We are off to a very good start!!! 2011 has already moved into February and it is nearly Valentines Day!! How quickly is this year going already!!

Thank you to all our dedicated parents who came to the “Meet and Greet”. It means so much to your children and to us if you are involved in their school life. The evening was an informal way for parents to meet their child's teacher. Afterwards everyone gathered outside the office for snacks and drinks. A super way for us all to chat and get to know one another and meet all the new parents.

The school would not be the same without all the parents who have volunteered one way or another to help at school. This includes paired reading, lifting kids to the swimming pool, helping with sport, offering the school different things to make life easier ie fans and extension cords!!! Thank you - your help and support is amazing.

Greenwood has also been taking part in the Plett interschools athletics day. Our children were fabulous and a couple have been chosen to participate in another interschools sports day tomorrow - this includes schools from Knysna and Sedgefield. I would like to say welcome to Wesley Andrew who will be our Sport Coach. We hope Wesley and our children will have loads of fun together while training to be super sportschildren.

Please let me know if you have any news that I can add to the blog!
chat soon,
Lyndall

More on the concerts

Well, this is my very first blog and Greenwood seemed an excellent reason to get started! Two more sleeps and I get to go and watch my youngest Jenna, who is four years old, perform in the pre-school concert. She is a rabbit "I am not a bunny mom, I am a rabbit" she advised me indignantly today. Janet and some of the other moms have done an amazing job with her outfit - I gave them as much moral support as possible as I cannot even sew a button on a shirt! If the primary school concert - "Flight of the Starship Silvergrey" is anything to go by then it can only be an entertaining evening. I thoroughly enjoyed the primary school concert, it was so professional and polished and not at all "thrown together". The hard work and hours that Tessa, the staff, pupils and parents put in was evident. But professionalism and polished are formal words. It is the feel good stuff that makes an evening, the comrade amongst staff and pupils having a drink outside whilst waiting in anticipation for the show to begin, the laughs that children create so naturally (the Goobledegook lost his eye a few times), the spontaneous applause and cheers that encouraged the pupils throughout the evening, the goosebumps I got when my daughter Kayleigh sang her solo and let's not forget staff, pupils and parents doing the "Timewarp" together at the end. Fantastic - I just can't wait for Thursday night!

TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL

That’s right, these five children from Greenwood Independent School are too cool for school. So cool, in fact, that they were flown to Johannesburg to take part in the annual Eskom ETA awards; the youngest contestants in the event’s 21 year history.

The Grade 6 and 7 class, represented by Nicolas Reid, Kharma Rossi, Azi Ngumbela, Heather Anderson and Teva Shneor, designed an evaporative refrigerator, which is basically a tub surrounded by wet sand and held together with cloth and plastic mesh with a lid on top. Amazingly this device, made from scraps found around the home, lowers the temperature of its contents quite dramatically making electricity quite unnecessary in refrigeration.

The simplicity and practicality of this little fridge caught the eyes of the judges who were surprised at the youth of these inventors and were impressed with their understanding of the broader issues of sustainability. The famous five were feted at the event and a great fuss was made of their age and expertise. They were given a special award for their project in the Young Designers Category; other contestants were all from high schools.

The children owe their greatness to Susan Donald who is the facilitator for WESSA’s program for Environmental Education in the Bitou area. Susan works closely with Greenwood Independent School to include these kinds of projects in the everyday curriculum. Unfortunately she was unable to accompany the young inventors to Johannesburg as she is currently in Sweden for a month as part of an award for her efforts in environmental education!

FLIGHT OF THE STARSHIP SILVER GREY

What an amazing concert!! Last week the children of Greenwood, along with their very talented music teachers Tessa and Karin and the other teaching staff at Greenwood, put on a production that was worthy of being on Broadway!! All the primary school children were involved - either as robots, aliens, suger pop girls, space troopers and many other 'out of space' creatures! The audience was thrilled to be able to watch such a superb production. The arts and drama departments at Greenwood are excellent!!

Kaleigh Packwood as the 'Earthling".

Kharma Rossi as Captain Skylark and Nicholas Hill as the GobbledeGook.

The Milky Way Parade with all the aliens.

and the lovely Space Singers.

ESKOM’S ETA AWARDS 2010

Some of the Greenwood learners will be flying up to Johannesburg on Tuesday to do a presentation for the Eskom and the Department of Energy. Well done Greenwood!!!

See the info below:

Eskom and the Department of Energy have for the past 20 years rewarded excellence in the field of energy efficiency. The purpose of the ETA Awards is to reward exceptional effort in the more efficient use of energy by individuals, students, companies or other institutions. All of the awards comprise a cash amount of R30 000 for the winner in each category and R5 000 for each of the two runners-up in each category.

We were recently notified that GREENWOOD INDEPENDENT SCHOOL is one of the 5 FINALISTS in the Young Designers Category for their “Keep a Chill on Global Warming” entry! Refrigerators are one of our households biggest consumers of electricity and, with the help of Susan Donald, they have constructed an eco fridge, which does not use any electricity! This is the latest of our energy saving projects which started last year with our solar water heater. The fridge works on the principle of evaporation, just as the Zeer clay pots do. However it is bigger, uses easily obtained and inexpensive materials, which we can get at the local hardware store. (Shade cloth, netting and sand.) The fridge is being used to keep milk, water and lunchboxes cold—and in tests, lowered the temperature of liquids by between 8 and 10 degrees.

We are so proud of you Greenwood!! Good luck...

Hockey tournament in George (Saturday 4th Sept)

Yay it's Friday!

What a wonderful Greenwood week it has been. Last night we all enjoyed the Cultural Evening that the children did for us.... it included poems in English and Afrikaans, drama, gymnastics, piano recitals, songs from the school choir, solo songs, guitar players, Xhosa dancing and even a praise singer (Xhosa) praising the school and Mrs Solomon!! What a wonderful experience.

Praise singer translation: Greenwood you unite nations. Mrs Solomn, we would like to say "Carry on with your fruitful work". Forward, Greenwood, forward. Forward Mrs Solomon, forward.

It was truely one of those evenings that makes Greenwood such a special place.

Here are a couple of other links I thought you may be interested in:

• The grade 6/7 's had a conscious classroom session today run by Carol from The Journey. For more info have a look at this website...


• I love the look of this book of the week from DesignMom - The Lion and The Mouse. I love the fact that it has no words so the kids can make up their own story as they turn the pages.


• And check out this fabulous tree house - made by a talented carpenter and his Montessori teacher wife! Also have a look at their jungle gyms. WOW imagine if we could have these at our school!!!