10 August 2023

From the Principal

Dear Parents and Carers,

As we move into Week 5 of Term 3 I wanted to highlight the benefits of developing mindful children.

Mindfulness is simply paying full attention in the moment. It involves relaxed focusing, without any judgement. For children, mindfulness may be used to help with managing conditions including autism, challenging behaviours, ADHD, anxiety and stress.

Growing evidence suggests that teaching mindfulness to children can help with learning, decision making, emotional intelligence, self-confidence and connectedness to others.

Mindfulness for Children – The Benefits of Mindfulness Therapy:

Mindfulness has many health benefits for adults, including reduced stress, less rumination (mulling over your thoughts), and improved focus, working memory and flexibility of thinking.

Mindfulness for children hasn’t been as well-researched. However, a growing body of evidence supports mindfulness-based therapy for children. Some benefits that have been supported by studies include:

• Improved attention, focus and cognitive development
• Enhanced social and emotional skills, such as greater empathy
• Improved behaviour at school
• Increased resilience
• Improved emotional regulation
• Reduced anxiety and stress.

Mindfulness meditation for children can help them learn to calm their bodies and minds. This creates a relaxed, positive environment which can benefit behaviour, communication and emotional regulation.

It can help children learn patience and explore feelings such as gratitude and love.

Mindfulness exercises can be used throughout a child’s daily routines (such as taking deep breaths to calm down) or be a planned relaxation experience (such as meditation or yoga). Mindfulness training helps to calm the mind and body and assists in being present in the moment. This supports children to be in control and fosters positive interactions and relationships.

Mindfulness Exercises for Children:

Listening walk

A listening walk is simply going for a walk with your child, focussing on your surroundings and sharing your findings. Familiar places are great because your child can discover things they haven’t noticed before. A listening walk helps teach your child patience and how to be present in the moment.

How to do a mindful listening walk:

Ask your child where thy would like to walk. Places such as a garden or beach are great as they have natural sounds like leaves rustling or waves crashing

Ask your child what sounds they expect to hear and why

Stop often, close your eyes and encourage your child to listen. After a minute or two, ask your child what sounds they heard and why they think they heard them.

Remember to keep it FUN and let your child take the lead! For younger children, adapt the mindful listening walk by seeing if they can make each noise they heard or locate where the sound came from.

Mindful Posing

An easy way for children to dip their toes into mindfulness is through body poses. To get your child/children excited, tell them doing fun poses can help them feel strong, brave, and happy.

Have the child/children go somewhere quiet and familiar; a place they feel safe. Next, ask them to try one of the following poses:

The Superman: stand with the feet just wider than the hips, fists clenched, and arms reached out to the sky, stretching the body as tall as possible.

The Wonder Woman: stand tall with legs wider than hip-width apart and hands or fists placed on the hips.

Ask your child/children how they feel after a few rounds of trying these poses. You may be surprised!

Mindful glitter jar or ‘calm jar’

This activity can teach children how strong emotions may take hold, and how to find peace when emotions feel overwhelming.

First, you’ll need to make a sparkly calm jar. It’s simple – get a clear jar or bottle (like a Mason jar) and almost fill it with water. Add a big spoonful of glitter glue or glue and dry glitter to the jar. Put the lid on and shake the jar to make the glitter swirl.

Use the following script (from Karen Young at Hey Sigmund) or take inspiration from it to create your own mini-lesson:

“Imagine that the glitter is like your thoughts when you’re stressed, mad or upset. See how they whirl around and make it really hard to see clearly? That’s why it’s so easy to make silly decisions when you’re upset – because you’re not thinking clearly. Don’t worry this is normal and it happens to all of us (yep, grownups too).”

Put the jar down in front of them.

“Now watch what happens when you’re still for a couple of moments. Keep watching. See how the glitter starts to settle and the water clears? Your mind works the same way. When you’re calm for a little while, your thoughts start to settle, and you start to see things much clearer. Deep breaths during this calming process can help us settle when we feel a lot of emotions.”

This exercise not only helps children learn about how their emotions can cloud their thoughts, it facilitates the practice of mindfulness while focusing on the swirling glitter in the jar.

Try having the child focus on one emotion (such as anger) at a time and discuss how the shaken versus settling glitter is like that emotion.

I hope you find some of these strategies useful with your children.

Kindest regards,
Ms Kerryn Woodhouse
Principal

New Prime Minister

Congratulations to our new Prime Minister Harper Cunninghame 

At the end of last term one of our Prime Ministers, Samuel Hampton left Landsdale Primary School. This provided our current ministers with the opportunity to apply for the role of Prime Minister. Harper Cunninghame who has done an absolutely wonderful job of being our Sports Minister won this position and has now stepped into the role of Prime Minister. The Landsdale Primary School community congratulates Harper on this achievement.

