Our Bicicletta Celebration on the Terrace Tuesday 4th December

Despite some unpleasant weather, there was lots of happy noise, laughter and chatter as we stood around in our beautiful terrace garden sharing afternoon tea. The sun came out towards the end when there were only a few people left to witness the fun and madness as we played with the ice!

The reason for our afternoon tea was two-fold, as you would know: to celebrate the wonderful year that we’ve had in Prep and also to raise awareness about the need to look after the plants over summer. Libby has suggested two things:

1) Foster Families for Plants: in the last two weeks of school, people could take home a smaller pot plant or two to look after over summer.

2) Come in to water and be rewarded: Families could pop in over summer to water the plants and check up on the chooks. In return, you can harvest any vegies in the Kitchen Garden and take home eggs they chooks have laid.

We will (with your help, please!) move all of the bigger-sized pot plants over to one side of the terrace, closer to the Kitchen Garden, to make watering easier. The hose and water tank key will be left in convenient spots.

SO, if you are able to help, please email me so that I can pass your details on to Libby, or just talk to her yourself.

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it. It was lovely having the time to stand around and chat about all sorts of things. I was too busy chatting to take note of who cleaned up, so I’m sorry I can’t name you, but thank you!

Also, two BIG thank yous go to Libby for instigating it and organising all of the food; and to Kirsty who spent the afternoon helping Libby to set up.

End of Term 3 - Friday spring clean

A couple of messages about Friday 21st September - last day of Term 3.

From Kirsty: 

We're planning to have a spring clean / plant rejuvenation this Friday (last day of term.)

If anyone can spare a couple of hours from 1.00pm onwards to:

• sweep 

• re-pot some plants 

• fertilise and mulch the pots 

• generally give the plants a bit of spruce up! 

And... if anyone would like to donate some new plants to replace some of the hanging baskets - and other pots - please bring!

Remember it's early break up on Friday - 2.30pm. But come and stay on for another hour to help, and perhaps we can have a drink at the end - on the tidy terrace?!!
See you there!
Kirsty

From Nerida:

Thanks Kirsty for organising this. It sounds fantastic! I would love to hang out for an hour or two after work with you all. If you would like to celebrate with drinks and food, bring something along. We also need some indoor plants, as the succulents weren't coping and have been moved outside onto the terrace. So, if you would like to donate something, indoor ferns or other suitable plants would be much appreciated. Thanks everyone!

Thank you - personal writing parent helpers

Thank you to Natasha who helps out with Personal Writing on a regular basis. Thanks also to Sarah who joined us this week for a session.

Three-way conferences

Three-way conference times and dates were sent home on Friday on small, white slips of paper - please look in your child's bag! If you don't receive one, email over the weekend or speak to Nerida on Monday. Sorry the paper was so small!

Friday Market 27 July - helpers needed!

Prep Bicicletta is rostered to run the next Friday Market on Friday 27th July. 

We need parent volunteers to help with the following things: 

• one person to pick up the sausages and bread (the school will pay),
• two people to arrive at 2:30 pm to heat up the BBQ and start cooking the snags by 2:45 pm so they are ready by 3:30 pm,
• lots of other helpers to arrive by 3:20 to staff the stall - set up your goodies to sell, work out prices, 
• people to help clean up afterwards, both the BBQ and the area around the market,
• and of course people to bring items to sell (edible or otherwise).

There will be a sign-up sheet up on the communications board on Monday - please put your name down to help. 

A few parents have requested that we buy some mechanised pencil sharpeners, so we are planning to buy these with the money you raise. If you have any other suggestions for how the money raised could be used, please let us know.

Community Walks

Hi Families! 

We are excited to announce that, as of Thursday 2nd August, Bicicletta will be going down to the Merri Creek each Thursday morning. The Prep team, with the help of some experts, have been doing research and would like to extend Project Time into the local community to allow children to explore nature, our local environment, landmarks and the great outdoors! This session will replace one of our Project Time sessions. We did this last year and it was a great success. We will pick a place along the Merri creek that we will visit each week and we will really develop a sense and understanding of this special place.

Families are most welcome (and needed!!) to come along with us, and if any one has (or knows someone who does) a knowledge of native flora and fauna in our local area - or just has a love of nature, or walking, or picnics, or good conversation and fun - we need you!!! We will leave school around 9.10 am and will return in time for recess at 11.30 am. We also cannot take this many preps out of the school unless we have extra adults, so please join in!

We will be going regardless of weather (unless there is extreme weather conditions!) so please pack weather-appropriate clothes - warm clothes, rain coats, gumboots, wooly hats etc.

Have a wonderful weekend.
Nerida

End-of-term clean up - thank you

Several parents came in on the last day of term to help us clean up. Amanda, Amelia and Kirsty spent hours in the Atelier. Kerrie helped move some furniture at the end of the day, as did some other parents who popped in just before the end of the day, like Hayley.

Thank you to Kerrie who took home lots of dirty smocks, table cloths and dress ups to wash over the holidays.

