• Mrs Kelly Jacob is teaching Year 5P, taking over from Claudice Plant. Kelly was previously working at Ferny Creek Primary School.
• Mr Matthew (Matt) Bowman will be teaching P.E. Originally from England, Matt has just left his P.E. role at Wroclaw Cosmopolitan School in Poland.

Our updated staff list can be found here.

Next Monday evening, we hope to see many families onsite at LPS as our Year 5 Leaders introduce the Stand Up Project. If you are interested in 'reducing discrimination, harassment, and bullying through student voice, agency, and leadership', we'd love to see you there as we launch this initiative. More details are on the Thrive page in this eNews.

With the Department's changes to curriculum and Reporting to Parents, we are hoping parents/carers will take advantage of the opportunity to meet with teachers. Our teachers have been contacting additional parents they would like to meet at Parent Teacher Meetings. They are offering those parents their remaining timeslots, after we advertised registrations in the previous two editions of eNews and sent an email reminder to all families last Sunday. If you prefer to choose your own timeslot for next semester, please keep an eye out for eNews notifications.

We're well aware of issues that have recently affected Sentral. These have apparently been caused by a malfunctioning interface between Sentral and the Department of Education's data base. At the same time during the last week of term, schools experienced issues with the Department's Finance, HR and eduMail systems.

Without access to our IT systems, it was like the olden days! Thanks to Sonya and Jodie for their catch up work during the break.

Hopefully these technical issues, which are beyond the control of individual schools, have been resolved.

If you love the convenience of our Classroom Cuisine lunch order service, please consider volunteering. We desperately need parent helpers to distribute the orders. See the Contribute: Parents Group page for details on how you can assist.

Finally, we expect individual NAPLAN results to arrive soon. These will be sent home in sealed envelopes, addressed to parents, with Year 3 and 5 students. Please keep them in a safe place, as you will find that many secondary schools request a copy for enrolment or scholarship applications.

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute

Exciting news!

Laburnum Primary School has collaborated with Foodbank Victoria and the Department of Education’s School Breakfast Club Program to create the LPS Snack Club. This initiative is funded by the Department of Education and comes at no cost to families.

Starting in Week 4, the LPS Snack Club will be set up at the canteen before school on Tuesday mornings from 8:45am. Staffed by highly trained Year 4 student leaders there will be assorted fresh fruit, fruit cups, tomato and veggie rice bowls, and tuna and brown rice bowls to ‘grab-and-go’ before school on your way to class.

Come past for a little snack and a cheery ‘Good morning’ every Tuesday! There will be leftovers available at Thursday afternoon recess, also at the canteen. Remember to pack a fork in your school bag if you’re interested in grabbing a fruit cup or a rice bowl.

Watch this space for more information, including family-friendly (and budget-friendly!) recipes, and support the LPS Snack Club!

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Our fantastic builders completed the northern playground at the end of last term, with the exception of placing some final boulders. This provided access via Pakenham St for other companies over the break. 

On the first Saturday of the holidays, the heavy-duty temporary matting system was installed near the Performing Arts Centre. This allowed tradespeople to safely move construction machinery onsite. Taking advantage of clear weather between Saturday and Wednesday of that week, multiple teams then began work to tackle four Priority Projects:

• Work began on the sensory garden upgrade on Monday 7th, with all demolition, removal and levelling completed the next day. Rock work and gardens were installed just in time for the rain! This Parents Group project will remain fenced until new equipment is installed in August. Following that, the rubberised surface will be poured.
  
   
  
• The layout for the Play Pod was also completed on Monday 7th, with concrete pouring and erection of the shed in the following days.
  
   
  
  
• The soccer pitch was levelled on Monday 7th, with crushed rock installed the next day in readiness for laying the synthetic turf. The lines and goals were installed between rain showers.
  
   
  
• The worn turf on the basketball/sports court was also removed on Monday 7th. This provided a useful turning circle on the underlying, long-covered asphalt for the trucks to make their deliveries. The asphalt needed laser levelling before the sports court could be installed.
  
                     
  
  

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute

Stand-Up Project (SUP) Update: click here for an overview of our Upstander program

We are thrilled to provide an update on The Stand-Up Project (SUP)!

