideas in education over the past 10 years has been Professor Carol Dweck’s work on Growth Mindset. However, despite (or perhaps because of) the hype, much of Dweck’s work has been misunderstood, or misapplied. Too often we’ve tried to teach about growth mindset, instead of teaching for a growth mindset. Importantly, the role parents play in helping develop a growth mindset in their child has been largely overlooked.

In this article I share a simple way you can help your child develop a more growth-oriented mindset.

About Mindsets

Your child’s mindset is how they view their most basic abilities, like their talents and intelligence, and it has a profound impact on their learning.

A child with a fixed mindset believes they are fundamentally limited. Who they are today, is pretty much who’ll they be in the future. For them, school and learning is a way to discover those abilities. They’ll ask if they are musical, or how smart they are. For these children, school becomes one long test to discover the answers to these questions.

A child with a growth mindset understands they have the capacity to develop their abilities. For them learning becomes a vehicle for creating and developing those abilities. You’ll hear this child say things like “I want to become really good at maths, so I’m going to work hard to make that happen.”

Why parents matter

Contrary to what social media might say, you can’t just tell your child to have a growth mindset. Their mindset is rooted in a lifetime of experiences.

As parents we play an important role in creating the experiences that develop our child’s mindset. What we repeatedly say, value, and reward all shape our child’s mindset. And I should know because I got it wrong.

What I did wrong

When my daughter was young, I encouraged her to try lots of different activities. She tried music, art, gymnastics, singing, the Maths Olympics. You name it, we tried it. And that’s fundamentally a good thing.

The problem wasn’t what I was doing. It was the messages I attached to it. Sometimes when she wasn’t keen to try a new activity, I’d say something like “Come on sweetheart, give it a go. You never know, you might be good at it!”

Can you hear the fixed message in there? “You might (already) be good at it.”

I turned trying something new into a test to find out if she was good at it. I promised her the possibility of instant success. To make things worse, if she didn’t have instant success, I’d often console her with something like “Well, don’t worry. You can’t be good at everything.”

In other words, she’d failed that test. Now it was on to the next test to see if she was good at that instead. The unintended lesson: If you’re not immediately good, give up.

Why did I do that?

If you just had an “ouch” moment, you’re not alone. Parents say these types of things all the time. We say them out of love, and with the best of intentions.

When we see our child upset or struggling, our natural reaction is to want to protect them from that discomfort. But what I did was to provide my daughter with an excuse for struggle by saying “you’re not that type of person.”

Perhaps you’ve provided your child with a similar excuse by saying something similar like “I was never good at that either.” The underlying message being “we aren’t the right type of person to be good at that—we don’t have those abilities.”

A nudge in the right direction

To help us be better parents and nurture a more growth-oriented mindset in our children, we need a little nudge. A reminder that helps us counter any unconscious bias and ensure we create more growth-oriented messages for our children.

I’ve created lots of these nudges, for all types of situations. The one relevant to this situation is to remember that “Learning is about creating, not discovering.”

Learning is about creating, not discovering.

In the context of trying new things, this nudge reminds us that we’re not trying to find out if my daughter has those abilities. We’re trying to decide if she wants to develop those abilities. So, now I might say:

“Darling, getting good at something takes time and the right type of effort. You need to decide if this is something you’re prepared to invest the time and effort into getting good at.”

The nudge helps us repeat this message over and over, slowly creating a more growth-oriented mindset. They become more empowered and see life as being in their control. They recognise they can become whoever they want, or need, to become.

It’s like George Bernard Shaw said, “Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” (Anderson, 2022)

Have a great week with our kids,

Mark B

Gratitude

John 1:5 reminds us that 'The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it'.

Blessings, 

Helping kids deal with disappointment

The last few years have forced us all to deal with disappointment more than any of us would have liked or anticipated. How many events, special occasions or even normal expectations have been cancelled or changed since 2020? The list is too long to worry about.

While the specific let downs of life, and particularly growing up, will vary from child to child, child development experts agree that the basic tools for managing disappointments are largely the same across age groups.

