Friday Fun 3/7/09 (a little late!)

It's not hard to have fun in the last week of term. There's fun stuff to finish off, and it's not really worth starting anything new, so the spare moments are fun too. On top of that, fun stuff is usually programmed into the week.

Fun this week

Another visit to the Ridge
On Monday afternoon we took another trip up the Ridge to do some weeding. We pulled up lots of verbascum and our area is now looking really great. We also took up some new brochures for the trail our school has been involved with and saw the sign that was recently installed. A journalist and photographer for the local community newspaper joined us and added our story (with front page picture) to this week's newspaper.

Green Up, Clean Up Day
The SRC held a fundraiser to purchase paint for playground markings to be sprayed under our new shade structure. Students dressed up in green and brought a gold coin donation. In order to 'clean up' and cut back on waste, our students were asked not to bring lunch items with extra packaging.

Jump Rope for Heart - Jump Off
On Thursday, we had a special assembly with Happy Heart of the Heart Foundation. The Skippy Chicks (our school's skipping team) demonstrated different skipping steps that students might like to try out individually, in pairs and with a long rope. Throughout the day classes took turns to rotate through skipping activities in the school hall. Students had fun, got fit and raised funds for research into heart disease, education and health promotion.

Mr Tucker's Balderdash Challenge
Mr Tucker was feeling more motivated than me as the week drew to a close. He set up a Balderdash Challenge with students competing for points in teams. He selected a number of Aussie slang phrases, and groups made up possible meanings for these. They then voted, with the most convincing definitions scoring the most votes.

Ned Kelly Paintings
Having learnt about Ned Kelly last week, we took a closer look at the paintings of Sidney Nolan and then students made their own Ned Kelly paintings using watercolours and ink or oil pastels. It was fun to see the unique perspectives students brought to the task. We really should do more painting!

Matilda
Mr Tucker's literacy class has been reading the book "Matilda" by Roald Dahl, so on Friday afternoon we watched the movie as a celebration and to compare the two. It's a great movie that shows how we can triumph despite adversity. The kids loved it.

Field Events
We've split our athletics carnival into two sessions this year. An afternoon for the field events and a day for the whole school to compete in the track events. Friday afternoon was the field event session and many of our students competed in shot put and long jump events.