Hillside Newsletter 30 May 2019
Hillside Kindergarten’s latest newsletter is available to read now. Find out the latest news from around the school and upcoming events.
Important Dates
Click HERE for the Full Hillside Calendar and instructions to subscribe.
| 7 June | Public Holiday (School closed) |
| 24 May – 2 June | ESF Art Exhibition at K11 |
| 12-13 June | K2 Celebrations (Please see schedule below) |
| Week of 17 June | K1 Science Fair |
| 27 June | Last Day of School Year |
| 28 June | Summer break begins for children |
| 15 August | First Day of School |
Principal’s Message
Dear Parents
As we come to the end of the school year, it never fails to amaze and fulfill when we take a step back to admire how much the children have developed (both academically and socially) in addition to how much they have physically grown since we commenced school last August. With only a few weeks remaining in the school year, we would like to remind parents to sign-up for your last opportunity to be a parent volunteer this academic year. Please sign-up HERE.
Of course, with our Celebration of Learning ceremony just around the corner, the K2 children have been working hard to prepare for this important event that will highlight a special milestone in their young lives. Please see the schedule below for details, and free feel to contact your child’s teacher should you require for any clarification.
For all the K2 families moving onto Y1 and any K1 families leaving Hillside at the end of this academic year, please do take the time to revisit and download your child’s ePortfolio. Please spend some time together with your child to look through all the work they have done over the year and let them tell you all about it. Click HERE for the instructions to access your child’s ePortfolio.
Thank you to those of you who have attended the Wellbeing for Early Years (Friendship, Resilience and Transitions) parent session last week. We value the development of a positive partnership between home and school, so we hope you will find these parent sessions helpful. Please click HERE to access the presentation for your information.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Kind Regards
Audrey
Acting Head of School
Hillside K2 Celebrations
One of the highlights of Term 3 is always our K2 Graduation Ceremony. With ESF moving toward a “Through-Train Education System”, we would like to see this move from K2 to Y1 as part of the transition process. As such, our end of year event will be a Celebration of Learning to commemorate the children’s time at Hillside.
Celebration of Learning Ceremony
- All K2 Leaving Ceremonies will take place in your children’s regular K2 classrooms at Hillside International Kindergarten, 43B Stubbs Road, Hong Kong.
- Children should come to school as normal and wearing the Hillside Uniform for this event.
- Due to space and seating limitations, it would be appreciated if we can limit to only two family members per child for this event.
- Please be reminded that we are unable to provide parking.
- At the conclusion of the celebration, you may wish to take your child. If you do so, please ensure that you inform the class teacher.
- Children not going home with parents will remain at school and go home as per their usual arrangements
| Wed 12th June 2019 | Thurs 13th June 2019 |
| Dragon AM + Tiger AM 9:30-10:30am |
Gecko AM + Turtle AM 9:30-10:30am |
| Dragon PM + Tiger PM 1:15-2:15pm |
Gecko PM + Turtle PM 1:15-2:15pm |
K2 End of Year Outing (Children ONLY)
As part of our end of kindergarten celebration, we have arranged a special (children only) event for our K2 children to send them off with joyful memories of their Hillside friends and teachers, at ‘Maggie and Rose’ – The Family Members Club in Repulse Bay. ‘Maggie and Rose’ is a private members club, and we are delighted that they agreed to make this exception to provide us with a play-date experience for our K2 children on this special occasion.
We will be taking a private bus to and from Repulse Bay within school hours during your child’s class time, so the children can arrive and depart from school as normal. Seats on the bus are limited and there will be a number of additional staff joining our trip, as such, no additional parental support is required for this particular trip.
Please make sure you have completed the eConsent form on Gateway at your earliest convenience.
K1 Science Fair
Our K1 children have been learning all about ‘change’ and how people can cause change in materials (causation) as part of their current unit on “How the World Works”. The K1 classes have been conducting a variety of experiments to develop the children’s understanding and help them make those connections.
To conclude this unit, the K1s will hold a four-day Science Fair during the week of 17 June. Parents can come in to join us and provide an opportunity for the children to share their learning.
