It has been wonderful to see the students returning to school this year and embracing change, committed to learning and growing in all aspects of their lives. Our Year 11 and 12 students have been involved with Seminar Week, which was an encouragement and helped build a foundation for future success in these important Year levels.

Years 9 and 10 were involved with challenging camps that built resilience, problem solving skills, and allowed for community building in their year levels.

Years 7 and 8 have settled into new routines and are looking forward to camps at the beginning of next term. Years K - 6 have started the year with a focus on being able to ‘Bounce Back’ when challenges come, and are enjoying new places to play and spend time with their friends in the breaks.

Year 11 Studies of Religion students celebrated a Jewish event, happening that very day around the world, called Purim, the story of Esther and the survival of the Jewish people during her time as Queen. They are researching the characteristics within a religion that keep it living and dynamic.

Here are some of their thoughts after a very fun celebration:

‘Religion is living and dynamic in Judaism, as evidenced by the ever evolving and lively holiday of Purim, which displays the interaction between Jewish beliefs, sacred texts, ethics, rituals and ceremonies. Every year at this time the story is read from the scroll of Esther, and when the name of the villain ‘Haman’ is read out, they boo and drown out his name with percussion instruments. This involves everyone keeping the story from the sacred text alive.

Year 5 have started 2021 with bang in Science! We are looking at ‘Earth’s Place in Space’ and we’ve been discussing some fascinating facts about our Solar System.

We also had some great fun planning, building and decorating an orrery. Group work is something this grade does so well. They collaborate, communicate and consider – just to name a few of their incredible skills!

It has been the most wonderful start to the year, and we are all looking forward to more great days to come.

Congratulations to Jessica Smith in Year 10 who has recently been selected in the CIS Secondary Open Girls Softball, and NSW U16s Softball team. Jessica has trained extremely hard and is the leading pitcher for her teams. 

What an incredible achievement this is and we wish her all the best in the upcoming tournaments.

Caroline Bartlett

We received a great write-up in local newspaper, The Western Weekender for our F1 in Schools teams recently. Thank you Western Weekender - and well done again to our amazing students and staff on your recent achievements!

CLICK HERE to read the Western Weekender article

Some changes have taken place in the Mathematics Department at PCS and we would like to keep the wider school community informed.

Firstly I would like to introduce myself as acting Head of Department. My name is Damien Jenner and I studied Engineering at UNSW and began my career as a Computer Programmer before exploring ministry opportunities working in Church and with Youth while completing a Theology degree. I then chose teaching as a way of being part of growing and developing young people. This is now my 13^th year teaching Mathematics across all grade levels, and I have experience developing and resourcing programs across three school systems. I am also currently undertaking a Master of Education Degree in Curriculum and Assessment.

I am committed to working with all the teaching staff to develop excellent teaching and learning practices in Mathematics at PCS; and with four children attending our school from Years 6 to 11, have significant ‘skin in the game’.

God has made each of us unique and in His image! Year 3 have been talking about our character traits and values in Health, with the realisation that we all have strengths and are special. During Art we created self-portraits, using oil pastels with a watercolour wash in the background. Our focus was on facial features and scale, reflecting how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

CLICK HERE to view our self-portraits

3D and Mrs Dawkins

In Term 1, Kindergarten to Year 6 students participate in a program called ‘Bounce Back!’ in Personal Development and Health lessons. Where possible, the knowledge, skills and concepts are also integrated into other Key Learning Areas; teachers then continue to refer to the Bounce Back! concepts throughout the year.

The values encouraged by the Bounce Back! program fit very well into the Christian ethos of our school. Bible verses are integrated into the program and the children are encouraged to learn them as another ‘tool’ to help them through difficult times. Examples are:

Philippians 4:13 (CEB):  I can endure all these things through the power of the one who gives me strength.

Year 4 have been enjoying learning all about plants in our unit ‘Plants In Action.’ We have put our observation skills to the test as we examined seeds and what’s inside them, and by looking at different flowers and leaves of plants. Students have learnt about conditions for germination and the life cycle of plants. Over the unit, the students have also worked collaboratively conducting their own experiments. Each group planted two bean seeds and changed the growing condition of one and have been observing over the last few weeks what effect it has had on growth. We have had some very interesting results!

Belinda Garratt, Ruth Phillips and Lachlan Whale

Year 4 Teachers

The Year 2 Guinea Pigs are loving our ‘Watch it Grow’ Science topic.

We had a fantastic hands-on science lesson as we explored plants, seeds, and their life cycles! We took a walk around the school and examined the root system of a spider plant and replanted it in our classroom to watch it grow.

We investigated the newly created irrigated gardens growing, and documented how our seeds were growing in our classroom window. A wonderfully rich lesson indeed and I am sure we have some future horticulturalists amongst us!

On Monday 22 February, Years 7-12 students participated in our annual school 7-12 Swimming Carnival. We were blessed with an absolutely amazing day at Ripples Penrith with students competing in a range of events throughout the day.

