Hillside News 7 December 2020
Hillside Kindergarten’s latest newsletter is now available to read.
Upcoming Dates for Your Diary
Click HERE for the Full Hillside Calendar and instructions to subscribe.
| 11 December | Last School Day of Term – Join us for some Christmas carolling at assembly |
| 14 December – 1 January | Christmas Break |
| 4 January | First Day of Term 2 |
| 12-13 January | School Photos (TBC) |
| 20 January | Parent Webinar: I Can – I Will: Flourishing Life Skills for Children and Parents |
Head of School’s Message
Dear Parents
As we move into the last week of this term, I want to take a moment to thank our entire community for their efforts, patience and support during these past few months. There were lots of adjustments, challenges and frustrations, but we are all learning to be resilient. We understand that moving to distance learning is the health and safety of all, but we cannot deny that it is just not the same as being in school. However, our teams will continue to work very hard with our families to support the children through this challenging time.
To this end, thank you to all those parents who completed the pulse survey. We had a 35% response rate in K1 and a 57% response rate in K2. Please see the summary graphs below for the results. We will conduct similar surveys throughout the school year, and we hope to get more parent voices which will provide valuable data for future decisions.
If you have any questions or concerns about your child’s learning, please reach out to us so that they can work with you to meet your child’s needs.
We will continue to work a balance between the online and offline learning based on your feedback and more importantly the children’s needs. To our pleasant surprise, even the K1 children have adjusted very well to this round of online learning and is ready to be extended.
We have been reflecting on our distance learning timetable, and you might have noticed some adjustments to this week’s schedule already in some classes. In the new term, after Christmas, all classes will be offering additional social connection opportunities (e.g. snack time together on Zoom or a reflection session to share their work). These sessions might not be formal or instructional, but they are intended to encourage language, social exchange, and turn-taking…etc.
Recent Parent Webinar
For those parents who attended the Parent Webinar on “More Playtime, Less Screen Time” last Thursday, I hope you found the session helpful. Brenda will be blogging about this webinar this week, so if you’ve missed it, you can check out the learning blogs to find out more.
My main takeaways were:
- Time vs content – e.g. Facetime with family and friends are important social connection time vs. time playing video games are not recommended
- Rules and boundaries – “different parents, different rules” – I really like this one as I know many parents struggle when other friends/ families have different rules and then your child requests the same.
- 24 hours in a day – What do we need our children to do? What do our children want to do? What do our children need to do? – This is a reflective exercise to complete for both your child and yourself. Template here
Upcoming Parent Webinar
Working title: I Can – I Will: Flourishing Life Skills for Children and Parents
When: Wednesday 20 January 2021, 1-2pm
Registration coming soon
We have invited Dr Mark Gandolfi, (PhD, MSc, MS, BSc) to host a parent session for the Hillside parent community. In this workshop, Dr Mark will share tools/strategies to help children (and adults) cope and be resilient during such trying times. These tools are practical and also transferable to many situations.
Speaker Notes: Dr. Mark Gandolfi has been a clinical psychologist, international school consultant and corporate wellness practitioner for over 30 years with his main practice in Hong Kong and Bangkok, Thailand. He has substantial clinical experience in working with children, teenagers, adults/parents in most areas of emotional well-being. Dr. Mark Gandolfi has been a lecturer for UK, US, Australia and Hong Kong universities and clinical supervisor for student and practising counsellors with Canadian, U.S., Australia, UK and HK universities.
Christmas Appeal and Resource Station
As always, we thank our wonderful Hillside community for supporting our charity Christmas appeal for Mother’s Choice! It has been a Hillside tradition to foster the spirit of giving every Christmas. Not only does this tradition create a connection with our learning community, but it also makes the “caring” profile of each learner (young and old) come alive. We love to give back to our local community and for our children to do this act of kindness towards other children. This appeal also builds on our sustainability principles, please donate pre-loved books rather than purchasing new ones. The books will be used at Mother’s Choice’s child care home book corner. Our Christmas appeal will run until Thursday 10 December, if you do pass by Hillside, we encourage the children to personally place the books in our collection boxes under our Christmas tree at reception. Thank you again!
Our resource station will remain open throughout the period of distance learning, please feel free to stop by to collect some resources during our office hours. It’s always lovely to catch up and see you in person!
Wishing all our families a healthy and happy Christmas ahead!
Warm regards
Audrey
Head of School
Inspiring Futures
In accordance with our Personal Data Handling Policy, ESF Hillside and English Schools Foundation may place your child’s photos, name, school work, activities and accomplishments in our newsletters or other publications (including but not limited to our websites and social media sites). If you would like to opt-out, please email the school office at kinder@hillside.edu.hk.
