O Nature, you are as a mother to me,

Giving me strength and nourishing me.

I feel you near me and nearer still.

You fill me with fire - how strong is my will!

To be doing what's good is what I desire,

And I shall, for I'm filled with God's heavenly fire.

Dear Families and Friends of Golden Hill Steiner School,

What a wonderful Autumn Festival on Friday!  One could be forgiven for thinking we were celebrating Summer given the heat, but thanks to the efforts and good humour of all concerned we truly experienced a wonderful day of gratitude and courage, the hallmark qualities of this festival at GHSS.

Thank you to all the staff who prepared the children with beautiful songs to add meaning to our festival and to Bruce and Ashley for your accompaniment.

In a break from tradition, we abandoned St George and the Dragon for a story more suited to the time and place.  Many thanks to Robyn and Class 4/5 for their sharing of "The Shadow Giant".

As always, our harvest table was groaning with produce from the school garden and donated by our families.  Many thanks to Neal and the children for the produce they grew and to all of our families for your contributions.  Our donation to the Denmark Community Collective was gratefully received and they will distribute the bounty to those in our community who are in need.

Many thanks to the Class Carers for their organisation of the challenge activities and the parents that assisted in running those events in the heat.  We hope there was sufficient shade available to keep you protected.

And the highlight of our Festival, Kristi's rope bridge walk over the river.  An extra special thank you to Kristi who carries this off each year.  Due to a breakdown in communication and available volunteer assistance on the morning of the festival, Kristi was left to get the bridge ready single-handedly - a rather challenging task.  Thank you to John McMullan who came to the rescue to assist in completing the structure so the event could go ahead.

Good did come of the situation, and a depth of gratitude to those school community members who have now created a Rope Bridge committee for future festivals.

We really do depend on the support of parents and to this end I have two requests to make of families.

1. Maryann and Anton, former owners of the little IGA, donated a container of furniture and secondhand goods for us to sell as a fundraiser to assist with the development of our school, and in particular, our high school.  There are items such as bookshelves, dining tables and chairs, a sideboard, rugs, lighting - a veritable Aladdin's cave of items looking to be re-homed.  It is currently stored behind the hall and in our green room.  And additionally we have some old school chairs and desks to dispose of so we are looking for a band of parent volunteers with the time and skill set to upload items for sale to Marketplace, attend the Sunday markets to bring out items for sale or perhaps the perfect item to complete your room redecoration is waiting your collection in exchange for a donation to our fundraising efforts.  Please email the office if you are able to offer this assistance on office@goldenhill.wa.edu.au 

2. At the end of next week I am sending off the paperwork required for step 2 of a 3 step process to register for starting our Year 7 class next year.  All parents who are intending or even thinking about continuing their child's secondary education is asked to complete an Expression of Interest Form and send it to the school.  If you are able to this by the 24th of March that would be greatly appreciated, especially if you have children currently enrolled in Class 4, 5 & 6.  This is not a binding commitment but will greatly assist our planning efforts moving forward. 

Just two weeks to go until the Easter break.  In the meantime, enjoy the changeable weather!

Warmest regards,

Jacqui Hamblin

Principal

Further to our exciting plans to expand Golden Hill Steiner School to include a Class 7 in 2022, we are now calling for your expressions of interest in having your child attend GHSS for Class 7 in future years.  These numbers will be vital to support our application during the next step of the process.

Please either download and complete this form - 

Please know that as a school we are always open to feedback should you wish to provide it.  We are constantly striving to refine our processes and make improvements where necessary.

Feel free to contact us via phone (9848 1811), email - office@goldenhill.wa.edu.au or principal@goldenhill.wa.edu.au) or come in and make an appointment to speak with someone.

Positive feedback especially welcome!

Easter is a moveable feast, the rule being that Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the full moon after the Autumn Equinox.

Easter takes it’s name from “Eostre” the pre-Christian festival of Spring and rebirth.  It celebrated the instinctive forces, those involving reproduction, and physical love.  The early Christians re-worked this festival to incorporate the resurrection of Christ, and it is the most important of the Christian festivals.  Christ is both healer and awakener and by his death and resurrection, he has brought life forces into our waking consciousness.  Christ brought into our world a new form of love, the pure love of human beings for one another, regardless of gender, race or any other differences.

