There is nothing in particular that I like about Alice Springs, I don’t feel the same comfortable friendly footloose and fancy free here.
We really enjoyed our visit to the School of the Air, the video presentation and talk by the staff was very interesting, the diversity of what the children do is amazing, some live on Cattle stations, police stations, missions and national parks. They sit the same national testing in May (NAPLAN) and have rated as well as the top 10% of the rest of the country. Each fortnight the mail plane takes out their bookwork (about a ream of paper worth for each child each fortnight), there are also maths packs, art/craft packs and science packs. The bookwork is all marked by their teacher which takes about a week for each class.
Grade 6 at TMPS would be interested to know that the 5/6 children go to Canberra on camp and they had scientists from Questacon at the studio in Alice Springs earlier in the year giving science demonstrations to the children via their einernet classroom.
It was Friday 10 am assembly and today was Crazy Hair day to raise money for Canteen, all of the children had sent in their crazy hair photos as well as some of their tutors; in the studio the bald principal had concertina streamers stickered to his head, while the other teachers sported some fabulous “dos” (plenty of inspiration for future reference, pipe cleaners and pegs being my personal favourites). There were two teachers setting up in the studio before the assembly and they reminded me of Karen & Sandra (librarian and special needs teachers and the resident entertainment at SPAN) who would be in full scale book week preparation right now, how are those Sleepy Bears?
Karen and Sandra from the School of the Air
We then went on to find the Royal Flying Doctor Service visitor centre, another place of interest in Alice Springs worth the admission charge as the funds go directly to the service. The service they provide is amazing and at no cost if you are an Australian citizen, are from a country with reciprocal health care systems or your travel insurance will cover it (no travel insurance will add about $34,000 to your holiday expenses).
Matilda and Sarah take a turn in the pilot's seat
Matilda checks out how an RFDS plane is fitted out