Each year, Kamaroi sets aside a portion of its revenue to offer a limited number of means-tested bursaries to families who would not otherwise be able to afford a Steiner based education for their children at Kamaroi. Bursaries are available for students from Class 1 onwards.

Specifically, Kamaroi School’s bursary fund supports continuing enrolment for children of community members who are experiencing financial hardship, which impacts their ability to meet tuition fee obligations. The fund is also designed to financially assist a limited number of new enrolments of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, otherwise unable to meet fees’ obligations.

Applications for bursary support during 2022 are now open and must be submitted by September 30th, 2021. To request an application form please email the School’s Business Manager, Michael Twigg. (michaelt@kamaroi.nsw.edu.au)

Kind regards, 

Michael Twigg

Business Manager 

The next PA meeting will be held on Tuesday 7 September at 7:30pm

Please join us on Zoom for the next Parent’s Association Meeting. All Kamaroi parents are automatically members of the PA, and your attendance at the meetings is always welcome and encouraged. The agenda will include discussing ways of staying connected as a community during this time. We look forward to seeing you there!

PA Committee

Katie, Mark, Dave, Chris, Dana and Natalie

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/92514188652

 These sessions are a response to the requests after last weeks talk for more input from Lisa Devine, and are an opportunity to meet what is living in our community. 

Thursday 9th September 7.30pm 

More info & Zoom details HERE

If you have any particular questions that you’d like Lisa to respond to please email them prior to vanessa@kamaroi.nsw.edu.au and we’ll see if we can navigate. 

Lisa Devine trained as a youth worker in the early 1980s and worked in a range of youth at risk programs. She has a Masters in Psychology and has counselled young people and their families over many years. Lisa’s connection to the work of Rudolf Steiner began in the 1990s when she completed her Eurythmy training. In 2013 she completed the training in Curative Eurythmy. She has worked as a Chaplain and counsellor in Steiner schools throughout Australia. Lisa teaches Introduction to Anthroposophy, Cosmology and Human Communication courses in the Sydney Rudolf Steiner College Teacher training program. Lisa is highly sought after around Australia as a speaker and facilitator in the areas of conflict resolution, child, inner and professional development – working out of the Anthroposophical impulse.

Making bread is an intrinsic element in our early childhood experience, and one of the many anchors we can return to in challenging times to give comfort, nourishment and nutrition for family well-being…

Sandra’s positivity and enthusiasm is always a joy to be around. Learn some enriching practical basics for the home with other families in the school community.

In this session you will learn:

The principles of sourdough bread making

How to make your own bread

How to make your own starter culture

Tactile exploration and nutritional study of many grains

How to make butter and cream cheese

Please Register Here

Sandra’s meaningful workshops are inspiring and nourishing. Sandra has been teaching principles of Nutrition and Sourdough Bread making for decades in Australia and internationally. Sandra’s formal qualifications include: (Bachelor of Child Study (HFX), Masters in Steiner Education (NYC), Certificate in Biodynamic Agriculture (NY)

www.sandrafrain.com

The open spaces sessions have been initiated by Lisa Romero, who has deepened Rudolf Steiner’s indications for teachers and parents at Kamaroi for over 20 years. She works in schools and organisations all over the world and has expanded a group of professional colleagues to make make her content more accessible. We highly recommend her approach for engendering Steiner principles in ways which are both insightful and practical for families at home.

Weekly from 7:30pm - 9:00pm

Starting Sunday 29th August until Sunday 28th November

Drop-in anytime from 7:30pm - 9:00pm

We are opening the door every Sunday night for live zoom sessions.

Share some human-to-human connection, bring a question, listen in quietness, reaffirm your connection to your Self and replenish  that you can continue to provide a healthy home for those in your care.

Register once to receive the link and drop-in when you can.

Register Here

Wattle, Banksia and Lilly Pilly are the new names for the early childhood area of our school in 2022. The plan for some time now has been to have a preschool connected to Kamaroi.  The thinking about this shifted earlier this year following our discussions with council and town planners.  A more simple solution for us was to have a stand-alone Pre- Kindergarten with capacity up to around 20 children to commence children’s Steiner learning journey. And we realised we could achieve this on our current site.  We explored a number of options and finally agreed on the plan below.

To achieve this goal, some creative planning unfolded and we are now confident that Lilly Pilly, our new Pre-Kindergarten class, will be up and running in 2022!