1. Listen and Validate

As parents, our first impulse is often to try to fix problems for our children. But often there’s no way to fix our current reality. What you can do is listen to and acknowledge children’s frustration and disappointment, says Carey Werley, LCSW, a clinical social worker at the Child Mind Institute. Werley points out that drilling down on the specifics of what your child is most disappointed about is helpful.

It’s also important to avoid judging their reactions. Invalidating the pain that our children are feeling (by telling them it’s not a big deal, for example) will only make them feel more isolated. What’s more, focusing on one issue might be a way for your child to process bigger feelings — like fear and sadness — that they can’t quite confront yet.

Instead, emphasize that you hear your child and express your support for how they’re handling this.

2. Provide Perspective

Kids, especially younger ones, don’t have the perspective adults have as a result of having lived through our share of disappointments. Instead, children may see things in black and white.

Again, validating this fear is a good place to start, and work to avoid false reassurances — you don’t want to give your child unrealistic ideas about what the future will hold.

This is your chance to appropriately share your own past experiences of change and uncertainty, including how you dealt with those challenges and what the results were.

3. Seek Solutions

Whatever the disappointment, be it a missed birthday part or poorer than anticipated results at school or in sport, work towards finding ways to compensate for these losses. We can’t always get everything we want, but we can get creative in the way we think about and act in the future.

You can also encourage your child to talk about what they’re going through with their friends — bonding with peers over their shared disappointment can help kids put things in perspective and maybe even strengthen friendships.

4. Give Them a Sense of Control

Often our disapointments coincide with feeling like we don’t have, or have lost, control of a situation. Working with your child to plan out their days is one way to give them a sense of control over what’s happening. How do they want to spend their free time? What projects might they enjoy digging into? Many kids will even get excited about giving input into meal planning or household chores.

5. Have Faith in Them

Remind your kids of things they’ve tolerated before, whether it was not being cast in the school play, getting a lower-than-expected grade, or losing a big game. Let them know that even though this situation is different, they can use some of the same skills to get through it.

In essence, the message we send our child is, ‘I have faith in you. I can see this is hard, but I know that you’ve got it.’

PE Week

Fun Run

Year 1 Cloud Drawings

With such changeable weather over the last few weeks, Year 1 students had the opportunity to observe and draw the different types of clouds that we have been learning about. As part of their HASS unit on 'Features of Environments', the students have been learning the special names for different clouds such as; Cumulus, Nimbus, Cirrus and Stratus. We were blessed with all of these different clouds in the sky last Friday due to the inclement weather.

Bus Requirements for 2023

If you are requiring the bus service for your child in 2023, please complete the online form below to register your interest. Demand is very high for our bus service and many of the routes have been full this year, so it is very important that you register your interest as soon as possible to secure a spot on our buses.

Full-time bus fees per term: $321 per child
Part-time bus fees per term: $217 per child (part-time is one way, either to school each day or from school each day)

Buses 2023

Upcoming Staffing Opportunities for 2023

Prescott Primary Northern has the following staffing opportunities for 2023 for the following positions.

• SSO (School Support Officer) – 5 days
• SSO (School Support Officer) – 4 days
• SSO (School Support Officer) – up to 4 days
• Front Office Administration Trainee – 5 days – 1-year contract

See the role descriptions for further details. Applications close on the 25^th of November.

SSO (School Support Officer) - 5 days

SSO (School Support Officer) - 4 days

SSO (School Support Officer) - up to 4 days

Front Office Administration Trainee - 5 days - 1 Year Contract

Daily Health Check

Do's & Dont's of Dropping Your Kids to School

Premier's Reading Challenge

Well done to all of our students for contributing to such a great outcome.

As a result of this achievement, Prescott Primary Northern was selected to attend the 2022 Premier’s Reading Challenge Reception for Outstanding Achievement.

This award is significant because it acknowledges the commitment and persistence of our students to the ongoing development of their reading engagement.

Here is a picture of our School Captains, Kezia Blackeby and Dillon Hong, receiving the award on behalf of Prescott Primary Northern.

Congratulations on another wonderful year of reading and let’s see if we can improve upon our result in 2023!

Prescott College