In celebrating this festival of Easter with young children, it helps to bring it to them through pictures and stories rather than intellectual explanations.  The egg is one of the most well known symbols of new life.  The outward appearance of the egg is cold and hard yet when we open it the golden yolk is revealed, like an image of the risen Christ.  In kindergarten we speak of the hare as the egg bringer at Easter.  Unlike the rabbit which lives within a large family in a burrow, the hare is an individual which makes it’s home wherever it finds itself.  The hare will sacrifice it’s life for the life of another by allowing a predator to chase it so that the other may rest.  For this reason it seems a suitable symbol for Christ, the bringer of new life.

Warmly,

Denise

“Invisibly within the seed,

The plant is waiting for its day of birth

Root, stem and leaf, the flower and fruit

Will sprout and bloom and ripen.

As the sun and rain call them forth,

So life will call from me what now is invisibly waiting.”

  (Dorothy Harrar)

I love this quote that provides the image that enables the children to picture the real work of their gardening classes.  It draws a nice parallel between the growth of the plant and their own development.

This year in the school gardens has started off with a real bang... with pumpkins, corn, tomatoes and plums fruiting in abundance.  The recently enclosed orchard is proving it’s worth with apple trees, feijoas and pears laden with fruit.

Class 3 have embarked on their farming year preparing large garden beds for garlic and potato crops.

They have built a big compost pile inoculated with Biodynamic preparations, that will provide winter nourishment for their crops.  Many thanks to Mark Broughton (Jack and Mia’s Dad) for his time and energy assisting with Tuesday's classes.

Class 6 harvested bucketfuls of tomatoes and turned them into a delicious passata sauce.  The Class 6 kids have been encouraged to provide a seasonal recipe using at least one ingredient from the school gardens.  I hope to collate these recipes at the end of the year into a recipe book for the class.

Class 1 have hit the ground running in their gardening sessions.  They have been looking at what the soil is made up of and which animals’ manure we can use for compost.  They planted two new fruit trees in the orchard (a nashi pear and a persimmon... both gifted to the school last year).  We also harvested carrot seed and sowed a new bed... they are all counting down the 100 days it will take for the carrots to be ready.

The girls in Class 4 really enjoyed setting up the new (temporary) kitchen garden classroom in the old staffroom.  It’s already been well used and many thanks to Kylie Collyer for offering kitchen items, stove and oven for the new setup.

Class 2 have literally enjoyed the fruits of their labour munching on fresh biodynamic sweetcorn.  They are establishing some winter crops, having seeded up broccoli and cabbage in their own pots.  They will tend these plants, potting up, feeding, weeding and eventually harvest and eat them.

Class 5 have been practicing Botanical drawing in preparation for their main lesson Botany later in the year.  They have pressed flowers and leaves to decorate their main lesson books and continue to work in the garden.  This year they will learn to use different hoes, and apply the knowledge gained from botany lessons in the field.

Happy Gardening,

Neal

Dear GHSS Community Members, Families and Friends,

GHSS High School on the horizon

You have hopefully heard the exciting news!  Planning and preparations are in progress, and 2022 is set to be the pioneering year for our long-awaited high school.  We wish to ask for your help, to secure an opportunity to acquire land, to make this expansion into years 7 to 9, and hopefully beyond, a reality and a success.

Lot 1 … Field of Opportunity

The GHSS community has long envisioned a high school, with classrooms, amenities and sports oval, on Lot 1, Riverbend Lane.  Lot 1 is the vacant land adjacent to the school, where the ibis forage and the ponies graze.

This land belongs to the Denmark Shire.  If we can get our interest in acquiring this land acknowledged in the LPS (Local Planning Strategy) then it could be zoned for ‘educational use’.  This would give us a very good platform for negotiating with the Shire to lease or buy part or all of Lot 1 for our expansion. 

Upcoming LPS … together let’s have our say!

GHSS have put in a submission to ‘Have your say – Denmark in your hands’, which is part of the community consultation process for the LPS.  We would like to invite our school community, families and friends, to support this request.