Our Year 5 students took part in the introductory sessions on Monday 16th June. It was wonderful to hear their insights about social dynamics within their peer groups and what they believe we should focus on to build a more respectful and supportive school culture.

Some of our SUP Leaders shared what they’re most looking forward to:

Emma B: “We get to pick what to teach others at LPS.”

 Abigail B: “I am looking forward to teaching the Year 3s and 4s. We will be teaching them the 4Ds – direct, distract, delay and delegate.”

 Suzanne S: “I like how we get to teach the parents and teachers who usually teach us.”

In addition to the family session, our SUP Leaders will join the program’s founder, Dr Zach Greig, in presenting to staff—empowering students to contribute to teacher learning and support this important whole-school initiative. After this, they will work with the Year 3 and 4 students to explore different types of behaviours, what happens when jokes go too far, how to be an upstander, and the 4Ds of upstanding.

Thank you to those who have already completed the RSVP form for the upcoming parent information session. As this is a whole-school initiative, all parents are welcome to attend. The session will offer practical strategies to help you support your child in navigating social situations. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do so using the form below.

Laburnum Primary School SUP Family Session
When: Monday 28th July 5.30 - 6.30pm
Where: Staff Community Centre

Please complete the RSVP form below:

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute 

What a busy end to Term 2! In Maths, our Year 1 students have been learning all about creating and describing different types of shapes. The hands-on challenges were definitely their favourite! Students were tasked with using paddlepop sticks to create various 2D shapes. Some were straightforward, like a square or a rectangle. Others were slightly trickier! We also made 3D objects using multi-link cubes and challenged ourselves to create something imaginative. In the last week, the students moulded polymer clay to match a 3D shape. There were lots of spheres, cones, cubes and cylinders for the teachers to bake to be ready to take home.

One of the overall highlights of the term was our Learning Expo. Students stood proudly beside their cultural posters ready to share with the many parents/caregivers who visited to support them. It was a beautiful sight to see so many happy faces sharing and learning.

Thank you to everyone who made the time to come along!

During the last week of term, Year 2 students had a Learning Expo to share their inquiry learning about the question, ‘How can we be fair, inclusive and value different cultures so we can build a respectful community?’ The students chose a culture to explore and created a placemat displaying their learning. Students researched different topics of interest such as animals, food, the flag, celebrations, cultural dress and important places. Some students chose to dress up on the day or bring special artefacts from home.

Thanks to all those who came along. It was a wonderful celebration of a great term of learning!

In Writing, Year 2 have been busy bees creating stories based on books by Pamela Allen. The students have worked through the whole writing process just like real authors. They chose how they wanted to set out their stories and illustrated them. Once the stories were completed, students shared their work with their peers, celebrating all their hard work.

A great way to end a great term of writing!

Curiosity  •   Respect  •  Integrity  •  Resilience

Welcome to Term 3 in the Art Room

Year 6 
This term we are very lucky to acquire the support of Santosh Mahale, a working artist in our school community, to lend his vision and talent to a shared project with Year 6. Santosh has designed a specific work for LPS, incorporating student ideas for a mural, depicting our local native plants and animals. He will be working side-by-side with the students and me, to create this traditional Year 6 gift of thanks to Laburnum Primary School; this year, from the “Class of 2025”.

Year 5 will be exploring how artists from the past used utilitarian objects to tell stories and express their creativity. Students will be looking at Ancient Greek pottery, pot shapes, illustrations and the Greek Key Pattern as well as Aboriginal symbols and dreamtime stories. Students will experiment with “relief” sculpture on a standing 2-dimensional pot.

Year 4 have a construction focus again, making objects for cross curricular connections. This time they will be building with paper-mache, innovating small islands in a sea. They will map out a miniature world with land forms, biology and beaches.

Year 3 are looking at monochromatic works inspired by blue glaze on porcelain – particularly the Willow Pattern and how the story is reflected in iconic symbols and patterns. Students will experiment with a variety of blues from warm to cool to tell their own story on paper crockery.

Year 2 will be making a clay “herb stripper” and looking at the illustrations from Dave Petzold’s book “We Live in a Bus” as inspiration for a painting, for Book Week.

