Dear mums, dads, carers and colleagues

Thank you once again for supporting our school at the Community Fair last Saturday.  It was a great event and one that I hope will form positive memories for our families.  All of the clean up is nearly finished and the accounts are being finalised.  We will know the operating profit from the day in a week or so and share the figures at the P&C meeting on August 20.  The profits are still being directed towards air-conditioning of classrooms.  

Year 4 camp

Year 4 camp this week saw great weather and great fun.  The gallery here shows some of the Facebook photos but the real gallery will be in next week's newsletter issue.  Well done to the staff who ensured that our children were safe and well and that they had a great experience.

2020 preparations

Our school has also begun its preparations for 2020 with enrolments being organised for Prep.  We are also preparing the 2020 booklists and I anticipate that these will be sent home at the very end of this term.  Additionally, the Student Resource Scheme will be prepared and presented at the September P&C meeting.  

Road safety

I have received two reports in the past week of students practising poor road safety.  One of the students was not from our school but was struck by a vehicle and injured while crossing the road.  And another student for whom I received a report was just plain lucky that the motorist was alert.   

Please discuss your expectations with your children.  These expectations around how they walk, ride or bus to and from school should be non-negotiable.  You should set the route they are to travel and explain precisely what you want in terms of crossing roads and safe behaviours.  Please remember that traffic and children are a potentially dangerous mix and it takes but a split second for things to go from nothing to tragedy.  

We discuss road safety in class at school often but nothing will influence your children's safety like your own parenting.  

What's ahead for us?

The next couple of weeks will be busy for our music department as we compete at the Gold Coast Eisteddfod.  Best wishes to our bands and string ensembles for wonderful performances and thank you to the staff involved.

The languages competition is being held at Griffith University next Sunday.  Thank you to everyone who is representing our school.

Good luck to Coomera Rivers at the Australian Education Awards announcements next Saturday night in Sydney.  A small team will be representing us at the event where we were shortlisted for two categories.  This itself is an incredible achievement.  

Have a great week.

Kind regards

Vic

We love having our Student Excellence Award recipients visit us down at Corporate Services to have their photo taken.  Congratulations to the following students who earned this award for Week 4.

A big congratulations to our $20 Boss students who collectively made over $1400 from the sales of their products at the fair last week.   Our $20 Bosses will be recognised for their efforts during the senior assembly next Friday.  They are very much looking forward to receiving their profits to pass onto their chosen charity next week.  Thank you to all those who supported our students in their first entrepreneurial endeavour.  This is only the beginning for these budding entrepreneurs.  Please keep an eye on the newsletter as our $20 Bosses have been invited to participate in another local event in Term 4!  More details to follow.

At Coomera Rivers we believe that to be successful in the 21st century our students need to be skilled, creative and adaptable users of technology.

This term we were excited to be invited to participate in the Queensland Schools eSports League.  The League provides upper primary and lower secondary school students with a safe, competitive and challenging eSports opportunity. The latest statistics surrounding 9-13 year old students indicate that over 70% of this age bracket have played an eSports title in the last 3 months. Alarmingly, 60% of these students have also reported encountering in-game online bullying and trolling. The Queensland Schools eSports League provides a safe, face to face, respectful community where students can come together, represent their schools and compete against their peers. 

Over the next few weeks students in Year 6 will be battling it out in our in house competition playing Mario Kart Deluxe 8 on Nintendo Switch.  They will practice good sportsmanship and learn about the value of concentration and persistence, all whilst having fun. Three students will be chosen to represent our school in the eSports finals which will be held at St Hilda's in Week 8 against representatives from the schools listed below.

• St Hilda’s School
• All Saint Anglican College
• Caloundra City Private School
• Coomera Anglican College

• Coomera Rivers State School

• Emmanuel College
• Hillcrest Christian College
• Ipswich Grammar
• McAuley College

• Ormiston College

• Palm Beach Currumbin High School

• Saint Stephen’s College

• St John’s Anglican College
• The Southport School

• The Springfield Anglican College


This week saw our Year 2 students begin planting their edible garden.  They were very excited to get into the garden and planted both seedlings and seeds after some careful soil treatment. Some of the produce we’re hoping to harvest includes carrots, cucumbers, lettuces, squashes, radishes and a variety of herbs.   We would like to give a huge thank you to Bunnings at Oxenford for their generous donation of soil, fertiliser, herbs and seedlings.  Kylie even came out to help us do some planting on Friday.

And now we tend to the seedlings and keep our fingers crossed that we get a bumper crop and can share some of our fresh food with the cafe.

The original plans for the NAIDOC Week BBQ needed to be changed due to the weather at the time.  The catch up date is next week.  We look forward to sharing the event with our ATSI families.

