Students have made a terrific start to the school year. There is a calm and friendly atmosphere at school and it’s great to see our new Foundation students making such a positive start. Our school values of ‘We Show Respect’, ‘We are Learners’ and ‘We are Fair’ are evident in the way the children conduct themselves. Well done everyone!

School Council elections
Each year half the parent positions on School Council become vacant. This means that there are four school council parent positions becoming vacant at Yackandandah Primary School. I am calling for Nominations for School Council. You can nominate yourself or someone else (be sure to check they would be interested). Nominations close Tuesday 14^th Feb. Nomination forms are available from the school office.

If there are more than four nominations received we will go to an election process within the school parent body. If there are four or fewer nominations received those nominees would be automatically elected.

If you would like to learn more about what is involved in being a School Council member you can talk to existing school council members or any staff member (including Michael.)

Student leaders
I would like to introduce some of our student leaders for 2023.

Our School Captains are:

Semester One: Violet MacCalman, Jack Summons
Semester Two: Gabrielle Gargiulo & Aidan Wall

Our House Captains are:

Hammond House: Charlie Killen & Ryder Stagg
Windham House: Angus Glanville, Summer Johnstone
Wellsford House:  Ed Boddenberg, Aisha Willis
Kars House: Aliya McCormack, Cameron McIntosh

We will be presenting these student leaders with their badges during assembly this Friday 10^th February. We are fortunate to have not only these students, but a whole group of senior students who we can trust and rely on to set a positive tone in our school.

Smile Squad
Last year a number of families took advantage of the Smile Squad dental service that visited our school. The dental van will be back to provide a fluoride treatment to children who returned permission forms last year for a follow up treatment. The van will be onsite for a week or so. Permission forms were completed last year and only those who indicated on the permission form at that time will receive the follow up treatment.

Swimming Trials
Congratulations to Hammond House for winning the House swimming sports. It’s been many years since Hammond last held the trophy so it’s great to see it in blue hands again. Most importantly, congratulations to all who participated. It was especially pleasing to see the support all the competitors received from each other. Thanks again to Brendan for another well organised sporting event.

Michael Edwards
Principal

Parent Payments
Thank you to all the families who have paid their Parent Contributions.  When making payment please ensure you include a reference.  If you are paying more than the contribution for your year level, could you please send me an email with what you are paying for.

Photography/Filming consent Form
Under Department guidelines the form only needs to be returned if you do not consent to the school using photos, video or recordings.  Please tick the box(s) that you do not consent to.

Local Excursion Permission Form
Students who have not yet returned the Local Excursion Permission Form have today taken home another one. Please return the form to school tomorrow.  These forms are required for students to walk across to the town library.

Scholastic Book Club

Scholastic has been proudly bringing adventure and the unrivalled enjoyment of reading to multiple generations of Australian families via Book Club. Each Issue of Book Club contains specially curated, age-appropriate titles that have been carefully selected and levelled by a team of professional booklovers.

With numerous studies finding that reading at home is a key factor in a child’s lifelong success, Book Club provides a fun and easy way of bringing books into a child’s home. It provides families with an affordable and convenient way to access the best in Australian and international children’s literature.

Brochures are sent home twice a term.

Each student has taken home a Scholastic Book Club Brochure and order form (this is in the envelope with all the other forms).  Orders need to be submitted through the Book Club Loop by Thursday 16^th February.

This year orders can only be done through the Book Club LOOP for Parents.

Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund (CSEF)
The Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund helps eligible families to cover the costs of school trips, camps and sporting activities.

If you have a valid means-tested concession card, such as a Veterans Affairs Gold Card, Centrelink Health Care Card or Pensioner Concession Card, or are a temporary foster parent, you may be eligible. There is also a special consideration category for asylum seeker and refugee families.

Payment amounts this year are $125 for eligible primary school students Payments are made direct to the school to use towards expenses relating to camps, excursions and sporting activities for the benefit of your child.

If you applied for CSEF through our school last year, you do not need to complete an application form this year, unless there has been a change in your family circumstances or you have a new enrolment at the school.

If you would like to apply for the first time, please call into the school office and ask for an application form.


