Dear Families and Friends of Golden Hill Steiner School,

We held our Winter Festival in the chilly, still night air of Friday evening and what a wonderfully reverent event it was thanks to the efforts of whole school community. On behalf of everyone who attended I would like to take this opportunity to offer my heartfelt thanks to the following, who made it all possible:

Penny Goodwin for her amazing organisation and coordination of helpers to assist with spiral foliage, lantern setting and lighting, bonfire building and post-festival pack-up;

To the many helpers who contributed to all those tasks – Tanya Bourne, Chelsea Donohoe, Lucy Dusenberg, Brooke Eddy, Kimberley Fisken, Hannah Halls, Lydia Kenyon, Katja Lamb, Brett Lamb, Gillian Malata, Rosie Reddie, Rangi Schwartz, Via Stidwell,  Haikam Suttie, Jane Taylor, Ryan Taylor and Lila Thanos, Sandra Brandao-Woodruff.

Silvia Davey-Lehmann for the wonderful winter tale by the bonfire.

Bruce Anthony for playing the lyre at the Junior spiral.

Kristi McMullan for her amazing efforts with the bonfire – once again! – and laying out the spiral, and assisting with the Class 6 lighting of the fire.

To the staff for preparing the children for the festival with lanterns and class stories, singing songs in the lead up, braving the deluge to lay out the spiral and assisting with the festivities on Friday evening.

Ellen Somas, Tina Charlton and Class 5/6 students for their efforts in lighting the bonfire and leading the singing. Truly beautiful!

As always I am so immensely proud and humbled to be a part of such a wonderful school community.

Sunday saw in the Winter Solstice, when the night was at its longest. The days now, with their glorious light, will get longer and we may look forward to the Spring.

Anyone from a place where the winters are truly long and awfully cold would really know the depth of Winter and the joy of Spring. Here in WA, we are fortunate to have bouts of perfect weather even in the middle of winter. So the metaphor of spiralling into the darkness, letting go of destructive forces within us and then moving outward towards the light has great significance and formed a part of our Winter Festival celebration.

If we connect to what is happening globally: the varied response to the pandemic; the lack of positive leadership in parts of the world; exclusion and harm to people on the basis of race or belief, we can easily succumb to feelings of angst and despair. Destructive forces may appear to have an upper hand. We may ask, “what is an antidote for this?”

In his lectures and writings, Rudolf Steiner addressed the question of morality and whether there is the opportunity for renewal. He suggested there is no human soul in which there is not the foundation of what is morally good. If we delve deep enough, we shall always find moral impulses. Human nature, Steiner states categorically, is not bad; originally it was good.

So as we head into the darkness and take the opportunity to reflect and experience a letting go, we can also look toward the promise of light and goodness.
Steiner suggests that the foundation for the improvement of a human being, morally, always consists in taking away one’s spiritual error through Faith, Love and Hope.
Faith: We must have faith that something immeasurably good lies at the foundation of man.
Love: If we develop faith in the original goodness of humans we can do no other than attain boundless love for human nature.

A moral life is formed on the foundation of faith in human goodness and love of that original goodness that lives in a person.
Steiner explained that the faith in the divine in a person, no matter what appearances may otherwise suggest, and measureless love of a person that springs from this faith are the foundation of a truly moral life.
In today’s world, it would appear exclusion and harm on the basis of race could not endure with such faith and love. In truth this becomes an antidote.

Hope: Steiner suggests that if we are to have a morally fruitful attitude towards our fellow man, (something that we may struggle to feel sometimes when we engage with the content of mass media and social media), we need to develop in our soul the hope that every single soul, even though it may have fallen far from the height of spiritual life, can find its way back to the divine spiritual.
He explained, we should be aware that Faith and Hope, either singly or together do not work; one must, of course, have them, but only Love is effective.

May the Winter Solstice have provided for our community a time to reflect and let go. May we emerge with hope and reaffirm our faith in the goodness of our fellow man. May that faith translate into acts of love towards our children, our partners, our students, our teachers and especially those whom we otherwise would judge poorly.

Warmest regards,

Jacqui Hamblin

Principal

We hope your family enjoyed sharing the indigenous story we sent home for the Winter Festival. We are currently in season of Makuru so I thought I would share information about the season as it pertains to us here in the south west.

Makuru: Season of fertility

The lifestyle for the Nyoongar communities during Makuru.
Makaru sees the coldest and wettest time of the year come into full swing. Traditionally, this was a good time of the year to move back inland from the coast as the winds turned to the west and south bringing the cold weather, rains and occasionally snow on the peaks of the Stirling and Porongurup Ranges.

As the waterways and catchments started to fill, people were able to move about their country with ease and thus their food sources changed from sea, estuarine and lake foods to those of the lands in particular the grazing animals such as the kangaroo. As well as a food source, animals provided people with many other things. For example, Yonga (kangaroos) not only provided meat but also bookas (animal skin cloaks that were used as the nights became much cooler). Nothing was left; even the bones and sinews were used in the manufacturing of bookas and for hunting tools such as spears.

Makuru is also a time for a lot of animals to be pairing up in preparation for breeding in the coming season. If you look carefully, you might now see pairs of Wardongs (ravens) flying together. You also notice these pairs not making the usual 'ark ark arrrrrk' that these birds are well known for when flying solo. Upon the lakes and rivers of the Southwest, you'll also start to see a large influx of the Mali (Black Swan) as they too prepare to nest and breed.