Please consider emailing the Shire, as a Denmark resident commenting on the LPS.  Let the Shire know that you “support the Golden Hill Steiner School’s request to have their interest in acquiring Lot 1 recorded in the Local Planning Strategy, 2021”.

Email - enquiries@denmark.wa.gov.au

If you would like more information, please see the document attached with this email: Field of Opportunity Project Information, or contact us, details below, if you have any questions or concerns.

Also, if you do send a submission to Shire, consider letting us know so we can get an idea of the pulse of community opinion on this issue.

Many thanks for your support,

Lydia Kenyon and Silvia Lehmann 

On behalf of GHSS High School Planning Group

Lydia – 0419 579 950: lydiakenyon@gmail.com

Silvia – 0435 006 228: iotheatre@iinet.net.au

Class 6 have finished up in Ancient Egypt by studying what it was like to live in that time.  Various roles and professions were looked into, along with the typical food and dress of the Ancient Egyptians.  The children were able to create a character and write a short story describing their daily motions.  Some very interesting characters were created including a magnificent chef to the pharaoh named Jafar!

Now the class has moved on to the Number and Algebra main lesson.  The children have designed their dream home and farms, creating a birds-eye-view plan with accurate perimeter and area measurements.

Algebra, the concept of using symbols to represent number, is introduced through imaginative story telling.  The children are following the marsupials of the forest in their preparations for winter, incorporating the four processes into algebraic equations.

The children have also drawn and painted scenes from Autumn in the lead up to our highly anticipated Autumn Festival.

But the most exciting event these past few weeks has definitely been our class sleep over.  We cooked a scrumptious pasta bake along with a blueberry and apple pie, using the apples grown in the orchard at school.  We then had another of our legendary dance parties – what a work out!  But it wasn’t all fun and games.  We did have our very first business meeting to plan how will make money for our business main lesson.  Some very interesting ideas arose but more on that at a later date.  With barely a moon, the conditions were perfect for a few rounds of “spotlight” around the school grounds.  We finished the night with another dance party followed by a bedtime story.  Everyone was well and truly exhausted, so when the command for sleep was uttered, amazingly, everyone went to sleep (unheard of!).  We had an early morning walk through the forest followed by a pancake breakfast.  A great time was had by all and I left with such a strong feeling of gratitude for my job and these wonderful children.

Ancient India

In class we have begun our Ancient Indian main lesson.  Our first week proved very exciting as we first learnt and applied our newly acquired grid mapping skills.  A great follow on from geometry.  We spent the week looking at the positioning of the array of cities in relation to the many river systems of India.  This led us into the vast differences between the population density between India and Australia.  We focused on religion, traditions and of course cuisine.

As a class the children contributed to our ‘vegetable mandala’, which slowly but surely took place once we had learnt the significance of a traditional mandala.

The vegetables and herbs weren’t there for long and soon were chopped, seasoned and cooked into a delicious vegetable curry.  This was served with rice, poppadums, cucumber and yogurt raita, tomato and chili salad and mango chutney.

This week we have read the wonderful and enchanting story of King Pandu and his sons.  Much discussion has focused around the ‘class system’, which was very dominant in Ancient times and quite prevalent today.  Each child had to choose (out of a hat), whether they were a Braham (holy person) and teacher or a warrior and a member of the royal family or finally a tradesperson or peasant.  We discussed the pathways of a Prince compared to a Princess.  A Prince, being educated and instructed in warrior type activities.  A Princess learnt a musical instrument and perhaps some intricate handwork.  A peasant or tradesperson would never be able to marry above their class and a Prince could not marry below.  This caused quite a discussion as I have many Princesses who would love to shoot an arrow from horseback and many Princes who so enjoy needlepoint!  Which I think is so wonderfully fabulous…  Also a peasant girl gardener who won the love of a Prince and become a Princess regardless!  So in tune!

It has been a wonderful descriptive writing activity, which the children have then read out to the class, and we all have enjoyed the stories.

A mixture of mediums with wet on wet painting and pastels made for beautiful lotus flowers with Kate.

