About the Precious Preps, 2011!

First day of school

Hi, my name is Aniela Lamott and I am the Prep teacher at Heatherton Christian College. I am very excited to be teaching The Precious Preps this year and I also feel very privileged to be in the position of working with the parents of these beautiful children in nurturing them through a very significant and vital introductory year of their formal education.

I feel so blessed because I teach a wonderful group of terrific, amazing, enthusiastic and Precious Preps! For me teaching is not just a job. I feel honoured to be a teacher because I am in the position of nurturing these wonderful children in all areas of their school journey. Everyday before I come to school I pray for each child and their family. I also thank God for giving me the special gift to teach.

A couple of the many things that I do are:

v  Ensure that the Precious Preps and their families feel warmly welcomed, safe, secure and loved in this new environment.

v  Partner with the parents of these precious children in helping their children reach the potential God has for each of them academically, socially and in their relationship with Him.

I am really looking forward to watching the children grow and develop in all areas of school life this year.

What The Precious Preps Say:

v  We love being in Prep! Miss Lamott calls us The Precious Prepsand we feel very loved because every day she tells us how much she loves having us in Prep.  

v  We enjoy it when we have our daily devotion! We love to pray at the start of the day, say grace before ‘Fruit Break’ and lunch and also for the different things each of us would like to pray for. We really like it when Miss Lamott prays over us at the start and at the end of each day.  

v  Once a week Miss Lamott puts on some worship music for us and we use this time to worship and thank God. We love to spend time with God! 

v  Miss Lamott has a very special bible verse that she got while she was praying for us before we started school. It is from Luke 18:16 – Jesus called the children to Him and said, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (NIV).

v  We love it when we do DIPL (Doorway into Practical Literacy) because it helps us learn more about sounds, speaking, listening, writing, drawing, spelling and reading. We love DIPL because the activities are lots of fun and we learn lots of great things. We love it when Miss Lamott gets DIPL the puppet out because he helps Miss Lamott teach us.  

v  We really enjoy our maths lessons too because Miss Lamott plans exciting activities to help us learn. This year Miss Lamott said that she will be teaching us more about: numbers, adding, subtracting, money, patterns, shapes and others. We really enjoy and learn a lot from the other subjects that we do: French, Art, Sport, Music, Science, SOSE, Health, Media, Drama and Technology.

v  Miss Lamott built a puppet theatre! We really enjoy using it and we love it when Miss Lamott puts on puppet shows which help us learn more about different things. Miss Lamott has lots of puppets that she uses. Some of these are: Carlo the Chef Puppet who helps us develop recipes for different learning areas and Betty the BeeHaviour Bee Puppet who helps us learn about appropriate ‘beehavior’ in and outside of the classroom.

v  We are so excited because we have a rabbit as our class pet. His name is Charlie Aaron Snuffles and we love him so much! Everyone else in the school loves him too. We really enjoy giving him lots of cuddles and he enjoys being cuddled. We always look forward to helping Miss Lamott feed him, change his water and clean out his home. Miss Lamott always says that she is so proud of the way we have taken on the responsibility of having a pet. 

v  Every day we also enjoy a ‘Fruit Break’ at 10.00 am to give us more energy. We also have ‘No Junk Food Day’ on Tuesday and Thursday. Every morning we do ten minutes of fun exercise so that we feel fit for the day. Once a week we do some fun physical activities like: Bindi’s Kids Fitness, tunnel ball and other games which we really enjoy. 

v  One of our other favourite things we like to do at school is spend time with our Grade 6 buddies. Our Grade 6 buddies look after us. They read us stories, play games with us and make lots of things with us.  

v  We love being in Prep because Miss Lamott makes us feel so special and loved!

Our class pet, Charlie the rabbit!!

Dear Aniela,   

Congratulations! Your application is one of the winners of the 2010 Teaching Initiatives
Program.     

We received many applications this year, all of a very high standard. Your initiative has
been recognised as bringing great benefit to the Education Community and therefore
your application  Mini Master Chefs   has received a TIP award of  $1000.00   to enable
implementation.     

Along with the other successful applicants, your School's name and a summary of your
initiative will be listed on our website. If you would like to supply photographs, videos or
other information regarding your initiative for placement on our website, you are
encouraged to do so.     

Your local Relationship Officer will shortly arrange a visit to your School to present your
TIP funding cheque and certificate. For further information, or to contact your local
Relationship Officer call  1300 654 822   .     

Yours sincerely,     

John Scarlett  
Director & TIP Convenor