Hillside Newsletter 26th May 2017
Hillside Kindergarten’s latest newsletter available to read now. Find out the latest news from around the school and upcoming events.
Important Dates
Click HERE for the Full School Calendar in PDF.
Click HERE to subscribe to our Google Calendar which includes reminders and alerts.
| 29 May | School Closure – Professional Development Day |
| 30 May | School Closure – Public Holiday |
| Week of 12 June | K2 Graduation Ceremony (Please see schedule below) |
| 29 June | Last Day of School Year |
Principal’s Message
Dear Parents
Thank you all for your cooperation and understanding regarding the cancelling of school bus services and the suspension of PM classes on Wednesday due to the extremely heavy rainfall. I can appreciate that sudden last minute changes to the transport arrangements for your child can be both unsettling and annoying to a family. In regards to the action taken on Wednesday, Hillside followed the direct advice/policy of both the EDB and ESF in regards to responding to the HK Observatory rain-storm weather warnings of RED and then BLACK rainfall.
The collection of the AM children from Hillside on Wednesday ran very smoothly and that is thanks to having a great staff team here at Hillside, along with the cooperation and support of our parent community. The safety of the children will always be our first priority in the decisions that we make.
P.S. During the collection of the AM children on Wednesday’s RED Rain day, a sum of money was found at Hillside and handed into our office. We have placed this money into the school safe and if you are aware that you may be the person that dropped this money, please give Sue Neilson (Senior Administrator) a call here at Hillside to discuss.
A New Website for Hillside
Our new website is up!
As part of the Foundation’s Goal to be a strong and unified ‘One ESF’, Hillside International Kindergarten has launched a new website today. The website is designed to have the same look, feel and functionality as all of the other schools that operate under the ESF Umbrella. The domain name for the website has also been changed to be in line with ESF. The new website address for Hillside is http://hillside.edu.hk
An example of what can be found on the Hillside website includes recent newsletters, announcements, links to VLE (ePortfolio and class blogs), general information, school calendar special events etc.
Creating and populating a new website is a huge amount of work and I would like to say a huge thank you to Hillside’s Vice Principal (VP), Audrey Tang for her outstanding dedication to undertaking all aspects of this project and for using a great deal of her own personal time to create this new website for Hillside. We are so lucky to have Audrey as our VP at Hillside and I for one would like to thank her again for her commitment to ensure that Hillside is successful in all we do.
Hillside K2 Leavers’ Ceremony
One of the highlights of Term 3 is always our K2 Leavers Ceremony. The date set for your child’s K2 class Leavers Ceremony can be found below. Further details regarding this event will follow closer to the date.
K2 Leaving Celebration arrangements
(Monday 12th – Thursday 15th June 2017)
4.00-5.00pm
- All K2 Leaving Ceremonies will take place at ESF Hillside International Kindergarten, 43B Stubbs Road, Hong Kong
- Your child’s class-based Leaver’s Celebration will commence at 4:00pm sharp on your allocated day (see table below). It is anticipated that the Graduation Ceremony for your child will conclude by 5:00pm.
- Please note that children in the PM class will stay on at school and will be supervised by the class teacher until the arrival of parents at around 3:55pm.
- Children in an AM class will need to arrive at Hillside Kindergarten with their parents just before 4:00pm.
- All children will be required to wear the Hillside Uniform for this event.
- Due to space and seating limitations, it would be appreciated if each child is accompanied by only (2) adult family members for this event.
- Please be reminded that we are unable to provide parking.
The K2 Leaver’s Celebration Ceremonies will commence at 4:00pm and should conclude by around 5:00pm
| Mon. 12th June | Tues. 13th June | Wed. 14th June | Thurs. 15th June |
| Tiger AM | Tiger PM | Dragon AM | Dragon PM |
| Turtle AM | Turtle PM | Gecko AM | Gecko PM |
That time of year… Mosquitoes and Biting Midges are back!!
At Hillside we are extremely fortunate to have a large outdoor play space that backs onto a lovely natural ‘green’ space (which is quite rare on the densely populated HK Island. The only downfall of this area is that at this time of year those annoying little mosquitoes begin to cause issues for us. There is also an increasing number of biting midges (also know as sandflies) this year that is causing havoc around HK.
“There are no known efficient methods of controlling biting midges, but personal protection will help in reducing exposure to their bites… and apply a repellent to exposed skin. These measures will assist in limiting exposure to these biting flies.” – Dept. of Medical Entomology
Unfortunately, some children are more susceptible to being bitten. If this is the case with your child, we would encourage you to apply some mosquito repellent/patches onto your child before they leave for school each day. We do take health and safety issues seriously, of which mosquito control is one, and in actual fact, have put measures in place to address and alleviate this problem. For example, there is a mosquito lantern installed under the covered area outside and four (4) industrial fans.
In addition, Fogging is carried out during the holiday breaks (this cannot be done if the children will be accessing the outdoor play area right after) and, at the start of every term, we arrange to have pest control measures to be carried out in our classrooms and in the outdoor area. We constantly ensure there are no areas with stagnant pools of water and carried out major repair work on the cracked and broken bits of concrete in the driveway and along the drainage grillwork and we also resurfaced our driveway with a bright blue layer of paint over the Easter break.
We are regularly inspected by ESF Centre facilities staff to check for possible mosquito breeding grounds. As you may have noticed when you visited our outdoor play area, we are in an area that is surrounded by a lot of trees and foliage, and because of this, we have an on-going battle in carrying out measures in controlling the incidence of mosquitoes at Hillside. We will continue to work with ESF Centre facilities to explore options that will help to alleviate the issue of mosquitos in our playground.
Please remember that Hillside will not be open to children on Monday 29th May so we hope that all of our children, and their family, have a great four-day break.
Regards Chris,
Principal
K1 News
Please visit our class blogs on the Hillside Learning Hub for your child’s latest class news and photo gallery. Please contact kinder@hs.esf.org.hk if you cannot access the Learning Hub.
K2 News
Please visit our class blogs on the Hillside Learning Hub for your child’s latest class news and photo gallery. Please contact kinder@hs.esf.org.hk if you cannot access the Learning Hub.
