It has been a pleasure to be part of the first two week at Beechboro. It was wonderful touching base with a number of people in the car park in the morning. If you see me around the school feel free to catch me to have a conversation.

Beechboro is a unique school with a strong community and I look forward to working with you as we take the next step in the school’s journey. Part of valuing the community will be the opportunity for parents to hear from the school and be heard in our parent forums held each term. I will be planning with Mr Streeton over the next few days and then we will send out a communication outlining the date and format of the meeting.

Having spoken with Mr Stuart Chisholm, it is clear that he has been made to feel very welcome and that he already has a firm grasp on matters within the school. I am very grateful to have someone of his calibre to stand in for Mr Dunjey as he enjoys his long service leave.

At BCS we are seeking to place personal excellence front and centre in our approach.  God has gifted each one of our students with their strengths and gifts and we seek to work with the students to develop and achieve their personal best. in this initiative. Our quest for personal excellence is one that needs to permeate every aspect of the schools life.  Teachers commit to providing the best possible learning experiences, students commit to embracing opportunities and giving their very best and parents commit to supporting students through encouragement and reiterating the personal excellence message at home.

We are also seeking your input to assist us in developing the future directions for our school. I have worked with the staff and gleaned from them their thoughts about our areas of strength and areas in which we need to improve.  Over the course of the term we will be surveying parents and our senior students about their thoughts about the school. When this happens, we would appreciate it if you can commit some time to the process as we value your feedback.

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” Henry Ford

Justin Krause - Principal

I have to commend the staff and students for the cool way they handled a record breaking hot spell last week. Given that this happened at the beginning of the year was particularly testing for our Kindergarten and Pre Primary students. Well done to all as the week passed without incident.

I can’t say the same for the local power supply, which as you would know left the area without electricity. This same power outage also crashed our main server and left us with limited capacity to print and communicate this week. We apologise for any disruptions you may have experienced. The SCEA IT team has been working very long hours to restore our data.  We expect things to be back as usual by the end of this week.

Stuart Chisholm - Head of Campus

The Bennett Springs Fair is on again - Saturday 12 March. The Fair is a wonderful community event that is open to all families in our community and surrounds.

Like all community events, the success of the day is not possible without the help of many volunteers.  Each class has been assigned a stall to operate and this week your class teachers will be putting a ‘Volunteers’ signup sheet outside their rooms for parents to sign up to help with this stall.

In addition to help running stalls we will require people to volunteer as parking attendants.  If you are able to help in this area please contact the School Office.

The staff are very excited about this event!!! We encourage you all to come along and bring your family and friends to a very enjoyable day out.

Please note, due to a change in the Department of Education’s Swimming Timetable our scheduled swimming times have all been shifted 15 minutes earlier. This change is achievable, but puts our first group under pressure. Please ensure that your child arrives on time to school and is wearing the correct attire. See the swimming newsletter published last week if you are unsure about these arrangements

The area at the rear of the school is strictly for pick up and drop off. There is no parking. If you drive through the zone and your child is not yet ready and waiting, please continue out and to the left. Use the round a bout before circling back into the drop off zone. If we all respect this rule, traffic should circulate fluently and will avoid unnecessary hold ups.

The Year 1 students had an exciting day with water and sand as part of the launch of their theme, God’s Beautiful Beaches.

With the help of a terrific team of parents, they created Salty Ice Sculptures to observe the beautiful changes when salt is added to coloured ice; created creatures with sand dough and beach jewels; wrote their name with sand; discovered what paint print and crayon rubs they could do with shells; wrote secret messages in wax and used water colour to reveal the message; and solved the Fishy Challenge to release the fish back to the ocean!

Year 4 students took part in the Safer Internet Day educational initiative supported by the Australian Government’s Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner to introduce the term’s digital technologies programme.

The day commenced with an inspiring message to show how learning new skills in digital technologies can be put to a higher purpose for God. 

Students also participated in expert jigsaw groups to explore how to balance screen time, avoid inappropriate content, protect personal information, ensure a positive digital footprint and understand practical steps for dealing with and stamping out cyberbullying. 

Many skills were learnt by all, including Mrs Wagner and Mr Peakall, as we linked into a special virtual conference with other independent schools to explore these topics in more detail.  The day concluded with each expert group dramatizing cybersafety “do’s” and “don’ts” to reinforce learning. 

Even though the weather was a scorcher, everyone in the class could say that they had a “cool” cybersafety day!

On Friday 12 Feb the Year 4 students headed to Kings Park for an amazing science excursion.

They participated in an interactive program called “It’s a Plants Life”.  The students were able to learn about the lifecycle of plants, examine the inside of a seed and search for seeds, seedlings and flowers in the bushland at Kings Park.

They joined in with dramatisations depicting pollination and photosynthesis and planted their own seeds to bring home.  In the afternoon they explored the Botanical Gardens and Federation Walkway.  A highlight was viewing Kings Park and the City of Perth from the top of the Glass Bridge.