Our school times will remain as usual on those days, and the Science Fair will take place over two 45-minute sessions. Each day we will have space for 6 parents per class. Three parents for the first 45 minutes and then another three parents for the second 45 minutes.
Please register via our normal Parent Volunteer Sign-ups. Please sign-up HERE.
Eco-friendly Hillside
Thank you to all families for your crayon donations in supporting our 
“Upcycle Your Crayons!” programme. I also want to acknowledge the K1 Frog class teacher, Dawn Semple, and her team for introducing and leading this initiative. Many of our class teams, along with the children, have been busy making new crayons over the past two weeks, and we have reached out to several charities for children to build connections and arrange donations. We will, of course, keep you posted on the developments of this meaningful project. If you have any unwanted old or broken crayons at home, please continue to donate it us to upcycle, reuse and donate. As always, thank you for all your support!
I also want to thank families for supporting the No Single Use Plastic Awareness Day by participating in our Zero Plastic Snack Day. On this day, we also supported Earth Hour by turning off all our lights during Open Play time! It is essential to build on children’s environmental awareness and living values. We should develop a respect for the environment, promote sustainable development and learn about our roles as a global citizen. Please continue to support us by talking to your children at home about the importance of reducing single-use plastic, encourage them to take action to minimize their plastic waste and sustain it in the future.
For those interested to bring eco-care out of the classroom, there is an exhibition at the HK Science Museum on early scientific discoveries of Dr Jane Goodall, a noted humanitarian and environmentalist. This exhibition will showcase Dr Goodall’s dedicated contribution to environmental conservation and youth empowerment through various interactives. One of the programmes, Be the Earth Pa Ma, might be suitable for young children. You may visit the Science Museum website for more details.
Another upcoming eco-learning event in the wider community is the author reading of the storybook “The Green Dragon“. This is a book reaching out to children to think about their daily actions and how they can make changes to reduce plastic and single-use packaging in their lives, and the story setting is based on Hong Kong! Click Here to learn more.
Once again, thank you for all your support on our move towards a greener Hillside.
ESF The Journey: An Exploration of Art 2019 Exhibit
There is currently an art exhibition at K11, a well-known, art mall in T.S.T. Hong Kong, showcasing numbers of ESF students’ artwork around the city: ‘’The Journey: An exploration of Art’’. This is a 10-day art exhibition, and the artworks cover a wide range of media.
This is the first time we will have organised an exhibition showcasing the effort and many artistic talents of our students across the ESF Schools, from kindergarten through secondary school, PIS and special school. The art exhibition is not just a journey through the years of our schools, it represents the way in which our students grow and develop as young adults.
All ESF schools were invited to submit student artwork for selection. The venue managers and organisers (both K11 and ESFC event team) reviewed each submission before it came to the final stage of the art exhibition.
Hillside has been fortunate enough to have three of our K1 children’s artwork selected for display at the exhibit. Congratulations to Arshiya Chopra, Charlotte Hung, and Chloe Sze.
An opening ceremony was held last Friday where many of the student artists and their families joined the celebration. More details and photos can be viewed HERE.
The information of the exhibition are as below:
Theme: The Journey: An Exploration of Art
Exhibition date: 24 May – 2 June 2019
Exhibition hall: chi K11 art space, B2/F, K11, 18 Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
Time: 12 pm – 10 pm
Admission: FREE!
Class Blogs
Please click on the links below to visit our class blogs on the Hillside Learning Hub for your child’s latest class news and photo gallery. Please contact kinder@hillside.edu.hk if you cannot access the Learning Hub.
| Dolphin | Dragon |
| Frog | Gecko |
| Monkey | TigerAM TigerPM |
| Panda | Turtle |
| Chinese | |
Inspiring Futures
Data Privacy The information we collect from you is in accordance with the ESF Personal Data Handling Policy and its related Personal Information Collection Statements (“PICS”). Our PICS statement is available online. http://www.esf.edu.hk/privacy
