Grant gets Kindy class moving safely

Lindi Harding
St Augustine's School
76

As August 2021 rolled around, grant funding opening date was looming. Although St Augustines Primary had completed many activities up to August, we hadn't quite been on top of our story writing. The email came out that funding was about to open and luckily with a flurry of stories just before midnight we just scraped in enough points to tip us into the gold status before the grants went live at 8am. The excitement of waiting for the grants to go live was like waiting in a virtual line for a Rottnest booking or (in those times gone past) a ticket to a sell out concert. The champion's children were sent to school drop off with another family so that she could focus her energy on the prize.

With the what felt like the quickest fingers in WA, we were lucky enough to secure our maximum grant available to us, a Gold Connecting Schools Grant worth $2,500. We received a confirmation email from Carol-Ann at your move with a 'grant menu' advising what we were able to spend the grant on and also advising that we were one of only 28 schools who secured grant funding in this round.

With 7 different options on the menu it was a hard decision on how best to use the grant funding to increase active travel at our school. After discussion with the Principal and Assistant Principal it was decided that we would request an Early Childhood Education bundle with tricycles and road signs so that our Kindy and Pre-Primary class could benefit from learning road awareness in the safety of the school grounds while enjoying themselves on specialised equipment.

We had a zoom meeting with Carol-Ann who took us through all the ins and outs of the grant funding agreement. Carol-Ann was extremely helpful and even assisted us to tailor our package to include a balance bike. We completed the paperwork and Carol-Ann had our order on it's way.

When the order arrived the Kindy and Pre-primary class were extremely excited to have a go at the new equipment. The Kindy teacher set up a course around the upper basketball courts and off they went doing laps of the course. Some of the students were more confident starting out than others, but it didn't take long for the confidence to build.

We are so grateful to have such an amazing new teaching resource to build gross motor skills and road safety awareness all while having a blast moving around the school grounds.

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