As a class we performed the autumn story, the Shadow Giant.  The children performed beautifully at our autumn festival and I was very proud of them.

So many exciting things have been happening in Class 3 in the past few weeks!  To conclude our Hebrew studies, we had special guest Nikki Green come to speak to our class about the Jewish celebration of Purim, after which we collaboratively constructed recounts of her visit.  We have also had guests from the school community attend our class meetings to address issues raised by students, including Kristi who help answer questions about what we can recycle at school, as well as Jacqui who came to talk to us about student playground concerns.

In woodwork Heather helped us make sundials which we discovered had the disadvantage of being hard to read during cloudy weather!  Continuing with our focus on time, we also looked at simple versions of water clocks and candle clocks, the candle clocks being a huge hit with Class 3 who were intrigued by the way the wax burnt down to the inserted nails (marking the passing of set intervals) releasing them to make a clang on the sink as metal hit metal!   

In Class 2 we have begun our Animal Fables Main Lesson.  Sly fox, timid mouse, mighty lion, steady tortoise and vain crow are some of the characters we will be meeting throughout the main lesson.

We are enjoying the opportunity to re-enact some of the tales and demonstrate the traits and feelings that these animals imbue.  Our morning circle has lots of songs and verses about characters from the tales.  Here is one of our favourites;

I lift my leg, I stretch my leg,  I plant it firm and light

I lift again I stretch again,  My pace exactly right

With care I go, so proud and slow, A Heron this way strides

My head upright, my eye is bright,  I walk with royal pride

It has been a lot of fun learning the Noongar names for animals in our local environment as we practised our song for the Autumn Festival. 

Thank you for the bright native autumn flowers  that some families have shared with us in our classroom.

In craft we finished creating our characters from The Kings of Ireland’s Son.  It has been wonderful to see the children making stories and puppet plays using their characters.  Now we have moved on to making little knitted animals using stocking stitch.  We have begun with a knitted hare.

Last week on March 17 it was Saint Patricks Day.   This day has become a celebration of all things Irish. 

We have just completed 2 main lessons with an Irish theme – an English Main lesson on ‘The King of Irelands Son’ and a Math times tables Main lesson embedded within the stories of Finn McCool and the Celtic Dragon Myth.  Therefore we acknowledged the day with lucky 4 leaf clover cards to take home with our Irish parting verse.  

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back

May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rains fall soft upon your fields

And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of his hand

Class 1 are enjoying their journey through the alphabet.  We are nearing the end of the consonants and will be learning the vowels very soon.  We've been practicing making our letters with beeswax and play dough and identifying words that start with the same sounds.  Last week we began learning the rainbow song - a lovely one for moving from Bunuru into Djeran and starting to see more rainbows with the welcome back to the rain!

Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow
Sing a rainbow
Sing a rainbow too

Listen with your eyes
Listen with your ears
And sing everything you see
I can sing a rainbow
Sing a rainbow
Sing along with me

In craft, Class 1 has been washing and carding wool.  We finished making our knitting needles with Heather and last week we were very excited to start knitting our recorder bags with Evie and Jewels.

Summer goodbye, summer goodbye!
You may no longer stay!
Autumn is on it’s way!
Summer goodbye, summer goodbye!
Roses, sweet petals shed!
Apples are turning red!
Summer goodbye, summer goodbye……! !

All around us are signs of a change of season…. the weather has been humid and stormy, with sunshine breaking through, (changeable as always in Denmark!), but the days are noticeably shorter as we draw closer to the Autumn Equinox (when day and night are of equal length), which falls on Saturday 20th March this year. 

The date of Easter is determined by the movement of the sun and moon; Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon once the Equinox has passed and in Karri Kindergarten our nature table is dressed in the shades of the season; reds, browns and oranges.  Gnomes guard a cave, mushrooms have sprung up and honey possums peek out from a fallen log.  “Mother nature” who sits on our story table wears her warm hat and shawl as the mornings are becoming cooler and “red squirrel” has begun gathering her stores for winter.  A bowl of wheat seeds is about to spring to life to create an “Easter garden”.  