On Thursday September 19, all Australians are encouraged to pick up a book and read for one hour, on their own or with the children in their life.  The Australian Reading Hour is a great initiative which highlights the value of reading for both adults and children.  Literacy is one of the most important foundations and reading has tremendous benefits for children, such as building knowledge and improving concentration and memory. Reading has also been shown to reduce stress by 68% in adults, more than listening to music or going for a walk, and is an enjoyable pastime that promotes creativity.  It is fun and free so let's get reading!

Click here for more information.    

Thursday 5 September

We are excited to announce that Coomera Rivers has secured a visit on Thursday 5 September from a favourite kids' author and illustrator, Matt Stanton. In six years Matt Stanton has put more than half a million funny kids books into the hands of children around the world. From picture books to chapter books Matt’s stories and illustrations invite kids to enter the world of books through their favourite door: laughter. We are offering this event at no cost to our families because we hope that students will be inspired by Matt to not only read, but to write too. The sessions are set to be highly entertaining and of course, funny!

Session times for each year level are as follows:

Please see attached details about how parents can purchase Matt's books if they'd like to.  Matt will then bring the pre-ordered books with him on the day. Of course our iCentre has a few books already in stock.

At OSHC we are passionate about making healthy choices. Our week was focused around educating our children and allowing them to make their own decisions that benefit them.  As always, children have the option of different fruit and/or vegetables with breakfast and afternoon tea.  Some of our all time favourites include bananas, oranges, red and green apples, carrot sticks, celery sticks, cherry tomatoes and of course, WATERMELON.

While we are used to these choices, we spent this week understanding the reasons why we make choices that are good for us and our growing bodies. Of course we also recognise the importance of balance. When we had ham and cheese puffs this week, we spoke about the importance of also fuelling our bodies with the fruit and vegetable options available to us.  Some of us even discovered that we actually enjoy the ‘healthy’ stuff, especially as it builds our big, strong muscles! Did you manage to crack the OSHC weekly riddle that related to our focus? People buy me to eat, but never actually eat me. What am I?

This year,  the Arts department has purchased a class set of guitars.  Year 6 began learning guitar last week and they were all were excited to master their first song the introductory pattern played with Old Town Road.  Rock out year 6!

If you own an acoustic guitar at home and your year 6 child wants to practise but it needs a string or tuning, Mrs Blyth is happy to do that for you, please send it in.

   

At the end of the Term 3, African Beat will be presenting to all students. Bringing hundreds of drums to Coomera Rivers, everyone attending will have the opportunity not only to learn to play the djembe (otherwise know as the talking drum) but also learn a traditional African song.  Salaka is presented by performing artists from Ghana who spend a few months each year touring Australia and performing to hundreds of students around the country.

If you’d like to see what students will experience at a performance, please click on the link below. Information notes and permission slips are available from either your child’s teacher or Corporate Services and payment is due Thursday 29 August.   Please email Mrs Zander if you have any questions. 

Lights! Coomera! Action! is a talent quest type of event organised by our student council that is set to uncover some amazing talent in our school.  We hope that students are excited about the opportunity to audition and showcase their talent.  There are four categories for students to choose from Drama, Instrumental Music, Singing or Dance. Students are only able to enter once. Hopefully, students have begun to think of what they'd like to audition for in effort to perform at our special performance assemblies. Our Junior school students will audition in Week 7 and Senior school in Week 8.

 The Auditions are as follows: 

Junior School – Week 7 

All auditions take place at 2nd break. 

Prep to Year 2 Drama Section: Monday 26th August 

Prep to Year 2 Instrumental Music Section: Tuesday 27th August 

Prep Singing Section: Wednesday 28th August 

Year 1 & 2 Singing Section: Thursday 29th August 

Prep Dancing Section: Thursday 29th August 

Year 1 & 2 Dancing Section: Friday 30th August 

Senior School – Week 8  

Year 3 to 6 Drama Section: Monday 2nd September 

Year 3 to 6 Instrumental Music Section: Tuesday 3rd September 

Year 3 & 4 Singing Section: Wednesday 4th September 

Year 5 & 6 Singing Section: Thursday 5th September 

Year 3 & 4 Dancing Section: Thursday 5th September 

Year 5 & 6 Dancing Section: Friday 6th September 

Good luck to all the performers and also to our student councillors who will be judging the acts alongside staff members.

A Concept to Foster Self-regulation and Emotional Control

At Coomera Rivers we use, Zones of Regulation to teach self-regulation by categorizing all the different ways we feel and states of alertness we experience into four concrete colored zones.

