MINUTES - Class One Meeting: 25th February 2006
Teacher Laurance 
Present Susan (Dylan), Sabine (Betty-Lou), Tanya (York), Lesley (Isabella), Anke & Matthew (Ella), Nazeema & Nezaam (Aakifah), Delphine (Roxanne), Tania (Taytum), Colette (Aliya), Shelley (Calla) & Kim (Samuel) who had to share herself between Nicole’s & our meeting. 
Apologies Caprice & Andrew (Isabelle), Linda & Zac (Kaiden), Jenny & Mark (Sarah), Annalisa & Shaun (Marlon). 

We started with an overview of what the first 5 ½ weeks have been like for our new group and my first impressions in teaching them. I can honestly say I have been most impressed by and proud of what this big group has achieved in such a short time. We are called the Playgroup because the 2 most important “objectives” of this age group for their first year at school are to do with the ability to play and the ability to form and be a group ongoingly and they have shown me just that!

I was just recalling what had happened only the morning before when one child decided to lie down on the carpet with her head on the pillow and asked me for a blanket to cover her. As I was shaking the blanket over her to put it down in a nice way she giggled and waved arms and legs as it seemed to her I was using the blanket as a sort of fan. Then immediately 4 more children (“power of imitation”) got a pillow and wanted to “play the same game”! Before I knew it I needed two big blankets for I had a beautiful line-up of 12 children on their backs, heads on pillows waiting to “play the game”. When that one was over, they all scattered and I put the pillows/cushions in a big circle in anticipation for a short story time before our chalk drawing activity; again it started with one child using them as stepping stones and going around in circle, and soon enough, 12 children went around playing that game. Then I decided to drop the story I had prepared and follow their lead for they were truly inspiring! They appeared to me like little elves on an adventure in the forest and so we went. When we got tired we went to sleep on our stepping stones turned pillows again. We slept until a fairy with a magic wand came to touch us gently and wake us up to take us to our chalk drawing. It is truly a gift for a teacher to experience such an inspiration from a group of children, especially this early in the year. Everything was effortless for both them and me. It flowed out of us by magic! It is, I think, a tribute to the level of play and the level of relationship they have been able to establish both individually and together.
Thank you parents for the gifts that your children are.

I then went on to speak about the agenda I had prepared. There was a lot for us to cover!
Handouts of classlists, playdough recipe and gluten-free birthday cake recipe. N.B. Time for the baking is @ 180 C for about 35/40 mns. It was left out on the printing of the sheet.
Writing down what you can offer as skills to our school and your email address if you have one. Andrew King and Matthew Swart have offered to be the distributors of information especially when it involved cyberspace!
Choosing our class representatives (Class link – Maintenance Rep. – Fundraising Rep.).
Discussing our previous newsletter’s points and how to communicate effectively with you.
Fundraising opportunities (Tuck shop/Fish Hoek Sailing Club/ Zip Zap Circus).
Topics for further meetings
Information about Joy’s group and how to remedy to the situation.

We covered 1) and 2) then regarding 3) Caprice King will officially be our class link and she will be supported in her role by Lesley Moerdyk and Tanya Van Jaardsvelt. We will also rely on Matthew and Andrew to ensure we all communicate and circulate information. I believe Linda Miller is still willing and able to be our Maintenance representative, she did a brilliant job last year! Finally we need a Fundraising representative. We have Tanya and Shelley offering their catering abilities whenever a fundraising event would require them and Tania Wiersma will be able to work with us on the Zip Zap Circus event as she knows the directors personally.

4) Another form of communication was suggested by Delphine ie making a cloth advent calendar type that would have pockets for each child large enough to hold messages of various kinds, from me or from other parents. Susan Eloff has volunteered to create it and we could have it inside the classroom for you to check every time you come in.
We discussed some of the points in the newsletter mainly what to bring to school and what not to bring (clothes, toys, food, etc…)

5) Fundraising opportunities:
Tuck shop: this is a very valuable opportunity to raise funds for the school, the net profit last year was R22 000. Gisela, who takes care of it, needs parents from Kindergarten and Playgroup to man the stall from 12.15pm to 13.00pm every day. If you would like to volunteer for however many days you can and maybe pair up with another parent as Anke suggested so your little ones are taken care of whilst you sell please let us know or speak to Gisela directly. Many thanks!
Fish Hoek Sailing Club: 2 races are on. One takes place on one day, the other over a few days, both events are happening over weekends or public holidays. It involves selling food tickets and just serving the food itself. We are offered 50% of the proceeds! Last year I attended with a few parents for one day and we got R500 which we used to make our sandpit bigger and add to our jungle gym. The Fish Hoek Sailing Club is in an extremely pleasant environment with lots for the kids to see and do. So it is worth to do as a family outing as there are great gaps in the actual work so we can have fun too! Please let us know soon if you can make any of these dates, even half a day. All the information is on my noticeboard at school. We need to know by 15th March otherwise the opportunity might go to someone else. I have spoken to the person who designed and built the jungle gym (s!) in Joy’s garden, please go and visit. He has offered some great improvements to our own garden and will be giving me a quote as well as drawings very shortly; he hinted at around R2000 for everything. So this could be a way of raising the money.
Zip-Zap Circus: I will give more details as soon as we have established a date for it, we are looking at possibly the first week of June.

6) Topics for further meetings: I found in a document written by another teacher about her parent meetings some very valuable ietms that I wanted to share with you. I particularly liked the way she presented them:

Rhythm: waking and sleeping/ eating and digesting/ activity and rest/daily/weekly rhythms
“A well rested child, properly nourished, a child who can anticipate the regular occurrence of certain events in his/her life is a child who will look with trust and confidence into the world”

“A child’s play is a child’s work”: How does the capacity of imagination guide the play? The princess becomes butterfly then flies to the house and becomes mother… The knight hunts dragon, becomes bear and hunter, etc… What deadens imaginative capacities? What enlivens them?

Meaning of discipline: emphasising the importance of facing this task and not abandoning our children. How must one look at children and childhood so that our assertion of authority comes from a deeper understanding of the nature of the child?

From these topics, on that day, we chose to talk about the discipline aspect and we began a conversation about the behaviours of a three year old especially at home, after school and how parents can cope with that, what tools they have. I would like to take another message to you to flesh out what was discussed and take that as an opening for our next parent meeting, where we would like to discuss this topic further and maybe have feedback from all of you to see what your situations are like at home.

It leaves one item and this one I didn’t cover during our meeting as we had run out of time. It concerns Joy’s group in particular yet affects the whole realm of playgroup/kindergarten so we will be involved in some way. Joy’s group is not as big as was anticipated at the end of last year, quite a few of her parents have had to pull out since January which makes it less viable for her group. She also has an imbalance in numbers: Xhosa speaking children and English speaking children, girls and boys and especially very few older girls. This is causing concern for the parents in her group who were expecting more choice in age group and gender for their children to play with, some have already left because of that very reason. We are looking at all possibilities in order to redress the balance and would welcome your suggestions, especially if you know of anybody who would be interested in their child joining the school, more so girls of 5 or 6 years old. Before the end of this term a decision will be made if no other solution appears, decision which may involve restructuring our classes in order to support Joy’s group. Please let me know your comments about this.
I hope I have covered most of what passed between us at our meeting. Please feel free to add to this or correct me in your communications with me and with each other. Many thanks!