Around the Grounds: Is it Really the Middle of the Year?

To Register: Woodleigh's Open House Event is for busy families to explore our Junior and Senior Campuses outside school hours. Come and see what makes us tick.
To Read: Are you familiar with the term Angertainment, coined recently and used frequently. Triggering the Outrage Machine covers the monetisation of outrage in education commentary in Australia. 
To Apply: Woodleigh School Adventurous Minds Scholarships are OPEN FOR APPLICATION

Back in the Kitchen

Years 3 and 4 at Minimbah are back in the Kitchen Garden program this term and this time, they're feeding the school.

After considering how they might give something back to their community, the students made a practical decision: take over the canteen kitchen and sell their food to other classes. They loved to see other students devour the fruits (veggies) of their labour. Any monies raised is put back into the Kitchen Garden program – a satisfying loop that the students understand and take genuine pride in. More recipes are coming throughout the year.

It's a delicious curriculum.

Swapping is Shopping

The Swap Shop is a Year 10 RFP initiative, a working circular economy built from the ground up by students who are learning that sustainability isn't a concept you study, it's a system that you, me, we, can design and create. Clothing comes in, gets assessed, resold, rehomed or responsibly recycled through Upparel. Funds raised go back into the initiative and stock for clothing accessibility for Woodleigh’s Irrultja and Ampilatwatja Broadening Horizons visits. Nothing is wasted and everything is considered.

It connects to Year 9 MYP Community Projects too, meaning students across year levels are getting hands-on with what regenerative thinking actually looks like when you stop talking about it and start doing it.

As part of keeping clothing in circulation, unclaimed lost property at the end of each term will flow into the Swap Shop system, a small but satisfying closing of the loop.

If you'd like to read more about how it all works, the full story is here. A huge thankyou to Hannah Watts and the RFP team for making this one run.

To Book: Rock Quiz 2026, Rock the 90s!!

Reconciliation

It was National Reconciliation Week, an important and deeply valued time in Woodleigh’s calendar.
This year’s theme, All In, reflects a commitment to learning from one another, learning from history and walking together in harmony, respect and friendship. From the action that happens throughout our community, I am proud that Penbank campus is truly all in.

Over the past fortnight, it has been a privilege to welcome seven students and four staff members from Wugularr to Penbank once again for a literacy and numeracy immersion. Their visit has been an enriching experience for our entire community, continuing to strengthen the connection between Penbank and Wugularr and maintaining the important, well-trodden pathways between our schools. We are grateful to the Yadha Muru Foundation for the continued support in making these opportunities possible. Please click here to read the newsletter from Yadha Muru, sharing stories of action across our country. 

We are all incredibly fortunate to be part of this Wugubank partnership, and we are proud to continue walking together in reconciliation. 

To Read: Triggering the Outrage Machine

Minimbah Discovery Day - Poo Crew

Minimabah's Foundation to Year 2 students bussed to Senior Campus to do some pretty outrageous things. Among them was scavenge for poo. Animal poo, from the Reserve and there is just so much of it. There were gloves, there were charts, there were 'ewwwwws'... 

...but there was also one giant smile amongst the pinched noses. Her gloves were snapped on so fast, instructions were whizzed through, poo was scavanged and held high. It was fabulous. 

Woodleigh's Regen Café

Minimbah Battle of the Beaks

Minimbah's Discovery Day kids didn't stop their adventure after the poo hunt, they visited the Senior School Science Labs to learn about birds and their wild feasts. They sat up at the big kid science desks while Mr Benton told them squirmy facts about disgusting food. Once they were ready to stretch their legs they wandered up to the very beautiful Farm. Mandy met them there, and told them stories and facts about different bugs, big ones, small ones, ones as big as your head. Bugs take on different roles in the complex ecosystems of our precious planet earth. It was a rapid fire of questions and facts from the kids, hands up and tales to tell, thankfully Mandy was able to keep up, answering a multitude of bug-related questions and all of the but whys.

To Apply: Adventurous Minds Scholarships are now open.

Explorers, All of Them

Mapping the world is Exploration 101. Its like a real life picture book, part time machine, and entirely real. A world map painted on glass doors at Penbank was where it began. Then diary entries written from inside the lives of adventurers and explorers who've covered so much of earth's ground. Some of those lives are being lived right now. Others are so distant it's almost impossible to imagine what a Monday morning meant to them, compared to ours.

Over several weeks, students had been living inside the stories of a remarkable range of figures, they wrote 'step inside' pieces that asked them to think not just about where these explorers went, but what it felt like to go there.

Pages of beautiful penmanship and illustration were exhibited for families, sharing facts, storytelling and humour. They stood before their families and spoke about lives very different from their own. Inquiry brought to life. 

To Book: Penbank Playgroup - Limited availability.

And there was just so much more, we will keep sharing next time we go Around the Grounds...