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On Friday 4 August, Mrs Adam along with our two school leaders, Allen and Rain, attended Hiroshima Day at Jan Hammond Park, Success followed by morning tea.  This is an annual event and is in its 38^th year. It was hosted by the Japanese consulate and City of Cockburn.  It was a lovely ceremony remembering the tragic detonation of two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August, 1945.  It was a moving ceremony and our leaders represented Spearwood Primary  School respectfully.

On Tuesday the 25 July Room 14, years 5/6, were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend a NAIDOC Week Cultural Immersion event run by Fremantle Dockers (Walyalup), City of Cockburn and Cockburn ARC to learn about our presence on Beeliar Boodja land and its significance.

The morning started with a traditional Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony, where everyone had to line up and walk through the smoke to celebrate the significance of country.

Then we were taken in our school  groups to participate in a variety of activities:  Storytelling and learning the Noongar words for the animals and lands; history lesson on the Fremantle Dockers and the indigenous players; designing our own AFL, AFLW indigenous round shirt; traditional dancing to the didgeridoo.  Our final 4 rotations involved learning new football skills with a variety of football coaches and players.

Then it was lunchtime – sausage in a roll.  We had a choice of Emu, Kangaroo or Crocodile sausages!

To top off our morning, everyone was given a Dockers members hat and then we had the opportunity to line up and get them signed.

After a term of lessons to learn their routines, the whole school performed their items at the annual Edu-Dance Concert on 28 June.  There was a large number of family and friends who attended and were treated to a fabulous performance.

All the children were amazing and absolutely shone on the day, with many of them overcoming their stage fright and nerves.

Thank you to everyone who helped prepare for the concert with a special shout out to Mrs Harper for her assistance to pack away.

Thank you so much to everybody who collected food for the Foodbank Food Appeal here at Spearwood Primary School. We did an amazing job! It is wonderful to give back to Foodbank and support the people who rely on them to meet their daily non-perishable needs.

Our final collection results:

Room 14 – 10 items

Room 16 – 12 items

Room  7 – 25 items

Room  6 – 30 items

EC2        – 24 items

EC1        –  6 items

Staff       – 41 items

We collected a total of 148 items. Well done to Room 6! Enjoy your “Recess on the Canteen” this Friday.  A special thank you goes out to the Nelson, Hayward, Kemp and Raymond families plus our staff members Shelly Reynolds and Elaine Visioli for their generous donations.

We had a wonderful Open Day with many students and a few parents / carers attending. Some of our staff members helped out including Casey Bright, Joanne Harper and Tabitha Riches plus our wonderful Spearwood Uniting Church Volunteers namely Sandy Scott, Monika Cowell and Chris Lock.

Breakfast Club is held on Wednesdays between 8.00am and 8.25am. The students can choose from Weetbix, Toast, Tinned Spaghetti and Baked Beans. Milo is also available and is popular with many of the students. Everyone is welcome!

The club is run by our School Chaplain, Coral and our 2 lovely volunteers from the Spearwood Uniting Church, Monika and Sandy. We are so thankful for their ongoing support, ensuring that our club runs smoothly and is a positive place to be for students who attend.

On Friday 16 June a selected group of students attended the Winter Lightning Carnival, playing soccer or netball.

Soccer

This year we finished third in the annual Soccer Carnival!  Traditionally, the carnival is designed for year 6 students but with our smaller school, we had to supplement our team with students from years 5, 4, and 3!  This group of students played as a team,  backing and supporting each other the whole tournament, with every team member doing above and beyond what was expected of them.  Their off-field behaviour was also fantastic.  The only time they panicked was when they got caught in a massive hailstorm before the event started.  With everyone in degrees of soaking wet, we managed to win 4/6 games across the day.   A special thankyou to all our families, who came to support us, especially Allen’s family and his older brother Frank Junior who stepped into his father’s shoes and took over the coaching.

Netball

The courts were very wet on arrival and the goal posts were the wrong height and our opponents had not arrived!  After the slightly chaotic start, the girls settled into a great team, working together and playing very well.  So well in fact that they won the title in the D Division!  Thank you to all our families who braved the cold and came along to support the team.

This term students have been working to create circular rag rugs in their classes to contribute to a project called ‘Reclaim the Void.’  The vision is to cover a mining pit with large-scale ‘dot’ artwork made up of thousands of handmade circular rag-rugs woven from discarded fabric. These are to be woven by people from all walks of life and backgrounds.

Students started with some recycled fabric torn into strips (or weavers) and a hula hoop which was used as a loom. The students took turns at weaving fabric strips around warp threads on the loom. They also learnt how to join the fabric strips together when they ran out of fabric.  It was a great way to recycle and repurpose materials we already had. After the spokes were filled, the ends were tied off. The rag rugs are waiting to be sent away where the individual rugs will be tied together. The individual rugs will be joined together into a giant textile artwork that will carry the story of the country on which the mining pit is situated. The idea for the project came from a group of Ngalia elders in Leonora, Western Australia.

The final artwork will include the tapestry of stories of all the people who have contributed to it, and will be a story of our collective love, respect, and wish to care for country.

On Friday the 9^th of June, Room 14 had the opportunity to participate in the Cockburn World Environment Day Schools Festival – Beat Plastic Pollution. We travelled via bus to the Cockburn wetlands precinct at Bibra Lake.

We were met by our guide and escorted to the big hall for the initial instructions about the day and sang alongside a couple of the supervisors, while we waited. Then Marie Taylor presented the Welcome to Country to start the festival.

Our first stop was learning about the way the Scientists used DNA to identify individual plants, then we had a go at using these amazing pipettes- that are worth $100.00 each.  We got to take a minute sample, then we created an artwork using tiny drops of paint onto a DNA chart.  We were the first school to use these amazing pipettes.

After a quick recess break, we learned all about the Long Neck turtle, the body shape and parts and how to watch for them in the environment.  We did a quick quiz about what we had learnt and then made our own clay turtle.

Our next move took us to the ‘Beat Plastic Pollution in Soil’ session. There was a variety of healthy soil samples that we looked at in minute detail, using iPad cameras zoomed onto the samples.

After lunch we worked with the Water Corporation to look at water samples from various places, tap, dam, lake, or ponds.  We had to use mini microscopes to try and identify which was which.

Our last activity for the day was whittling sticks.  We were well supervised as we had a go at using the special tools to remove the bark from sticks. Once we had our stick to its required form, we rubbed it down with a range of different sandpapers and then waxed them to keep them moist.

On 17 and 24 May, the year 5 and 6 class participated in 2 sessions presented by Laura t’Hart from Cockburn Healthy Schools Program.

They had fun sorting several different and unfamiliar foods into their correct food groups.  Reading nutrition panels was both interesting and challenging.  They also looked at how misleading some product packaging can be, giving the impression that the product was a healthy choice.

It was very ‘eye opening’ to see how much sugar, salt and saturated fat is hidden in our everyday products.  Even a few small, simple changes in product choices can make a difference in our diet.

Each student also received a small recipe book full of delicious and simple healthy recipes to try.

Remember – Try to have 2 Fruits and 5 Veggies each day.

The National Simultaneous Reading this year was on Wednesday 24^th May, 2023.  The NSS is a fun, online event promoting the value of reading and literacy.  Schools, libraries and other institutions gather school-age children together to read the same picture book at the same time.  A total of 2,357,960 people joined in from across Australia and New Zealand.

The story this year was “The Speedy Sloth” by Rebecca Young and Heath McKenzie. It was followed it up with a demonstration of how to draw a sloth.