8 Nov 2019

Hillside Newsletter 8 November 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.

 26 November  Parent Workshop: Importance of Open Play
 13 December  Christmas Family Action Day
 16 Dec – 3 Jan  Christmas Break
 6 January  K1 Admissions 2020/21 – School Closed
 15 January  Theatre Trip (Kids Fest): The Gruffalo
Principal’s Message

Dear Parents

Hillside is dedicated to sustaining high-quality collaboration across the Hillside Learning Community (teachers, children, parents).  As we seek to connect and involve the whole learning community, we would like to thank all the children and parents who actively participated at the Hillside Sports Fun Day last Friday and made it such a huge success!

The fabulous weather and excellent services at the Hong Kong Football Club must have raised everyone’s expectations. The spectators stands were filled to capacity with children and parents ready for action!

Instead of the usual clock-driven Sports Day, we put a creative spin on the day’s proceedings. This time around, every family was free to visit the game station of their choice and to play as they wish. The stations were family friendly, age appropriate and well attended – from water games to ‘rings of fire’ obstacle courses. We hope everyone enjoyed this year’s family-carnival atmosphere.

Thank you for your feedback on Sports day. A common theme we heard was for classes to have some time together as a group and to continue balancing that with some free-choice time. We will reflect on this as we plan our next family event.

Parent feedback matters, and often can contribute positively to the children’s learning experience. We would like to find out more about your wonderings, feedback and comments on a more regular basis. Please leave us a message on the Hillside Wonderwall HERE. Whilst we might not be able to address every item immediately, we will try to answer some of your questions at our upcoming Parent Workshop.

Have an enjoyable weekend.

Kind Regards

Audrey
Acting Head of School

UPCOMING Parent Workshop: The Importance of Open Play

When: Tuesday 26 November, 3:30-4:30pm; Where: Hillside

A friendly reminder if you have not yet signed up: this particular workshop aims to demonstrate what active learning looks like at Hillside, particularly during our Open Play time. We hope parents will take away ideas on how to support and extend learning at home.

We will share different learning opportunities with parents and explain the learning intention behind each one (with the aim of enabling parents to reinforce and extend their child’s learning at home). We hope that this parent workshop will provide parents in attendance with a bank of ideas and activities to do with their child at home.

Hopefully, theory can also be put into practice when parents come in as Open Play Visitors.

On the subject of home-school partnership, please feel free to contact your class teacher if you ever want to share anything from your culture, facilitate a celebration or put on a demonstration of your expertise in an area.

The Parent Experts programme has hit the ground running with a K1 Engineer Dad working with our K2 children on how to build paper castles. We then had four Mums come in for a Diwali presentation on the 30th October. We even had a K1 Dad who generously agreed to come in for one whole week to conduct an art demo with all the K1 children. Kudos and thank you to all parents for your precious efforts and the gift of your time.

SAVE THE DATE: Christmas Family Picnic

Get ready for the year-end family event that will take place on the morning of 13 December!  Preparations are underway to plan the Hillside Christmas Beach Family Picnic. We will be sharing exciting details as soon as all arrangements are confirmed.

The Gruffalo – “Kids Fest 2020” – Wednesday 15 January

Tickets to the Gruffalo show are going quickly, thank you to all parents who have secured their booking early. The entire theatre has been booked for this production of Kids Fest 2020 at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts (1 Gloucester Road, Wan Chai). The date for Hillside to attend is on Wednesday, 15 January. We believe this will be a great experience for our children and we are excited to be able to accommodate the whole school to see this popular production!

We will meet all attending families directly at the venue and the show will run for approximately an hour.  There will be no classes at the Kindergarten on that day, and please note the school buses will not operate. The morning families are invited to the 9:45am show, while the afternoon families are invited to the 12:00noon show.

Please send in payment to secure your booking, we will need to confirm final numbers with the production house by the end of November. We get a special school discount price of $450 for TWO tickets.  Payments can be made by cheque, payable to “ESF Educational Services Ltd” or banking transfer: HSBC 511-335-069-001  Account holder name: ESF Educational Services Ltd.

TICKETS ARE CONFIRMED UPON RECEIPT OF PAYMENT (on a first-come-first served-basis), and will be given out onsite, to prevent forgetting them at home or ticket loss. Please place your cheque or deposit/transfer record in a sealed envelope labelled with your child’s name and class, along with the number of tickets you wish to purchase.

Please contact us on 2540 0066 or kinder@hillside.edu.hk for any enquiries.

Health Reminders

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health reminds members of the public, as well as the staff of institutions and schools, to maintain good personal and environmental hygiene as a preventative measure against influenza, hand foot and mouth disease and other illnesses.

In light of the changing season, please note that it is imperative that unwell children do not attend school. Parents and carers are reminded to be vigilant and to take your child’s temperature every day before sending them off to school. We have a “Zero Tolerance Policy” towards the spreading of illness at Hillside, and we will send children home if they come to school with a fever, runny nose or a continuous cough. These procedures are in place to protect all members of the Hillside community.

Learning Blogs

Please click on the links below to visit our year group learning blogs on the Hillside Learning Hub. Please contact kinder@hillside.edu.hk if you cannot access the Learning Hub.

K1 Learning K2 Learning

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