Year 1 will be painting a “still life” and looking for signs of Spring. They will also be finding inspiration for an artwork, from the book “Spiro” by Anna McGregor, for Book Week.

Preps will be considering the designs on animal fur and how animals camouflage. Their focus this term is construction, and they will be using card, glue and split pins.

During Semester 1, Year 6 painted small wooden surfboards that are currently displayed in their classrooms. They made all their own colours from the three primary colours and all their designs are individual.

Images below are Prep to Year 5 works from Semester 1.

  
 Prep Coburn Inspired Collage              Y 1 Fish drawings    
 
 Year 2 Symmetrical Collage        Year 3 Bilaterial drawing
 
 Year 5 Hand Built Clay

 Year 5 Layered Landscapes

Curiosity  •   Respect  •  Integrity  •  Resilience

Mapping Edendale Farm

After an exciting visit to Edendale Farm, our students created their own maps to show the different places we visited. They drew the paddocks, rooms and other areas from a bird’s-eye view, like looking down from above. They thought carefully about size, making sure each area looked the right size compared to the others. Students also used keys to show what each part of the map represented.
 

Students worked hard throughout Term 2 and showcased their efforts during the Year 3 Learning Expo. Some of their displays included an Edendale farm map, international brochure, ‘Strong Emotions’ poster, ally poems and more. Students created an international brochure by researching, recording notes and presenting the information. The ‘Strong Emotions’ poster outlined self-calming strategies to refer to when feeling certain emotions. They have been learning about people living with disabilities and how the community supports them. We would like to say a big thank you to the parents/carers who could make it to our Expo and look forward to seeing you all at the next one!
 

On Thursday the 3rd July, Year 4 participated in Celebrate Culture Day. We saw wonderful traditional outfits from all over the globe. Students had the opportunity to talk about their outfits and the meaning behind them. It was a great experience for all to learn more about each other and their cultural identity.

The following day was the last day of Term 2. Besides being the last day, the Year 4 students were excited for another reason. They read their picture story books with their Prep buddies! The students had been working on these books for weeks leading up to this. They had to write the story with a message of acceptance and inclusion, then design and illustrate all the pages. The Preps loved hearing the stories as they were read to them by their Year 4 buddy. It was the perfect ending to Term 2!

Curiosity  •   Respect  •  Integrity  •  Resilience

Welcome to our school. As we know that effective school communication relies on parents' engagement with clear information, the following is essential reading for new families.

For information about how the school operates, please see our 'Starting at Laburnum Primary School' page, which includes the A - Z of Useful Information for Parents. This important document was last updated in December, and can also be located on our website under the Enrolment tab. Everything on our website can be translated into your home language.

To regularly communicate important information, we use both LPS eNews (our electronic newsletter) and Sentral (for most emails to and from parents). Please ensure you read any messages sent by the school. LPS eNews is emailed to all parents/carers fortnightly and contains essential information about important dates and events. The eNews archive is found on our website here.

A reminder to all our new families to create their Sentral Parent Portal accounts as soon as possible, as this is the school's main avenue for  communications to specific families, as well as excursions, student reports and parent-teacher meetings.  You can also email your child's teacher about non-urgent matters through Sentral.

Instructions and access codes will be sent home with your children. The Sentral Parent Portal is also used to upload documents, and includes the 2025 School Map and Parents Group minutes each month.

LPS eNews usually contains a combination of these pages:

• Principal's Message
• School Council Update from the School Council President
• What's Happening? from the Assistant Principals 
• Learn, about academic news
• Thrive, for wellbeing news
• Contribute: Parents Group news
• Contribute: Community information
• Thrive: Superstars, recognising those who have wonderful achievements to share
• Parenting Ideas
• Next Generation Learning, updating families on our capital works program and playground upgrade

As well, all year levels and specialists regularly share their news in these pages:

• Prep
• Junior School - Years 1 & 2
• Middle School - Years 3 & 4
• Senior School - Years 5 & 6
• Specialists

We hope that you'll be using these resources to become more familiar with our school.

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute

Please remember that, although any remaining funds will now be for 'school activities', schools still need a written (email) request from parents to allocate these funds to an event, e.g. swimming or athletics. Please include your child's full name and class.

