We were very sad to say goodbye to Arianna, our Penguin’s EA this term. For the past few years Arianna has been undertaking her Montessori teacher training and she has now been offered a teaching role in a day care centre closer to home. We are however excited to welcome Kathryn Gurr who moved to WA from NSW in January 2020. Kathryn taught at Southside Montessori and relieved at Sydney Montessori as a Children’s House teacher and will join the Penguins classroom as EA for Thursday’s and Friday’s. We are also really pleased to have Sam Fuller extend to a full time EA position in Dolphins covering Renea’s maternity leave. We are delighted to share the news that Renea had her little boy Henry on Sunday 25 October and both are going really well.
I thank those parents who have now provided notice if they will be leaving the School at the end of the year. Both myself and the teachers are so delighted that the number of children leaving us is less than half that of the past few years. Our team has worked so hard to increase the retention across the school as this benefits all children in our beautiful Montessori school.
Our Adolescent Program continues to gradually grow and we now have 100 AP students. For the commencement of 2021 Murdoch University have approved an additional two classrooms for our second sub-school. We are in the process of negotiating the fit out of these new rooms along with the development of some outdoor play areas for the adolescents to utilise. With the move to delivering the 15 – 18 years Montessori Curriculum in our Senior School in 2021, we are excited to now have access for our Senior School students to utilise the Pinjarra Community Garden for Occupations on a Friday. If you have been unable to attend the two information sessions we have held on what these curriculum changes mean for your child, please join me on a tour of the Adolescent Program by booking through our website https://rms.wa.edu.au/.
At the end of last term, we received our provider application number for RMS to run our own OSHC (Out of school Hours Care) program on the Primary School site. We have entered the final stages of this process which will enable Amy to transfer ownership of the Rockingham Montessori OSHC program to RMS. We thank Amy from Our Place, for her flexibility and support of all our families to continue the OSHC at her Dixon Rd premises whilst the School gains all relevant registrations to take over this service. I thank our School Board Secretary Jocelyn Tan, who attended the ECRU interview with me, to secure the first stage of this process. This process has taken longer than anticipated and we now expect our OSHC program will commence in February 2021 and will once again run from the Dugongs and Turtles classrooms. Families will be delighted to know that Nat Wright will return as the director of the OSHC program.
We have such a busy term due to the postponement of many activities from term 2 and 3. To date we have had swimming for the Adolescent students, the Camp Quality Puppet School and the Lower Primary camp last week. This week we have the Upper Primary camp and the Senior School odyssey, then swimming for our Primary School students in Week 5. We also have the Book Fair on 5 November where you can stock up on your Christmas presents. We have a presentation from the police on Bike Safety for our Upper Primary students and road safety for our Adolescents. Please also note the changes for our “Walk Safely to School Day” on Friday 6 November. Once your child has eaten breakfast at the foreshore you are welcome to leave and walk to school. To ensure the safety of all our children, we will not walk as a group and parents are asked to walk with their child to school. Please also ensure you have the Carols on the Green event in your diary for 4 December.