Many of life’s regular events cause everyones emotional states to become less regulated; our emotions move into the “yellow” “blue” or “red” zones. Zones of Regulation teaches students to become aware of their feelings and emotions and to recognize triggers that cause their emotions to rise.

Our feelings and states of mind determine what zones we are in.

The Red Zone is used to describe extremely heightened states of alertness and intense emotions.  A child may be elated or experiencing anger, rage, explosive behaviour, devastation or terror when in the red zone. When in the red zone we often feel a loss of control.

The Yellow Zone is also used to describe a heightened state of alertness and elevated emotions however one has more control when they are in the yellow zone. A child may be experiencing stress, frustration, anxiety, excitement, silliness, the wiggles or nervousness in the yellow zone.

The Blue Zone is used to describe a low state of alertness and feelings such as sad, tired, sick or bored.

The Green Zone is used to describe the ideal state of alertness. A person may be described as calm, happy, focused, content or ready to learn when he or she is in the green zone. A strong sense of internal control is experienced when in the green zone.

Since the community fair finished, we have recieved heaps of requests for the recipes to some of the delicious cakes and slices that were on offer last week.  Thank you to all of the awesome chefs who contributed to this stall.  It was a BIG HIT.  Below are two recipes from the fine fair treats.  Thanks to Nicole for sharing.

Miss Nic's Triple Choc Cookies:

*Makes 25 large cookies (more if you make them smaller)*

- 280g of softened butter (room temp, not melted)
- 2 cup of brown sugar
- 2 Tsp of vanilla extract (can be replaced for vanilla essence)
- 2x egg
- 3 cups of self-raising flour (however, more is required to add to mixture later to get to the right consistency)
- 2 1/2 Tbsp of cocoa
- 200g of dark choc chips (you could use milk choc chips instead)
- 200g of white choc chips

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan forced). Grease and/or line two baking trays with baking paper.

2. Beat the butter and brown sugar together using an electric mixer until it is pale and creamy, add the egg and vanilla the the mixture and beat together. Sift and stir in the flour and cocoa, and add the white and dark choc chips (you may need to add more flour if your cookie dough is to sticky/wet). Mix until all ingredients are well combined, you want it to have the consultancy of soft play-dough).

3. Roll the mixture into balls roughly the size of large golf-balls and place them 4cm apart on prepared trays. Gently press down on the top of the cookies with your fingers or back of a spoon to slightly flatten them.

4. Bake for roughly 15 minutes (until they are a nice golden brown). Set aside for 5 minutes and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

*(if you are wanting to make just choc chip cookies, don't add the cocoa)*

                 
Miss Nic's Sticky Salted Caramel Fudge:

*Makes roughly 16 fudge squares (depending on the size you cut them)*

- 140g softened butter (room temp, not melted)
- 395g sweetened condensed milk
- 1 Tsp of vanilla extract (can be replaced for vanilla essence)
- 2 1/2 tbsp golden syrup
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 Tsp of salt (or to taste)
- 200g white chocolate (nestle white choc melts work best; add less (150g) if you want a firmer fudge)

1. Grease and/or line a baking tray (preferably a brownie tray) with baking paper.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan on low heat. Once melted add and stir in the condensed milk, golden syrup, vanilla, salt, and brown sugar. Constantly stirring the mixture over low heat and bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for 10 minutes while still stirring.

3. Take it of the heat and mix in the white chocolate until it is melted (don't stop stirring). Place the saucepan back on low heat and continue to stir until the mixture starts to lose its gloss/shine.

4. Pour the mixture into the prepared tray and smooth over the surface. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, and then refrigerate until firm (roughly 1-2 hours). Once firm, cut into squares.

*(if the fudge does not harden, place the mixture back in the saucepan with 1 cup of water. the the mixture melt and constantly stir until it thickens and loses its gloss/shine, then repeat step 4)*

With the Community Fair done and dusted we are switching back to the usual routine.. Fathers day events are coming up quickly, sports day lunches, Containers for Change are all continuing and the 2019 Year Book is about to heat up.  As usual we would always love some new faces in the Cafe and volunteers for Containers for Change.

   
Cafe:

• Monday: 12/8          1 Volunteer required
• Wednesday: 14/8     1 Volunteer required
• Thursday: 15/8        1 Volunteer required
• Friday: 16/8             1 Volunteer required

   
Containers for Change:

• A volunteer to take a few bags to the recycling depot on Friday.

Fathers day stall:

• Tuesday 20 August           3 Volunteers
• Wednesday 21 August      3 Volunteers
• Thursday 22 August         3 Volunteers
• Friday 23 August              1 Volunteer

   
Special event:

• Please save September 10 for the Volunteer Afternoon Tea (This one has an tasty twist so be sure you put the date in you diary)