What a busy and strange year we’ve had so far! We certainly hit the ground running right from the start. Some of the exciting learning experiences that S24 has been involved with have been: grocery shopping for many of the high school classes (online ordering and physical collections from the supermarket), making sandwiches for the school staff as a fundraiser and as a work skills activity, and packaging and delivering pamphlets to homes near the school as another work skills activity. Other fun weekly activities have been: swimming, cooking (and eating!), bike track exercises and combined fitness sessions which incorporated targeted movement skills and games.

However, our most exciting weekly activity has been sailing. On Wednesdays last term, we travelled to Drummoyne and every student had individual sailing experiences with a volunteer sailor in a 303 sailboat and a power boat. The students really enjoyed these experiences and were always looking forward to their next sailing day. Consistently beautiful weather throughout most of Term 1 helped to ensure that we had wonderful sailing adventures. A part of the sailing activities included a barbeque lunch and then assisting volunteers to clean and pack away boats and equipment. That was teamwork!

Then, Covid-19 hit! Our whole way of learning and socialising changed almost overnight. Many of our programs had to be altered, with the safety of both students and staff given priority. Along with other schools, home learning then became the principal form of education and the students did a wonderful job adapting to this new style of learning, supported by their amazing families!

Time will tell how the rest of the year will shape out, but one thing is for certain – we will have fun and will all continue to do our very best! See you again next time!

Hanna, Serena, Kuhan, Jack, Robert, Kelly, Vincent, Anthony, Tracy and Alain.