During Week 3 the students demonstrated a genuine openness and a willingness to continue to build positive relationships with the staff and their fellow students. The development of the individual and an appreciation of the importance to live and work alongside one another are the keystones to this amazing experience.

The course that focuses on Self started this week and students explored the Six Dimensions of Self and how they are interrelated and make us who we are. Different periods of time have been investigated in the Place and Time course and students are starting to make connections with all the experiences that Clunes provides. This interconnectedness is so powerful for the students and the ability to transfer understandings, knowledge and skills from one learning domain to another is extremely important.

Last weekend was the first of two parent visiting weekends. The students were very excited and looking forward to seeing their families and sharing some of their Clunes stories and experiences. May I remind those parents who have their visiting weekend this weekend that students may be collected from 4.00pm Saturday and must be returned by 6.00pm Sunday. We ask that parents do not make requests to change these times as it does have a negative impact on Saturday’s program.

On Saturdays we run House Meetings and the students are also involved in a more rigorous cleaning of the house – a real team approach. This is a time for House Leaders to have meetings with individual students about their progress and address any issues that may have arisen.

This weekend the Wesley at Clunes campus celebrates its 10th Anniversary. As I have previously outlined in an email, all parents and families are invited to attend. The program starts at 11am in Collins Place (in the main street of Clunes) and includes guided tours of the campus, music from past and present Wesley @ Clunes students, kids tent and activities, market stalls, displays in the Town Hall and Weavery and many local community organizations will have food stalls. The formalities and speeches will be held at 2pm in the Collins Place rotunda.

We look forward to seeing many of you this weekend and hope that you enjoy the hospitality of Clunes and the region. If this is your chosen visiting weekend please ask your child take you to the places they have been and to let them demonstrate how much they have learnt about Clunes and the surrounding area.

On Thursday it was game on between Red cluster and Blue cluster. The first game went off to a great start with Red cluster taking the first game. The second game got off to a slow start with Red cluster playing these games on Monday and Blues cluster just getting used to these games! They won! The last game of the night was a spectacular game with continuous cricket and Blue taking out the points.
Also congratulations to Red for having the M.V.P of the night.

On Sunday everyone on campus comes to the Jube and watches a movie. Last Sunday we watched a movie called The Bean Movie. We also have a rule which is that the first house that gets to the Jube for morning meeting get bean bags and House Two won that privilege again. We would also like to thank the TIC (Teens In Clunes) groups for choosing this movie.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a sports program, all students choose to do a workout for the running to beckworth program or the fitness program. Depending which one you choose you will be allocated to stick with that program throughout Clunes. The fitness program includes over 20 people who work mostly on the body and core muscles in a toning and stretching manner. Fitness also includes swimming sessions although as it is only the third week we still ease into the more aerobic sessions later in the weeks. Even when it’s hot, and everyone can’t be bothered everyone still puts an effort in attempting to complete each workout because in the long run it will be good for them!

On Sunday the 14th of February we went on a 20km bike ride to Beckworth. We first went down to the bike shed and got our bikes that we had a test. We walked down to the petrol station and got our tires pumped up. We then rode back and put our bags on our backs and went up to the Hannah Street house where we were told about the road that we were going on and to stay as a group because we are all in this together. I was elected to be the second person in the line and that meant that I got to lead the group. We set off and we got down the road a bit and some people had tire punctures. We got there within the hour and then had about an hour break. Just as we were nearly there we saw a purple Wesley bus come past us and we thought that they were coming to save our lives. We got their finally after an hour and a half of hard work and had lunch. Then we started to ride back and I was chosen to lead again, second in line. We got back to the campus and we were all congratulated on all of our hard work and effort put into this ride. For all of our hard work and effort that we put into the bike ride we watched a movie for the movie night called Mr. Bean which was very funny. Congratulations to our House 2 for winning the bean bags two weeks in a row.

On Saturday night for Saturday Night Fever we had an 80’s disco which was heaps of fun. We got to put on our 80’s clothes and have a fantastic night of dancing. We first got there all said how much of a boring disco this would be but then there were some really good songs that came on and we all started to dance the night away. Then there were some people that taught everyone some moves to Michael Jackson, which was quite interesting and very funny to watch them dance to the song. There were some people that dressed up really 80’s and then there were some people that just wore what they usually would around at home to parties and did not have much 80’s stuff on. Overall I think that it was a really fun and enjoyable night and we should do a disco at the end of the term for our last Saturday Night Fever. At the end of the night there were awards given out for Female and Men’s best dressed, best dance moves and a couple of other random awards put in as well. Congratulations to all of the people who won awards for these things.

Environmental art was a very interesting experience. The first lesson we decorated rocks with mosaics. Some of the girls were decorating poles that were going to be placed around the campus for the 10 year celebration. The second week we went out to the bottom of Mt Beckworth and made art out of the environment. People were making piles of rocks, patterns out of sticks, decorating rocks with sap, collecting burnt sticks and making patterns. We had to make the art works temporary, so later the the wind would come and take them away.

On Monday Red and Green had cluster sports. Both teams started off well by a very quiet walk down. When we got there everyone sat down and made their chants. Both teams made a good chant, and it was very even through the whole night. We played continuous cricket first, where we had 4 bowlers in each corner and whoever got the ball would bowl it. Then we played the Frisbee game where we had to throw the Frisbee in the middle circle, and if we did we got 10 points and if we hit the chess piece then we scored 15 points. All in all everyone had a great time, everyone was enthusiastic, and it was a very successful night.

On Thursday the 18th of February, we all met at the Jubilee Hall where we talked about the teachers and what they have done in their lives, then one of the teachers read us a book called “Who Sank the Boat?” We were split into four separate classes; there were two boys’ classes and there were two girls’ classes. The class was all about us, as it is called Self class. In the class we talked about how we are managing with Clunes and the changes, what our percentages of our concentration is on, out of physical, emotional, spiritual, education, social and mental. Most of the guys in my class concentrated on their physical body more then anything else. We also talked about what has happened in out lives so far. Then after we had our lunch break we came back and were given A4 sized paper and we had to go through magazines and find pictures that represented our past and cut them out to stick them on to the paper.

On Tuesday the 16th of February I had a class called Prehistory. Prehistory is about how the universe was created with the start of the big bang that put all of the stars and planets in the spot that they are in at the moment. We watched a couple of movies about the Moon, Earth and our sun and our teacher gave us a sheet of paper to answer about 10 questions about what we have learnt. After we watched the movies we were broken up into three groups that had 2 researchers, two artists and one editor. The researchers researched the Quaternary Period to find out what were the dominant animals and the dominant plants of the time period. The artists had to make a labelled diagram of the inside of the earth including the crust and all of the layers. The editor had to get all of the researcher’s information and put it onto the paper and present it to the class.