A warm welcome back to school for Term 4 to everyone. There are many exciting and special events to celebrate this Term, including the much anticipated School Bazaar. The two amazing Emilys, Banjo and Lulu’s Mum, and Tucker’s Mum, are in overdrive as they coordinate a mini ’Woodstock’ of star performers who are close to our hearts and from our community. In particular, for this year’s Bazaar, we are delighted to carry on a long standing tradition of bringing children together from different schools to sing, as was established by Anne-Marie Secull and the Coro dei Bambini. Emily and I have invited the school choirs from Brunswick South Primary and Clifton Hill Primary schools to join our PHPS choir for a fabulous performance of Inter-School singing on the Bazaar centre stage. We look forward to this collaboration and to welcoming students and families from these schools to our Bazaar.

One of the many rewarding aspects of our ‘one term old’ School Choir, is the singers’ growing confidence of singing in harmony, or singing in parts which over lap each other. We have progressed from wanting to cover our ears, and sing fortissimo to block out other singing parts, to opening our ears and listening to how our vocal lines weave together. For the Inquiry Assembly at the end of last Term the choir sang 2 short songs, ‘Hotaru Koi’ and ‘Yonder Come Day’. Both songs have melodies which, with staggered entries, can harmonise as they unfold. Most often, the second part starts the melody as the first part moves onto the second phrase of the song, and the harmony line calmly builds as each following part begins: as we heard with ‘Yonder Come Day’. ’Hotaru Koi’ was much more challenging with the distance between each part being only one beat: brains to the gym for us all. Thank you and congratulations to Emily and the Choir.

We hear the expression ’super excited’ a lot at PHPS, but the things we get up to are the uplifting kind which energise and inspire. I am thrilled that our combined Inter-school Choirs will sing the Youth Group song ‘Forever Young’ which has pretty much reached ’anthem status’ for our older students… and if this is not ’super exciting’ enough then, we will be accompanied by the band ’The Receivers’ who are our very own home grown former PHPS students 🌟 Arlo Fennessy,🌟Poppy and 🌟Ava Pearce. Please watch the centre stage programming on the day so that you are there on the oval to add your voices to the fabulous spirit-lifting chorus of this song.

After the excitement of the Federation Handbells performance, we ended last term gently with some rhythm games and team building skills activities. One activity we enjoy involves unravelling a group of students who are all connected together by holding short pieces of red tape. As pictured above, students began in smaller groups of 5, standing in a circle and each holding an end of tape which is criss-crossed across the centre of the group. Without letting go of the red tape, students need to work out how to manoeuvre themselves so that they end up standing in a circle with the red tape positioned between the students running around the perimeter of the circle. The skills required to be successful include communication, co-operation, prediction, patience, leadership, knowing when to surrender leadership and observation. Small groups of five students had a high success rate, especially when the groups were made up of friends operating with familiar friendship dynamics. More challenging, but also eventually equally successful, were larger groups of nine students or more. Bavo to everyone, and especially to those students who could see the link between the team building activities and those skills required for music learning in ensemble contexts.

Back in the Yr 2 – 5/6 Neighbourhoods we are enjoying a few weeks of Uke Club before we turn our attention towards learning songs to celebrate the end of the school year and the holidays. The accumulation of hands-on instrumental playing is really developing focus and ensemble skills. Just like the team building exercises, all the same skills are being practiced. Whether we are creating music with bells, singing, practicing rhythms or learning to play the ukulele, the whole group is engaged and demonstrating their best to achieve a satisfying outcome. With the Preps and Yr 1s we are revisiting some basic music notation and practicing reading different rhythmic patterns. Also, thanks to the rainy day and our need to burn off energy, the Yr 1s are now expert Macarena dancers. It’s been a delightful start to Term 4. Thank you to everyone for your enthusiasm and good cheer. Cheerio, Deb