Click to download the 2023-24 Hillside Calendar. You can also access the school calendar via the ESF App.
22 April: Faust Incursion @ Bradbury
25-26 April: Hearing Screening
26 April: Book-Inspired Dress Up Day
21 May: Parent Webinar - Oral Health Education
22 May: RERUN Parent Webinar - Oral Health Education
23 May: Parent Webinar - Strategies for Supporting Anxious and Shy Children
27-30 May: K2 PTCs
31 May: ESF K2-Y1 Transitions Day
3-4 June: K1 PTCs
14 June: K2 Celebration Day (Graduation - more info to follow)
Dear Hillside Families
As we begin the last term of school, it's natural to start thinking about the next stage of your child's educational journey. Some parents have questions about early literacy skills, specifically phonics. Early literacy skills lay the foundation for your child's reading and writing journey. They include a variety of abilities that intertwine to create a strong basis for literacy success. Alongside phonics, other essential skills such as print awareness, vocabulary development, comprehension, and language fluency play integral roles in your child's literacy growth.
By actively engaging with your child in activities promoting these early literacy skills, you can give them a strong start in their literacy journey. Read books together, play rhyming games, engage in conversation, ask open-ended questions, and provide opportunities for drawing and writing.
It is important to understand that a holistic approach to early literacy skills is vital for your child's overall literacy development. Learning should be fun and play-based at this age. Incorporate games, songs, and hands-on activities to make the learning experience enjoyable for your child. Please read more under the Developing Early Literacy Skills section below. We hope you find it useful.
Warm regards
Audrey
World Book Day is on 23 April! To celebrate, we have planned a series of events that week to celebrate our love of stories.
Faust Incursion - Monday 22 April
We will kick off Book Week with the children’s theatre company Faust. They will perform the classic story Peter and the Wolf, and all the K1 & K2 children will be watching the performance in the Bradbury School hall! This also ties in well as a provocation to inspire children’s thinking around how theatre and music are ways to express ideas and stories. This will surely inspire our young performers as they dive into their last unit of inquiry How We Express Ourselves.
K1 & K2 Storytellers
We are once again inviting parents to share their love of stories with the children. Please look out for a separate app message later on this week for more information and to sign up.
Book-inspired Dress Up Day - Friday 26 April
To wrap up Book Week, we want to encourage children to see how stories inspire us to express ourselves. We invite children to dress up as a book character of their choice and to bring the book on the day to read with their friends. Inspiration for costumes can be drawn from a fiction or non-fiction book. Let your ideas run wild! Please note that we kindly request that children do not wear dress-up costumes such as Disney/Marvel characters. We want to focus specifically on creating an opportunity for children to engage with literacy and books. Here are some pictures for inspiration:
We’re all very excited for Book Week and we especially appreciate parent support in helping your children prepare for the special dress-up day.
The children have made incredible progress in their play, learning, and social interactions throughout the course of this year, and we are excited for grown-ups to join us in witnessing and celebrating the children’s growth and accomplishments with us. There will be various opportunities for parent participation in Term 3, so continue to keep an eye on this space.
We start off by inviting any interested K1 storytellers and K2 Open Play volunteers. Please look out for a separate app message with your class-specific sign up sheet. We hope to see you at Hillside so
At Hillside, we are extremely fortunate to have a large outdoor play area that backs onto a lovely natural green space. However, this does mean mosquitoes and midges will be around.
We work with an exterminator year-round, including weekly fogging out in the playground, drains, and other common breeding grounds. We also have mosquito-repelling lanterns and industrial fans, but we highly recommend that everyone applies insect repellent before heading off to school. Sometimes, natural repellents don’t last as long as chemical products, so we must reapply. Roll-on ones are very child-friendly, and we noticed children could manage this independently. You can also apply repellent to clothing rather than directly to the skin. We’ve noticed some bites have penetrated through clothing!
Some children are more susceptible than others and can develop very itchy red lumps around the bites. We will apply an ice pack at school for these children to help reduce the swelling.
Your child's Sharing the Planet Unit of Inquiry report is now available for viewing. Please refer to the graphics below to access your child's report. When viewing the report, we invite those parents interested in contributing by adding your comment in the "parent response to learning" box.
Early literacy skills encompass a range of abilities that form the foundation for children's reading and writing development. These skills are typically acquired during the kindergarten and early primary school years and serve as building blocks for future academic success. Here are some key early literacy skills and ideas on how to support them:
Print Awareness: Read books together and point out letters, words, and sentences. Show them how to handle books properly.
Phonological Awareness: Engage in rhyming games, sing songs, and play with sounds by emphasizing the initial sounds of words.
Letter Recognition: Introduce letters through alphabet books, alphabet puzzles, and letter-themed activities.
Phonemic Awareness: Play sound recognition games like "I Spy" or encourage them to blend sounds together to form simple words.
Vocabulary Development: Talk and converse with your child frequently, introducing new words and discussing their meanings in context.
Narrative Skills: Encourage storytelling, have conversations about daily experiences, and ask open-ended questions to promote expressive language.
Comprehension: Ask questions about stories you read together, encourage making connections to personal experiences, and discuss the main ideas of the stories.
Concept of Word: Point out words while reading and demonstrate how words are separated by spaces.
Writing Readiness: Provide opportunities for drawing, coloring, and tracing lines and shapes to develop fine motor skills.
Alphabetic Knowledge: Explore letter-sound relationships by associating simple words with their initial sounds (e.g., "cat" starts with the sound /k/).
Remember to keep activities age-appropriate, engaging, and fun. Play-based learning is especially effective at this age, so incorporate games, songs, and hands-on activities to make the learning experience enjoyable for your child.
Here’s a short video we've put together with some tips and tricks on developing pre-reading skills and what you can do at home.
Here’s a short video we've put together with some tips and tricks on developing writing skills and what you can do at home.
Topic: Building Resilience Through Play: Strategies for Supporting Anxious and Shy Children
Date: 23 May, 1-2:30pm
We are excited to host an exclusive talk for our families with Dr Melissa Giglio, child clinical psychologist, anxiety specialist and author at Hillside School.
Join us on the 23 May from 1 pm to 2.30 pm online as Dr Giglio shares invaluable strategies for supporting your child when they are experiencing anxiety or acting shy. Dr Giglio's talk will focus on the power of positive interactions during play at home to reduce anxiety while strengthening the parent-child relationship. She will offer practical insights on how to foster communication skills in a fun and nurturing environment.
This is an opportunity to gain expert advice and equip you with the tools to build confidence and resilience in children. There will also be time for Q&A. We look forward to seeing you there.
Registration Link: [Web Link]
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