Flowers that will start to emerge include the blues and purples of the Blueberry Lilly (Dianella revoluta) and the Purple Flags (Patersonia occidentalis). As the season comes to a close, you should also start to notice the white flowers of the weeping peppermint (Agonis flexuosa) as the blues start to make way for the white and cream flowers of Djilba.

Report Collection

Kindy 6 to Class 6 student reports for Semester 1 will be ready for collection from outside the Front Office this week, from Tuesday 23^rd, 8.30am til Friday 26th June, 3pm. Reports that are not collected from the school will be posted during the school holidays.

This year, report interviews with teachers are to be booked online by parents. All staff have scheduled times that they are available to meet. You will be able to book your times with all of your children’s teachers at the same time through Schoolzine. The booking link will be forwarded to all families Wednesday via the email address that this newsletter is sent to.

COVID-19 Fee Relief

Most of our families have opted in to our COVID-19 Fee Relief waiver for Terms 2 and 3. We hope that this brings relief to our community at this time.

We would like to send an extended thanks to those families who elected to contribute to our COVID-Bursary Fund. The details of how these funds will be used will be made available in Term 3.

Admin Upgrade complete! The building stage of our office upgrade is now complete. We are awaiting the new furnishings that have been ordered for the building and should have phone and computer connectivity over the holidays that will allow us to move back in! Fingers crossed for the start of Term 3!

It is amazing to look back on how much we have seemed to fit into our shortened term!

We have finished our maths main lesson but have continued maths learning with lots of number games and hands on counting activities using counting gems, blocks and construction pieces.  The co-operation, language and social skills that come from exploring these concrete activities has lots of wonderful outcomes.

We are now enjoying a Nature Stories local surrounds main lesson.  We are hearing about many of the things that happen in the natural world in Autumn and Winter through stories that bring to life natural science concepts such as the water cycle and the flowering of native winter plants.

This has tied in perfectly with the winter solstice and all the stories, crafts and songs that go with this magical celebration.

As we were all in lock down and staying close to home at the beginning of the term, our intrepid Class 2 students were out and about exploring their local surroundings and following along with the adventures of Pelican Pete.  They discovered that we really do live surrounded by natural abundance here in the bio-diversity hot-spot that is the Great Southern!  Our travels soon brought us all meandering back to Golden Hill where we went even deeper into the animal kingdom through our ‘Animal Fables’ main lesson.  The Fables helped us to understand that we all share certain characteristics with the animals in the stories.

Finally, we have been learning about place value and the secrets of our number system by meeting ‘King Zero’ and investigating the power of ten.  Brave Class 2 number hunters have tracked down and captured some truly huge numbers, right here at out school!

The Class 3 students have had an exciting 3 weeks of the Building and Shelters main lesson, very pertinent to the Class 3 children.  It has been lots of fun as they begin to plan their own model to tackle in the holidays.  It’s always a very proud start to the term as they share their models with their admiring peer group.  I have been very proud of this wonderful group of three who have completed their knitted gnomes and the joy they receive as their gnomes come to life.  One of my favourite activities.

The Class 4 children are working through their individual animal projects after newly completing their Human and Animal main lesson, a favourite main lesson for many.  The class has immersed themselves into our encyclopedias to find out the most interesting facts about their animal.  Their enthusiasm makes my world go around.

Our lanterns have taken centre stage this week as we busily prepared for the Winter Festival, although not yet fully completed in time for the newsletter we have completed our kite paper stars ready to adorn our painted and glittered lanterns.  So beautiful…

This week we have also begun our Division main lesson, a little revision to begin as we work our way through remainders and the process of long division.  The children are also continuing on with their Talk for Writing story of the King of Fishes as they decide on their own three wishes to write the story into their own.  As a class we are reading the Wonderling each day…  Oh my! I seriously don’t want this book to end.

Happy Holidays,

Robyn x

This term in Indonesian we have been having lots of fun by getting out the instruments and learning Indonesian folk songs.  From ‘Burung Kakatua’ to ‘Rasa Sayang eh’ ukuleles have been strummed to within an inch of their lives and marimbas and xylophones have been mapping out island melodies while we all sing along.  Many of our students have a well-developed musical intelligence and find exploring the language through song, suits their learning style.  Our older students have also worked on translating and creating songs.  A recording deal and world tour are waiting in the wings as soon as the band have thrashed out their creative differences.

Bedwetting, or nocturnal enuresis, is very common in children.  Bedwetting has nothing to do with dreaming, and children who wet the bed are not “just being lazy”.

If your child wets the bed, there are a number of things you can do to help, such as using a waterproof mattress cover and establishing a before-bed toilet routine.  It is not helpful to punish children who wet the bed.  Fluids should not be restricted, even before bedtime.  Sugary or caffeinated drinks should be avoided.

If your child is still wetting the bed after five and a half years of age, seek help through a referral by your local doctor.  A bedwetting alarm is an effective and safe method of treatment available for nocturnal enuresis and may be appropriate for your child.  Community Health Nurses facilitate bed wetting programs in partnership with parents and children.  Video conferencing options are available.

Contact your local Community Health Nurse, (Paula Stretton) on (0427 922 663) for more information or email:  paula.stretton@health.wa.gov.au