Building better friendships
You may have heard your son or daughter coming home with phrases such as 鈥渨e had a friendship fire,鈥 or 鈥渋t was mean on purpose.鈥
These phrases are important terms/phrases from the URStrong friendship program which we have begun implementing in Years 1鈥6, with a focus on the language in Prep and Kinder.
The URStrong program is a cornerstone of the Kinder 鈥 Year 6 EMPOWER program and focuses on children teaching others how to treat them.
Included in the K-6 Assembly last week was a focus on the URStrong program鈥檚 Four Friendship Facts. We focused on the first two 鈥 No Friendship is perfect (Friendship fires happen and that鈥檚 okay) and Every friendship is different (wouldn鈥檛 it be boring if we were all the same?!) In this we spoke about Friendship fires and why they are normal and how to 鈥榮ort them out.鈥
We then read a book, Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley by Aaron Blabey, about a friendship where both the children were very different from each other, but that鈥檚 okay.
Over the coming weeks you will begin to see a number of changes as we encourage our community to use the URStrong programs language. We will be changing our Bucketfiller certificate to 鈥 the Heart of Friendship Award.
You will see a number of posters going up around the school that incorporate and remind us of the key learnings from the program. We encourage you to speak with your child about these, and assist them to develop their friendship skills.
More information about the program and parent resources can be found here: Over the coming weeks we will be adding some articles to the newsletter as resources for parents in our community.
Mrs Olivia Stephen - Co-coordinator of Pastoral Care K-6
A Catholic School in the Salesian Tradition