The current library will become Lilly Pilly (our Pre-Kindergarten space).  Of course, some minor modifications and playground adjustments will be made to ensure that it is a suitable and beautiful environment for the 4 – 5 year old children to learn, explore and play.  These children will then progress to Kindergarten where those rooms will be named Wattle and Banksia rather than the by their current names KLJ and KBR.

The current library and all its contents will be relocated to the Barn.  This process is well underway already and should be completed during the upcoming term break.  It has provided us with a great opportunity to review our library contents and I make a quick mention of the work that Bernie, Lisa and many helpers have achieved already! Once the library space is cleared, this will allow tradespeople to carry out works to prepare Lilly Pilly for 2022.  The Barn space which has been occupied by Katherine Balbi for Extra Lesson has already been relocated down to the Meadow Room.

It is full steam ahead now for Kamaroi to finally have a place for young children and their families to join our school.  We strongly urge families to let their friends know about this exciting opportunity. Indeed, our data base of families interested in enrolling children has already commenced and so now is the time to apply for Lilly Pilly in 2022.

For enrolment enquiries please contact registrar@kamaroi.nsw.edu.au or phone the school on (02) 9450 1651.

You can also join our waitlist here

Barbara Maxfield

Principal 

A big thank you to The Kamaroi Kitchen team Miriam and Akiko and a special thanks to Lena (class 3 parent) for sharing her wonderful Cinnamon Scroll recipe. We are sure our families will enjoy making these recipes at home!

Skillingsboller (Norwegian Cinnamon Scrolls)

Ingredients for dough

400ml Milk or Rice Milk

670g Spelt Flour

80g Sugar

2tsp Salt

1tsp Ground Cardamon

4 ½ tsp Dried Yeast (2 x 7g sachet)

100g Butter

Ingredient for filling

Softened butter or Nuttelex

Sugar or coconut sugar

Cinnamon

Method

1. Sift cardamon, flour into a bowl and add sugar, yeast and salt

2. In saucepan melt butter and milk together – let it cool slightly

3. Pour the liquid into the flour mixture slowly and combine until it creates a dough, you may need to add more flour if it’s too sticky

4. Knead the dough in the bowl and then transfer to a floured surface. Continue kneading until smooth and you can see air-pockets in dough

5. Put the dough back in the bowl, cover and leave in warm, draft free spot for 45min – 1hr (until doubled in size)

6. Once risen, transfer dough again to floured surface. Roll dough into a large rectangle

7. Spread softened butter over the dough and then sprinkle sugar and cinnamon mixture over the butter

8. Starting at one end, roll the dough over itself like a Swiss roll.

9. Using a sharp knife cut roll into 2cm slices

10. Turn each slice onto its flat side and place on lined baking tray. Press down with your hand to flatten the dough

11. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees

12. Cover trays with tea towel and let rise for another 20 minutes

13. Brush each roll with milk or egg and then bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown

Enjoy!

Easy spinach cheese Gozleme

Ingredients

400-500g fresh spinach chopped 

1 bag of mountain bread of your choice (8 sheets)

300g cheese (feta or mix of feta and mozzarella or tasty)

Olive oil  

Lemon (optional)

Method

Mix spinach and cheese and cut mountain bread sheets into half. 

Brush mountain bread with olive oil and put a small amount of pile of spinach/cheese mixture in the centre of each sheet

Fold one side of the bread over the filling (to the centre) and then fold the other side over.

Fry with olive oil until both sides are golden brown. Eat with some lemon juice if you like. 

Enjoy!

Icebox cookies

Ingredients 

250g butter 

150g sugar

1 egg

400g flour

1 tsp vanilla extract 

a handful of currants

Method

Cream butter, add sugar, egg and vanilla

Add flour and currants and make a dough

Make the dough into some logs (Around 5cm), wrap logs and rest in the freezer for at least an hour

Preheat oven 170. Cut cookies (when they are soft enough to cut) in 1cm thick 

Bake for 15 minutes until the bottom sides are brown (Top shouldn't be too brown)

You can keep the logs in the freezer until you are ready to bake again. 

Enjoy!

Kamaroi Kitchen, Miriam, Akiko & Lena

Lidija began her teaching journey in the Sydney public school system as a Class Teacher of the early grades. During this time, she became acquainted with Anthroposophy and Steiner Education when searching for an educational system that reflected her professional and personal values. After completing studies at Parsival College (now Sydney Rudolf Steiner College), she decided to take a leap of faith when she became a member of the vibrant Kamaroi community in 2011. With love and guidance from her supportive colleagues, she shepherded a class from Class Three through Class Six. Although this was a period of significant growth and immense satisfaction, her desire for adventure led her to New York, where she embraced a different cultural setting at the Brooklyn Waldorf School. Here she guided a class from Class Four through Class Eight and enjoyed the wonders of this great city. When she returned to Australia in 2020, she was delighted to accept a position at Glenaeon as their Learning Support Teacher; however, she couldn't resist the pullback to her spiritual home.