There are many families that have credit available on their family accounts. This means that you can ask for that amount to put towards any school fee, excursion or payment, simply by emailing the office, including your child's full name and class. 

Do you have a credit in your Family Account that you could be using for school invoices? Just check the statement you receive for any credits. 

Using the Department's finance system, family statements with a (-) minus in front of the amount, are a CREDIT. 

Examples of credits on Statements:

Unallocated Receipts      -$3.60 (this family could direct $3.60 to a school payment)

Unallocated Credit          -$210.00 (this family could direct $210 to school payments)

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute

2025 Pie Drive

This year LPS Parents Group will be selling delicious pies from Tony’s Pies, to raise funds for the new Sensory Garden. Please look out for the ordering forms which will have online ordering details - these will be sent home with your child next week (week beginning 28th July).

Join Parents Group!

We’d love to get more parents involved in our school Parents Group. We meet once per term and the term 3 meeting will be at 7pm on Tuesday 12th August.  If you’d like to get involved in fundraising for our school, planning fun events for the children and school community, and meeting other LPS Parents in the process, please email: parentsgroup.lps@gmail.com

More Parent Helpers Needed for Lunch Orders in Term 3!

We are always looking for more parent volunteers to assist with packing the lunch orders on Wednesdays and Fridays.  We’d love to see some fresh faces get involved – it’s a nice way to spend some time at school during the kids’ lunch break and them happily playing! If you are free for one hour at 11.15am on a Wednesday or Friday please consider signing up.  Lunch order volunteers work in pairs so if you haven’t done it before you will have someone to show you how it works!  Click on this link to sign up: https://signup.com/go/CNbQDJF

(Please note you also need a valid Working With Children’s Check to volunteer).

                          
LABURNUM PRIMARY SCHOOL 
SECOND-HAND UNIFORM SHOP

Curiosity  •   Respect  •  Integrity  •  Resilience

The ICAS test (International Competitions and Assessments for Schools) is an independent, skills-based assessment program, designed to match and test skills in key curriculum areas. 

You can read more about the ICAS tests here.

This year Laburnum Primary School will again participate in the ICAS competitions for English, Mathematics and Science. 

As ICAS is an extracurricular activity, entry is available to LPS students in Years 4, 5 and 6 ONLY.

Testing sessions will be held before school on the following dates:

• English ICAS test – Wednesday 13 August
• Science ICAS test – Wednesday 20 August
• Maths ICAS test – Wednesday 27 August

Families enrol their child through the ICAS Parent Payment System. Follow the link below, and use the school access code to enrol your child. The Parent Payment System will close on Monday 28 July. 
Please understand that we will not be processing any registrations after this date.

Your parent page link is: https://shop.icasassessments.com/pages/pps

School access code: ZPF593

More information will be provided closer to the test dates.

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute

Click on these links  below for Community News or information:         

TeamKids Out of School Hours Care  Click here for our first TeamKids newsletter. Please register your child here - it's free to register and you'll always have that option for childcare, even in unexpected circumstances.  More information is on our website here.

Please click Chess Club image for registration

Please click here to view information and registration for Digimaker.

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute

Learn more about Mel, the LPS TeamKids Director of Service, by clicking here.

More details about TeamKids can be found on our new website TeamKids page, under the "Our School" tab. We have recently added Family Handbooks and Vacation Care flyers to that page.

Registration is free, but essential, before your child can attend the service.

New to TeamKids?

• Visit www.teamkids.com.au, select our school’s program, and follow the enrolment instructions to register your child and add bookings.
• Our school's direct link is 
  https://www.teamkids.com.au/venues/laburnum-primary-oshc/
• Parents can now register and book in for Before, After and Vacation Care.

Used TeamKids before?

• Contact TeamKids’ Customer Service Team to link your account to our school. Once linked, you’ll just need to add your desired bookings.

TeamKids’ friendly local Customer Service team is always ready to assist. If you have any questions or need support, please reach out via:

• Email: info@teamkids.com.au
• Phone: 1300 035 000 (press #1)

Our Vision:    Learn   •   Thrive  •   Contribute