Click to download the 2022-23 Hillside Calendar. You can also access the school calendar via the ESF App.

3 March: Hillside Family Event (this week!)

6-8 March: K1 Curiosity Kids Incursion

14-15 March: School Photo Days 

17, 24 March: Vision Screening 

21, 23 March: K2 Tai Tam Excursion

31 March: Staff Meeting Day (No Classes)

3-14 April: Spring Break (School Closed)

17 April: Term 3 Commences

17-21 April:  K2 Beach Clean up (Details to follow)

9 May: Parent Webinar - Why Sleep Matters

2 June: K2 to Y1 Transition Day

12-15 June: Save-the-date for K2 Celebration of Learning

Dear Hillside families

Happy mask-free day! Another step away from the pandemic and back to normalcy.

I often like to take the time to pause, reflect and bring everything into perspective. Looking back on the past few years, we have not had a full February of face-to-face kindergarten classes since 2017! We've had school closures and distance learning due to influenza and Covid for the past five years, and it does have an impact on all of us. 

We have been living in a virtual world for the past few years and perhaps getting too familiar with communicating digitally and promptly. With this said, I ask for your understanding as the teachers are now fully engaged in-person with the children. They are less readily available to reply to emails during the school day, and with 48 families (from AM & PM), it could take much longer to go through all the communications. If there is anything urgent that you need the class teacher to know, please call reception, who will help pass on the message.

With the continuing relaxation of all the Covid-related restrictions, we look forward to seeing many smiley faces at our upcoming Beach Picnic!

Warm regards
Audrey

It is wonderful that children and staff can remove their masks starting today! This will be immensely helpful in supporting speech and language development, which has been challenging for the past few years.

Whilst many people are happy, there will be a transition period as some children might still wear masks for different reasons. A few students might initially be stressed when others take off their masks. The ESF Educational Psychologist team has written a Social Story about this. 

Other points to keep in mind while supporting children to navigate changes around mask-wearing guidelines?  

• Helping children understand your families' reasons for removing masks or maintaining the use of masks will be individual to you as a family, and the Hillside community will respect the views of each other.  
• Being open and honest with teachers about your family's wishes will help each child at Hillside be supported through this change.
• Children adapt to change in various ways, and we will take a supportive stance by understanding that for some removing their masks may take a little longer to adjust.
• Research based tips for establishing and negotiating new social rules taken from other countries that have already removed mask-wearing mandates could be a helpful resource for us all.

There were some parent questions about developing early literacy skills. Please take a look at this short video we've put together with some tips and tricks on developing writing skills and what you can do at home.

[Web Link]

As a follow-up to the recent stakeholder survey, we would like to review our various methods of keeping parents informed of their child's progress and development throughout the year. We value your thoughts and feedback to support us in continuing to reflect and improve our practices. This will help us find a good balance between the various methods of info sharing. It's a very short survey (5 minutes) but focuses on feedback. We greatly appreciate your time to fill out this survey. We thank you again for your input!