Seeing as ANZAC day falls in the holidays and school is away next week on camp, we decided to commemorate ANZAC day today. The children worked in groups to make remembrance posters and then we raised the flag at the community hall.

With Easter fast approaching we saw that Mitre 10 Mega was running an Easy As Kids workshop to make wooden Easter Bunnies and thought we'd ask them if we could have some kits for a craft activity here at school. We got so much more than we asked for though as Mitre10 Nelson Helping Hands brought the workshop to us.

The kids had a great time building and decorating their bunnies under the guidance of Murray from Mitre10 Nelson Helping Hands and the under the watchful eye of the Easter Bunny.

Thank you Murray and Mitre 10 Mega Nelson Helping Hands! It was a fantastic workshop and the kids had an absolute blast.

April Fool's pranks were in full swing today at school as we had to make sure we topped last year's Easter Egg hunt and boy, did we get the kids good. We started relatively tame....the seniors got to school to find their passwords on their chromebooks had changed and when they finally managed to login, the screens were all rotated sideways! The juniors were all looking forward to making decorated brownies for their maths lesson today, only to find out they were making decorated 'brown-Es'

But we didn't stop there, our main prank for the day started at morning tea when we set the school on fire! ​

Well, we actually turned on a smoke machine but the children didn't know that. Once spotted the children did very well and followed procedure, one child coming to tell the staff, another blasting the fire horn and then they all turned up at the evacuation point...well, all children except one. Where was the one child? A sweep of the buildings and grounds still didn't turn up the child and with the village siren going, we left the searching for the firecrew.

The fire trucks arrived with lights and sirens going. The firecrew (including Mike) in all their turnout gear commenced the search for the missing child and ran out the hoses to put out the 'fire'. The kids now convinced it was totally real even imagining seeing sparks and smelling real smoke watched and waited and wondered where the missing child was. Turns out she was hiding in the back of the fire truck. Mike had taken her with him on the way to the fire call out, a prank on the rest of us and to see what we would do.

Laughs of relief abounded when the truth of the smoke machine came out and the kids vowed to get revenge...what a pity April Fools is on a Saturday next year.

Of course such an elaborate prank couldn't be done without some external involvement, so thank you to the St Arnaud Fire & Emergency team for supporting our plan for a kid driven fire drill, supplying the smoke machine, making sure the Operations Center knew they would be holding a callout practice which included setting off the sirens and producing fake smoke.