There were a number of students who achieved personal bests on the day in their chosen events and we would like to give a special mention to Lily Jackson who set a new School Record in the 12-Year Girls 50m Butterfly and Adelaide Telfer who set a new School Record in the 18-Year Girls 50m Breaststroke.

We have 39 students successful in qualifying to attend the CSS Nepean Zone Secondary Swimming Carnival which will take place on Wednesday 3 March 2021 at Mt. Druitt Pool. All information will be sent to those students’ parents and caregivers shortly.

A huge congratulations to Year 5 student Coco Purcell. Last year she trialled and successfully made the CSSA Tennis Team, and on Monday competed at the CIS Tennis Trials. Coco represented CSSA (and PCS) excellently, winning THREE of her matches! We are extremely proud of Coco and her efforts.

Joshua De Martin
Year 6 Teacher

Our Summer Reading Challenge was a great success for our second year running. It is great to see so many students continuing to read through summer. This is so important as research shows that on average, students drop in their reading level over long holiday breaks. We also had some great photos sent in of students reading in unusual places to add to the fun.

Congratulations to the following students who completed the challenge and received book prizes. I hope you enjoy them!

YEAR 1

We are conducting a survey to better understand the reasons why parents choose to send their children to our school. An email will be sent to K-12 school families on Monday 8 March inviting your participation.

The Christian Schools Community Profile: WHY PARENTS CHOOSE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS survey is offered by Christian Schools Australia. It will be conducted amongst all families with children enrolled K-12 in participating Christian schools. It is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of parents’/caregivers’ choice of school, their satisfaction with their child/ren’s learning, their engagement in the school community, and their general background.

The survey will be conducted from Monday 8 March to Thursday 1 April 2021 and all responses are anonymous.

On Thursday 18 February, 27 students represented Penrith Christian School at the Nepean Zone Swimming Carnival at Glenbrook Pool. All the students were exceptionally well behaved and swam competitively to the best of their abilities.

Congratulations to the following students for their outstanding results:

12 Years Boys - Tyler Brown 

Our routines at the end of the day have been much improved with your patience and changes to procedure. We continue to ask the following to make this time as safe and efficient as possible:

• All students K-12 will now be dismissed at the normal time of 2.55 pm. If you have older students, we encourage you to enter the school from 3.00 pm to assist our little ones leaving first.

• Please use all four lanes upon entering Bay 1 of the car park to ensure that traffic is not held up at the roundabout, and then zip together giving way as necessary when moving onto the lower section of Kiss & Go.

• Please be courteous to other parents by not using the Simeon Road entrance – this must remain open for deliveries and emergency services, but is not an entry point for Kiss & Go any longer.

We are excited to begin our co-curricular music ensembles for 2021!

We are also excited to offer our Intermediate Band students a place in our Concert Band! This year we will be learning some new repertoire and continuing our journey through existing material. Ensembles return this week (Week 4 - week starting 22 Feb 2021) at the following times and locations:

• Beginner Band: Tuesday 7.30 am to 8.15 am in the Auditorium

• Concert Band: Wednesday 3.00 pm to 4.00 pm in the VET demountable (same room as last year)

Is it living? Is it non-living, or was it once living?

These are the important questions the budding scientists in 3D have been trying to determine! Then there are those tricky things like ugg boots that are made from sheep’s wool, but put through a process. 3D have been working together to observe and categorise specimens in order to understand more about how living thigs are grouped. We have completed nature walks around the playground and searched at home to find as many living things as we can find!

In our classroom we have a nature table with a high turnover of caterpillars, grasshoppers, centipedes and the occasional moth. We are careful when we handle animals that are living, and try to return them back to their habitat after a few days. Our fighting fish, Blueberry, is often observed by the students and they enjoy asking questions about him. It has been an exciting start to Science!

Year 2 Scientists have been busy exploring our new Science topic - Watch it Grow!

This topic is all about investigating the life stories of people and animals, capturing student’s interest about the way living things grow.

We are excitedly observing some mealworms in our classrooms! The students are loving watching them grow and change. We are discussing the variables that might affect the growth of mealworms as we work in collaborative teams to conduct our investigations. We are exposing Year 2 to many opportunities to explore the growth of a range of living things through hands-on activities and investigations, looking at the life cycles under different conditions.

On Monday 8 February 2021, students participated in our annual Years 3-6 Swimming Carnival. We were blessed with an absolutely amazing day at Ripples Penrith, with students competing in a range of events throughout the day.

There were a number of students who achieved personal bests on the day in their chosen events. We would like to give a special mention to Olivia Galea, who set an astonishing five school records which included: 11 Year Girls 50m Freestyle, 50m Breaststroke, 50m Backstroke, 50m Butterfly and 100m Freestyle.

Twenty nine students have also been successful in qualifying to attend CSSA Nepean Zone Primary Swimming Carnival which will take place on Thursday 18 February 2021 at Glenbrook Swimming Pool. All notes and information will be sent to those students and their parents shortly.