Parenting Tips #1:
I was very excited last night to receive the online sessions by “Growing Families Australia” via email from Mrs McKellar in the College library.
For many years in the early days we ran these parenting courses and later a shorter version of them but although parents were very interested in learning more skills for this most important role, it was often very difficult to attend the sessions each week.
My intention is to include a short parenting session link to Growing Families in weekly newsletters which will allow you to watch 5 minutes over coffee and conversation with your spouse some time on the weekend. I pray that these will be of value to you and will be a springboard for conversations.
The FIRST one is very interesting and may enlighten you about “Parenting Challenges Compared – The Digital Worlds 1993 to 2018”. These series will help you navigate the minefield which our families encounter in today’s world.
Click the link to watch.
Message to Farmers – from our Primary families
When we purchased the boxes to make up the care packages for the farmers, we asked teachers to email Primary Admin to indicate how many boxes each class required for the goods. Oh my goodness, I was so amazed at the incredible response from our primary families. I shouldn’t be amazed because you always get behind any call for help which comes out from the school and totally support what we are doing here at GCC.
The first truckload of hay and care parcels will go this Friday. They were to go last Friday but it rained a little which was an answer to prayer and we HAVE been praying. But remember that from the time the rain comes there is still a long period before farmers will see the benefit of that rain.
If you haven’t had a chance to send items for our care packages yet, please don’t think that you have missed the boat or even the truck. We will be continuing this “Fill it for a Farmer” drive for the next few weeks so please feel free to send in items for the boxes as another truckload will go in Week 10.
We have purchased 100 boxes and will buy more as they are filled. I heard from someone in the land last Friday that desperation is gripping these farmers because cattle and sheep are dying before their eyes even though they are bulldozing every bush on their properties trying desperately to provide some sort of fodder for the animals. The final straw for this person has been watching ewes ready for “lambing” dying with the lambs ready to be born. It’s so tragic!
So your kindness and generosity will bring some hope and a little joy into a desperate situation, to know that families so far away care enough to prepare these parcels and deliver them to desperate people farming a dry and thirsty land.
We all know Dorothea McKellar’s poem “My Country” but you may not know the experiences which were the inspiration for this particular verse. Below is the complete poem. What a contrast between the two countries – England & Australia.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
Excerpt from
My Country – Dorothea Mackellar 1908
“From 1898 to 1901, the Mackellars owned Torryburn station, near East Gresford, NSW, during one of the region’s driest times. While holidaying at the property the family witnessed the breaking of a drought. In later life, Dorothea Mackellar recalled how, after the rain, the grass began to shoot across the parched, cracked soil of the paddocks and, as she watched from the verandah, the land to the horizon turned green before her eyes.”
Cheryl Bryers, Head of Primary