This week the children have been painting blown eggs to hang from the Easter Tree (could parents please send in a blown egg if they haven’t already done so).  We look forward to baking Hot Cross Buns for a special treat and an egg hunt in the last week of term (keep these secret for the children please!).

As we come to the end of our first term together in Karri Kindergarten, with a wide range of ages and stages from different place combining, I am feeling that the work of stitching us all together to create a cohesive group is coming to fruition!

Warm wishes to all!

Denise

Naatj boola djerap koolangah werdaka        Pibbulmen-Menang boodja marlak-ngat 

How   many   birds   children searched for         Bibbulmen-Menang  country bush - in

Ngany waangkin noonook mayow alidja        Pibbulmen-Menang boodja marlak-ngat 

I            tell               you           few        there         Bibbulmen-Menang   country  bush - in

There have been some exciting events at Bush School in recent weeks.  A big thunderstorm occurred on Bush school morning a couple of weeks back, and we abandoned our morning circle to move to the safety of our bush shelter while it passed over.  After the storm had moved on a little, and before the rain became a downpour, we decided it was safest to return to class under shelter of trees and do our Bush Journalling for a while.  When the storm had fully passed, sunshine and clear blue skies emerged as the clouds parted, and we returned to the forest for a glorious morning of bush activities in a recharged and vibrant fresh atmosphere.  So special for the children to be able to experience the wonder of these dramatic natural events in the environment directly and vividly.

As the fungi have begun to appear, the children have been learning about the underground world beneath their feet, and the important role the fungi/mycelium plays in caring for trees and plants, and keeping everything in balance.  Some of the children’s artwork in their journals reveals how deeply they have been able to imaginatively enter into this world and experience the interconnectedness of all these natural systems.

The children have been learning some new songs in Noongar language, and one particular project has been to learn the Noongar names of fourteen different birds that appear in our forests and school grounds.  To help our memories, we have designated one of our trees the Djerap (bird) Tree, and as we sing the song we place the birds in our imaginations on different branches upon the tree.  That way we associate the names of the birds with our local landscape.  In the longer term, we aim for the children to be able to say the Noongar name of the birds whenever they see or hear them in the environment.  We will update you on our progress in future newsletters.

With the rain followed by warm weather as we have approached the equinox, it has been an ideal time to return to the creek and, as local careers of everything, ‘pay the rent’ for all the gifts that we continue to receive from the forest environment.  The children have been helping to free up the flow of the creek where it has been blocked, using the loose sticks and branches removed to ‘wood weave’ the eroded patches along the creek in preparation for the big waters that will soon be flowing when the big rains come.  We will continue with this custodial work in the remaining weeks of the term, before we begin to focus on campfire activities after the holidays.

Little fungi friends on the forest floor

Popping up to say hello, but doing so much more 

Mother Nature’s helpers spreading all around

Caring for the trees and plants, far beneath the ground

In Bush Kindy, the children have been following the forest trails to explore new areas of the bush and creek.  A few weeks back, we crossed over the creek for the first time to visit The Wise Old Jarrah Tree; we sang his song together and the children listened with reverence and intent to hear his wise old words.

As the season has begun to show signs of shifting and changing from Bunuru to Djeran, we have had the first visitations of our fungi friends from beneath the earth.  Especially after the wild thunder storm a couple of weeks ago, the paths were littered with the tiny red fungi on our bushwalk, but since the return of warmer weather, they seemed to have decided that it was too early to be sticking around.

There have also been many spiderwebs throughout the forest over the last couple of weeks, and the children have heard the story about Mrs Spider and her efforts to rebuild her web each time it got bumped by the koolangka (children) running on the path.  Eventually she received some help from Ngaangk (sun) and Boorong (rain) to help the children notice her web before they ran into it.

With the warm weather after the rain, it has been a wonderful time to visit different sections of the creek and enjoy her gentle beauty before she grows wild again with the first big rains of Djeran.

Everyone went home a little bit dirtier today.

It was such a beautiful gathering of busy babies and relaxed Mums.

All welcome.

Please find attached correspondence from Denmark Senior High School Principal Kath Ward requesting feedback from the community regarding preferences for a language to be offered to Year 7 students in 2022.  The link to respond can be found in the PDF.