Enjoy your week
Sandra

Harlan O’Brien & Bella Sommerville

Hughie Vorbach for displaying confidence when trying tasks that ‘stretch’ our brains during Maths this week.
Eliza Westbrook for demonstrating a conscientious attitude to all learning activities.
Frieda Haslett for an excellent start to Foundation and doing everything with a smile on her face.
Grace Scobie for settling into Year 1 with confidence and continuing to be a self-motivated learner.
Joni Mayhew for demonstrating the value of learning by having the confidence to read her ‘just right book’ to the class.
Mia Bebbington for demonstrating the value of respect when showing care and compassion to classmates in need.
Max Boschetti for thinking carefully about choosing “just right” books during independent reading.
Nate Millward for being a leader in our classroom and setting a great example for others during learning time.
Hughie Vorbach for displaying confidence when trying tasks that ‘stretch’ our brains during Maths this week.
Eliza Westbrook for demonstrating a conscientious attitude to all learning activities.
Henry Wyatt for listening well and applying feedback to his learning.
Dane Holden for demonstrating exceptional listening and organisational skills

Mandy and Caz are busy planning art activities for the 2023 Yackandandah Folk Festival - March 24-26. We would like every student from Foundation - Year 6 to bring in a WHITE - no logos/brands please, plain T-shirt that we can print a pattern onto. We will be asking classroom teachers to collect them for us over the next three weeks.

Thanks, Caz & Mandy

We kick off week 2 with freshly cooked Egg & Bacon Rolls! 

This week's orders have now closed but the order form for the remaining weeks will be open until this FRI 10th.

📣 "Last call for Hot Lunch orders for T1"

A 'hot lunch' option is offered to students on most Friday's during the school term. Each Hot Lunch meal costs $5; this includes an individually served hot meal and fruit.

** We do our best to cater for students with special dietary needs, so please indicate on the form.

If you would like to make an order, then please use the link below; complete the google form and submit (for each student).

Hot Lunch Order Form - https://forms.gle/RcAXyvxwBm3h3zsa9

Orders must be submitted by 11am FRI 10th Feb.
We also welcome kitchen helpers, so please indicate on the form if you would like to assist us.

Suitable dates for parents to bring younger children are; 17th March & 6th April. 

Below is the school hot lunch menu & help roster for Term 1, 2023.

If you require any assistance please contact me.

Jane Murphy
YPS Hot Lunch Coordinator
0416 051 473
ypshotlunch@gmail.comArt

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to our new families at YPS for 2023. My name is Sarah McAlister and I look after the school library on a voluntary basis. I’m a parent of Alex Beatty in Year 5, and also teach at the school as a CRT. Please feel free to contact me with any Library related enquiries throughout the year: sarah.mcalister@education.vic.gov.au

We are so fortunate to have started Term 1 with an extremely healthy library- lots of new books, magazines and donations at the end of 2022 means that we have a broad selection of books for your students to explore. We take reading seriously at YPS and strive to keep the library shelves stocked with books that the students want to read.

New Books & Donations
A massive thank you to the McInerney family for an incredibly generous donation of novels for our older readers- including a stack of Rick Riordan titles such as Percy Jackson, The Kane Chronicles, The Trials of Apollo and Heroes of Olympus. A big thank you also, to the O’Brien family (Karen & Jed) for the donation of a massive box of picture books. These will be used in the school library, and also in the Prep/1 rooms to build their class library.

Have a wonderful week of reading!

Sarah McAlister

Tennis at YPS
We are fortunate here at Yackandandah to have secured some funding to run a Tennis in Schools program this term. These sessions will be led by Louise Thornton either at school on Mondays (students in Foundation to Year 2) or at the Yackandandah Tennis Club on Tuesdays (students in Years 3 – 6). These lessons started today and will run for four weeks.

Mondays (30 minute lessons):

Tuesdays (45 minute lessons):

9.30 – 3/4A
10.15 – 3/4E
11.00 – 5/6B
11.45 – 5/6L

All equipment is supplied, but students might like to bring along their own racquet if they have one. A school hat and appropriate footwear will also be required.

Earle

Mountain Biking Interschools (Grades 3-6 only)
This year the Australian Mountain Biking Interschools are being held at Thredbo Sunday 5^th March - Wednesday 8^th March.  The event consists of five different race formats – All-Mountain, Flow, Downhill, Cross Country and a Pump Track Challenge. Registrations are currently open.  More information is available here https://www.thredbo.com.au/mtbinterschools/

The Victorian Mountain Biking Interschools have been rescheduled to Friday the 31^st March at Falls Creek (subject to the road opening).  This event will be the same cross-country format as last year. Registrations for this event have not opened yet. Check out some photos from last year’s event here https://www.yackaps.vic.edu.au/articles/797

Any students that are interested in attending either event please let Brendan know and he will link the interested families.  Noting neither event will be attended by YPS staff and will need to be organised, supervised and paid for by parents. 

