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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

World's Biggest Cuppa

Michelle and Karin are hosting the World's Biggest Cuppa on Friday afternoon from 3pm in the park. So far BOM are being nice to us and predicting fine weather.

They will be raising money for cancer charities by selling tea, coffee and cake. That last bit is where you come in - they need some cake or other afternoon tea-style nibbles to sell. If you can help by whipping up your specialty, I know these wonderful women would be most appreciative.

Also, remember that the afternoon tea kicks off at 3pm, so there is time for the adults to have a cuppa and a nibble before the kids come out, so some adult-style tasties would probably not go astray along with kid-friendly favs.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Websites

A presentation was made to the P&C at the last meeting from a company spruiking websites targetted at P&C's.

I know Isabelle will be putting info in the newsletter, so look out for that. In addition, I thought I'd put up some easy, click-on-through links to AtSchool, the providers that made the demo, as well as some of their websites and one that I know that was built and is hosted for free.

The company's home page is here. Be warned though, it loads a flash page which plays music at you which can't be turned off. Fortunately their other pages are not so abominable, so click through to the others.

Lane Cove West Public School P&C site is here.
This is a website provided by AtSchool. I'd encourage you to Google it as well, since Google optimisation is a consideration of the quality of the website.

Ben from AtSchool said that Willoughby Public School was using AtSchool, but this website doesn't appear to made by them.

Haberfield were also said to using them, but they aren't either. Nice website though.

Ben also mentioned Normanhurst Boys High, but I can't find any sign of their website at all.

The ones I can't find may be because they've signed up and not launched yet - the whole thing is a fairly new endeavour, and I did lose track of what exactly he was saying about each of these P&Cs.

UPDATE 10/6/10: Isabelle confirmed last night that only LCW is actually operational at the moment.

Also, I wanted to link to Normanhurst West Public School P&C's website. This was built and is hosted for free through Wordpress. You can see it looks quite similar to some of the templates offered by AtSchool.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Personal Reminder 17/5

The notes have gone home for Pizza & Pyjama Night, which is on Saturday, 29th May. This is THE social event of the year in 3-8yr demographic, so make sure you get your notes and money back pronto!

The information night for prospective parents is on Wednesday night, so if you know any parents considering Yeo Park for 2011, let them know.

Also, the idea of a P&C website was discussed at the meeting last week. Stay tuned for some links and examples of options in the next day or so as food for thought.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Pages, pages, we haz pages

Blogger, that which hosts this blog, has finally seen fit to provide 10 pages that can be created to fit our whim*.

I know Robyn has Ideas for a page or two. Does anyone else have things they'd like to see on a page that is separate from the main blog page?

The sort of thing I'm talking about here is perhaps a page devoted to alumni (one of Robyn's ideas) so that ex-families can keep up with things that may be of interest to them, without wading through the day to day. Other ideas might be a page of useful links, a page devoted to freecycle-type stuff, or a page of kid-related recommended vendors (such as party venues, good sources of kids' clothes, good suppliers of extra-curricular activities etc).

If you have any ideas, leave a comment, send me an email or grab me at school.

*This might be better described as "I have finally noticed that..."

Fruit boxes

Does anyone have a use for the fold-up style fruit boxes with lids? They are about the same dimensions as archive boxes, and I get fruit delivered every week in them. The delivery people won't take them away, so I am currently recycling them. If someone has a use for them, I'd be happy to flatten them and pass them on.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Ethics trial

Isabelle brought up the St James Ethics Centre trial of an ethics alternative to Special Religious Education (otherwise known as scripture) at the P&C tonight.

There seemed to be a bit of support for the programme, so I thought I might throw a few links up here.



There is also a Facebook page.

ETA: These are some links to speeches given by the Greens' Lee Rhiannon and John Kaye.

That last one has a lot of information about how to be active in campaigning for this to become a choice for all our kids.

For mine, I'd like to say that this programme is designed only to encourage children to think about ethical issues in a non-threatening environment - much the same way that religious instruction is designed. It does not offer opinions on right and wrong, it merely encourages kids to think things through and consider what decisions they might make. It is not a formal ethics course, it isn't a philosophy course that kids doing SRE miss out on, it's just an alternative environment to consider moral questions for children for which the religious options offered at their school are not appropriate.

Finally, if you support this, I'd urge you to get involved. There are a lot of people campaigning hard to stop this becoming a mainstream option. We need to ensure that all voices are heard.