Sports News

Congratulations to Sophie B for reaching the 100 lap milestone of our Monday Morning Running Club!

Well done to our 40 Cross Country runners who represented the school at last week’s State Championships. The races weren’t easy, with greater distances than they had competed in before and up to 500 students in a single race.

School Calendar

Student Birthdays

The following students have birthdays coming up in the next fortnight.  We would like to wish them all a very Happy Birthday on their special day.

P&C News

Landsdale Primary School P&C are excited to announce we are holding a Billy G’s Gourmet Cookie Dough fundraiser! 

Please help us to raise funds toward supporting the Year 6 Graduation Dinner event. 

All money raised will go towards our Year 6 Graduation event venue hire, decorations, prizes, photographer and partial parent supervisor attendance fees. 

Start Date: Friday 28^th July 
Final Orders Due: Monday 14^th August 
Estimated Delivery Date: Thursday 11^th September 

How do we create a Fundraising Page? Creating a fundraising page is easy! 

Visit the link below and click the “Register” button on the home page to fundraise on the cybersafe, Billy G’s Cookie Dough platform.  

Choose your goals and create a unique avatar! 

Place your order using the “Order Now” button and share your fundraising page with your family and friends via the “Share” section so they can start buying some yummy cookie dough. Easy! 

Happy Fundraising!

Father’s Day Stall 2023

The 2023 Father’s Day Stall will be held on Friday the 1^st of September (and Tuesday the 29^th of August for Kindy A rotation).

We are now accepting pre-payments on Qkr until Thursday 24^th August. Please note, pre-payments are limited to 1 gift and 1 card per student. Additional gift purchases will need to be paid for in cash on the day and are subject to stock levels.

We are very excited about the stall gifts this year, and we know how much the kids love coming to do their ‘shopping’! So make sure to prepay your child’s $6 shopping token before the due date, or students can bring in $6 on the day to buy their Dad, Caregiver or special guy in their life a cool gift for Father’s Day. Cards are also able to be prepaid at $1 or cash on the day, until sold out.

If you are interested in helping out on the day, please contact Nerissa on 0432 326 584.

Nerissa Toh
Father’s Day Stall Organiser

Roadwise – Safety reminders from our Traffic Warden

Just a few safety reminders from our lovely traffic warden, Lynne, who is located on the Southmead crossing.

• Please stick to 40km/h in our school zone between the hours of 7.30am–9am and 2.30pm–4pm.
• The crosswalk is a no parking/stopping zone. Please do not park or stop over the crosswalk in the afternoon waiting for Kiss & Drive.
• No vehicle is permitted to park within 20 metres of the approach side of the crosswalk or within 10 metres of the departure side.

Council Rangers regularly patrol our school. You will receive an infringement if you are parking illegally.

Canteen Information

CANTEEN INFORMATION

We have our own facebook page! Please like and follow us to get our latest canteen updates and menu specials. 

We will never let a student go hungry. If your child needs an emergency lunch and comes home with a note from the canteen, please pay the amount either in cash the next day or on Qkr via the accounts to pay menu. If you have any queries please give us a call and we’ll be happy to help. 

Thank-you
The Bush Blues Cafe team

Thanks
Sue, Nat & the canteen team

Uniform Shop News

For all uniform requirements, please contact Tudor Uniforms on Tel. 9408 2666 or the link below. Their address is: Unit 1/75 Excellence Dr, Wangara.

Leap – Parent Information

Welcome to Bilingual Families Perth

Bilingual Families Perth is a not-for-profit network of linguistically diverse people in Western Australia.

Our network connects over 500 families and individuals from more than 40 language backgrounds. In the past 10 years we have provided support for families who speak Afrikaans, Bengali, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Gujarati, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Malay, Malayalam, Mandarin, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Samoan, Serbian, Spanish, Swahili, Swiss-German, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese besides various dialects of the relevant languages.

Most families have pre-school or school-aged children and we are experiencing similar issues while raising our children in more than one language. We also work together with professionals who share information on bilingualism and multilingualism. We can probably put you in touch with people who speak your language

Ballajura Community Fair – Sunday 20th August – 10am to 3.30pm

Saver Plus

Help us share Saver Plus with more families!

Like many families in WA, your families may also be experiencing the impact of cost-of-living challenges. Saver Plus helps empower families with money skills and assist with school expenses by rewarding them for saving.

What is Saver Plus?

Saver Plus is a free online community money skills program funded by ANZ and the Australian Government, and delivered by The Smith Family in WA:

• helping people to hit their savings goals,
• develop life-long savings habits, and
• receive up to $500 in matched savings from ANZ to assist with school expenses.
  

Eligibility criteria applies.

Ballajura Landsdale Cricket Club – Female cricket opportunities

Cyber Safety

The session will take place on Monday, 14 August, at 6 p.m at Ashdale Secondary College. Bookings are essential. Please click on the link below to secure your tickets.