House Swimming Carnival
One of the most impressive features of the recent House Swimming Carnival was the number of kids persisting, supporting others, and having a go to earn points for their ‘House’. It was the kind of sporting spirit we like to foster at Yackandandah Primary, so it was great to witness it in bucket loads. Thanks, as always, to the teaching staff who all combined to make it wonderful day.

The final result was a close one, with only 12 points separating first through the fourth:

4^th: Windham Yellow (88)
3^rd: Kars Green (89)
2^nd: Wellsford Red (93)
1^st: Hammond Blue (100)

This was Hammond’s first taste of victory in the H2O since 2015. Great job to all the Hammond competitors. There were also a number of great individual results on the day. Check out the age champion results below.

12/13 BOYS

1. Edward Boddenberg (Wellsford 15)
2. Ryder Stagg (Hammond 11)
3. Cameron McIntosh (Kars 9) and Fredi Farley (Hammond 9)

12/13 GIRLS

1. Violet MacCalman (Hammond 20)
2. Aliya McCormack (Kars 16)
3. Charlie Killen (Hammond 7)

11 BOYS

1. Angus Glanville (Windham 18)
2. Tarn Charles-Jones (Wellsford 14)
3. Lenny Jones (Hammond 5)

11 GIRLS

1. Lily Schultz (Wellsford 15)
2. Jayde Pritchard (Windham 7)
3. Lexi Agnew (Wellsford 5)

9/10 BOYS

1. Spencer Dowsley (Hammond 14)
2. Will Maybury (Kars 11)
3. Jim Kelley (Windham 8) and Nate Maybury (Kars 8)

9/10 GIRLS

1. Grace Westbrook (Hammond 11)
2. Lucia-Mary Gosling (Kars 10) Lara Bebbington (Kars 10)
3. Ivy Mahoney (Kars 7)

District Swimming Carnival – THIS FRIDAY!
We have a crack squad of 26 swimmers heading to Beechworth to make a splash this Friday, February 10. More information, including permission forms, are coming home with qualifiers today. We will be taking a bus.  Cost is $10 per student.  Permission forms and payment need to be returned to school by Thursday.

As one of the larger schools in the district, Yackandandah needs to provide some volunteer support to help the day run smoothly and to give our students a great experience. If you are planning on coming along on Friday and are willing to help out, please let Brendan know.

Brendan.hogan@education.vic.gov.au

Best of luck to all those involved!

Brendan

This year at our school, each class will be having a weekly 1hr SEL lesson. SEL stands for Social & Emotional Learning. This part of the curriculum looks at how we positively interact with each other and work on being our best selves. Although each week’s focus is delivered by Stace during the 1hr lesson, we would love to have all our community (children, teachers, parents) using the language in and around our school. To help with this, each week you may like to read the SEL update in the newsletter or talk with your child about what they learned in SEL.

To begin the year in SEL, students learned how to be ‘Calm, Quiet, Focused’ in the classroom. If we can be these 3 things in any classroom, we can have great teaching and learning, feel connected and feel safe. Your child may like to demonstrate to you the positive version, and they’re likely to want to show you the not so positive version.  

Stacey      

Community Street Fest
The street fest is fast approaching and we are still in need of volunteers to help prepare and serve the free hamburgers and sausages.... 

We still require people for various time slots from 1500 - 2000 on Friday 17th, for cooking and assembly, see the attached sheet for vacant placements.  

We had an overwhelming response for kitchen prep on Friday 17th for the 1200-1500 time slot. We have filled these time shots so if you previously volunteered for this slot and can lend a hand at another time that please let us know or email the school at yackandandah.ps@education.vic.gov.au
Trish & Paul Anderson

4^th February – Beau Ridgeway

4^th February – Ivy Mahoney

6^th February – Ewan McInerney

7^th February – Frieda Haslett

Yackandandah U12’s Football Training
The Yackandandah Under 12s footballers will start training on Thursday the 23rd of February at 4.30 pm at Butson Park.

Anyone between the ages of 10 and 12 are all welcome to come down and train and hopefully play for Yack this year.

Laurie Farrugia