Lidija is thrilled to be returning to Kamaroi into a warm and professional community of colleagues who consistently strive to uphold the highest moral, aesthetic and academic standards. As the new Learning Support Teacher, Lidija wishes to contribute to the well-being and creative spirit that lives in each child. She is enthusiastic about creating a healing educational environment that allows each child to flourish and learn with a sense of purpose and joy.

Lidija has an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in Education. An avid lifelong learner, she is currently studying Psychology and majoring in Child and Family Psychology with a strong interest in Educational and Developmental Psychology.

"I began my journey in the Kindergarten at Kamaroi, first as a practicum student while studying at Parsifal College (now Sydney Rudolf Steiner College).

I was then offered a part-time position working 2 days a week, before moving into a year of full-time teaching, while one of the Kindergarten teachers took a sabbatical.

On her return I began working 4 days a week, and have continued to do so ever since, and that was around 14 years ago.

After I finished high school, I completed a Bachelor of Teaching in Primary Education, and then began working in a bookstore that specialised in children’s books because I wasn’t ready to begin working as a teacher.  We had many schools ordering and also requesting specific books, and it was the books that were being invoiced and sent to Kamaroi that caught my attention. It is difficult to describe what it was, but I felt a familiarity and a resonance with their choices.

When the time came to move on from being involved in children’s books, I began studying at Parsifal College. All that I heard from the tutors and experienced resonated deep within me and so I continued with their Early Childhood Courses, which brought me to where I am today.

And what I most appreciate about having the opportunity to work at Kamaroi is the peace and quiet I feel when I am at school, even though we are located on a main road.

I also feel protected from the busyness of the outer world, and many of my worries fade into the background because the children need me to always be in the present moment.

Some of the things that I have been doing to help me during this time of extended lockdown are sitting in the sun; taking Charlie, my cavoodle, for a walk; weeding; hand sewing; crocheting; noticing the changes in nature and snuggling with my rabbits."

Lisa Olsvold

Kindergarten Teacher

Rose has an outdoor office at home as the rest of the family take up the dining room table working from home too- oh the juggle!

Bernie, Lindy and Natalie hard at work in the library leveraging some early motions to clear the space for our beautiful new Pre-Kindy room! Action Stations!

We have been enjoying a lot of the craft activities and Kindergarten recipes in our house over the past few weeks. Eadie has enjoyed being able to have her favourite bread at home, thank you to the Kindergarten Teachers for sharing this recipe with us!

Kindest,

Bonnie Kelly

Kamaroi Registrar and Marketing

Jutta running Zoom from the PAFA room with Lisa for Kindergarten.

The light at the end of the remote learning period is aglow. (No pun intended!)

Whilst the full return to on-site learning is still many weeks away it is wonderful to know that the children will be back on site. Some news is better than none!

The results and feedback from the surveys that have been sent this week will be reviewed closely and we will refine what we do wherever reasonable based on the general consensus from your input.  This is particularly important given that remote learning is continuing until late in October.

I’ve been enjoying my daily walks of late and note especially the smell of the spring flowers! Our staff are working together to create a special Spring Festival celebration for the children in the last week of Term 3. In 2020 we held the Festival on the Meadow and even the teachers joined in with the maypole dancing!  Many of you would recall that families watched this on Zoom as they were not permitted on site. I marvel at the flexibility shown by the teachers as they look at creative ways to keep the joy of spring alive and I am sure this will again be special in 2021.  There is still so much in which to rejoice, and Kamaroi will do everything it can to share this with our community.

Much of the focus of my role in recent weeks has been on keeping up with communications from the Association of Independent Schools about what is unfolding for schools across NSW.  I keep our staff updated regularly to guide them in their work.  As mentioned in the correspondence that went to families last Saturday, neither parents nor teachers signed up for an education like the one we are currently experiencing. Once again in 2021 we have been flung into a learning mode that was unimaginable when we became teachers.  This has extended our teachers in unimaginable ways but they have risen to the challenge.  It has been handled so well by our families and again, I say thank you.  We are all being stretched and, amazingly, our children seem to just go with the flow.

In closing, I extend my warm wishes to the dads. Happy Fathers’ Day!

Warm wishes,

Barbara Maxfield

Principal