It feels great to be clean – no more crusts, marbles and chewed up pencils under furniture; no more overflowing piles of old resources in the Atelier crowding us, and clean table cloths to cover ugly tables! We couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you a thousand times over.

Cooking with the kitchen garden

Next Tuesday (the 24th) we will be cooking soup with Margaret using some veggies from the kitchen garden and from our pots on the terrace.  Please send a mug and spoon to school with your child so they can have a taste.  If you would like to join in and help, we will be gardening and cooking from 10-10:45, and again from 11:30-12:30.

Tidying up on last day of Term 2 - helpers wanted

Friday 29th June is the last day of school for Term 2.

Could we please pretty please have parent helpers to help:

• clean up and sort out the atelier (it’s a huge job and we’re desperate for some help),
• sorting out the castle/imaginative play (we have a back stage area which needs to be sorted out and labeled, and excess items in the castle to be stored back stage) 
• take dress ups and smocks home to wash, 
• sort maths equipment, 
• sharpen pencils, 
• watering the plants on the terrace and feeding them some fertilizer (in the trunk) 
• and just generally helping to tidy. 

This would be a major help for the teachers and will help to continue to provide an orderly, clean and safe environment for the children.

Also note: early dismissal for children at 2:30pm.

End of Term Picnic and Amy’s Farewell

On Thursday 28 June, from 9:30 am - 1:00 pm Prep Bicicletta and Triciclo will be joining forces and walking to Fleming Park to celebrate the end of term and farewell Amy. All families are invited to join. You can join us for the whole time or meet us at the park. Bring along a picnic rug and any safe games to play at the park, such as skipping ropes and grip ball. If you wish to take your child straight to or from the park please let your teacher know. You will need to sign an early leave form if you wish for them to leave early.

Children will be taking their own bags and will need:

• Play lunch and lunch. (This is not a picnic where children are sharing food)
• Warm clothes and sensible shoes.
• Things to play with at the park (such as balls, frisbees, skipping ropes, clearly marked with your name).
• Water bottle.
• A book, colouring pencils, activity books or anything for down time at the park.

Thank you Brett

Thank you to Brett for sweeping the terrace this morning, it looks so much better.  If you ever have 5 minutes in the morning we would really appreciate it if you could water the plants or sweep the terrace. 

Watering plants on the Terrace

Libby has made a Watering Checklist to help us keep track of the watering of our plants on the terrace. Please, if you have even five to ten minutes spare in the morning or afternoon, water some plants, focussing on one ‘group’ at a time, i.e. the hanging plants, back plants or front plants and then tick off the corresponding grid on the Watering Checklist. Our beautiful, inspiring terrace will only stay alive if we all take responsibility for it. Please and thank you.

Parent helpers - thanks

Thank you Libby for taking home a big load of pencils to sharpen overnight! A thank you also goes out to Jane for searching (as yet to no avail) for an electric pencil sharpener to make life easier. We encourage as much parent-help as possible, such as keep pencils sharpened so that children take pride in their writing and drawing. Whenever you have a spare moment, please pop in and take a seat with a sharpener!

Greening the Terrace - thank you!

A big thank you, as has already been made, to all of the people who made our terrace the beautiful and inspiring place that it is. Whether you made a donation or helped out on the day, we are truly grateful. An thousand thank yous are owed to Kirsty and Libby in particular for initiating and organising it. We feel so lucky, in Bicicletta, to have such a generous and supportive community of families.

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Parent helpers

Thank you to all the parents who have come in to help us and run sessions so far.  We really appreciated the time that some of you put in to help us name and organise resources, and we were lucky enough to have a wonderful bracelet-making workshop in project time as well last week. If you have any special interests that you would like to share, or an activity that you would like to have a go at with the children please let us know and we will let you know a good time to come in.   

As well as project groups we really appreciate help with day-to-day classroom tasks such as helping organise our stationary, going through children’s readers with them and emptying the recycling. 

We would love it if someone could come in and help us with some laminating this week.  We have finished the children’s individual P.O. boxes and would like to have them laminated and up and running as soon as possible. If you are able to help us with this please let us know. 

We also need someone to help us empty our paper and cardboard recycling.  If you have a few minutes this week please drop in and we will show you where the recycling stations are. This is a job that needs doing on a regular basis – our Preps are too small to reach the big bins that ours get emptied into.

How parents can help

We greatly appreciate your help in the classroom. We would love for you to come in and help us with a variety of activities. 


We are particularly looking for parents to come in to:

• help set up the readers,
• do individual reading with children to give them confidence with their take home readers, and
• run workshops with the kids during project time.

We know that many of you have particular skills that you would like to share with the kids, such as gardening, languages and philosophy. You may also have a particular interest that you would like to explore with the children, or something that you are working on at home with your own child that you would like to introduce to the group. If so, please let us know when you would like to come in and lead a small group of children in this area. It doesn't have to be anything complicated, even reading a story to a small group, discussing and retelling it is a really worthwhile activity and we would love to have you here to share it with us.