Welcome to Monday! We’re beginning on a serious note this week, with National Child Protection Week and some free resources we think are genuinely worth adding to your toolkit.
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| From there, things become considerably lighter. We meet two brothers who turned childhood filmmaking into a career and now have millions of followers watching their work. There’s also a phizz-whizzing excuse to celebrate Roald Dahl, plus a Fun Finish involving buried undies, nose blowing and, regrettably, cockroach milk. |
| Here’s what’s happening this week… |
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Child Protection Week: Beyond the Mandatory Training
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The theme of this year’s National Child Protection Week is “Every Conversation Matters: Shifting Conversation to Action.”
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| It’s a frank and serious place to begin this week’s newsletter, but helping children feel safe, heard and able to speak to a trusted adult is one of the most important responsibilities teachers hold. |
| We know you already undertake mandatory child-protection training and know your school’s policies and reporting procedures, we’re not here to add another training module to the pile. Instead, we’ve found some free resources from the Daniel Morcombe Foundation that might be worth adding to your toolkit. |
| The Foundation’s 2025 Australia’s Biggest Child Safety Lesson resources focus on the complicated spaces kids move through online: |
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| Australia’s Biggest Child Safety Lesson 2025 Lower Primary |
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- The Upper Primary Educator Toolkit, for kids aged 10–12, looks at AI chatbots and how they can enter the spaces where children might spend time online.
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| Australia’s Biggest Child Safety Lesson 2025 Upper Primary |
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| Both resources include short, age-appropriate video lessons and discussion prompts, practical activities and Australian Curriculum v9 links. |
| You’ll find the Foundation’s full collection of materials on the Australia’s Biggest Child Safety Lesson page. |
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From the Sock Dimension to a Million Subscribers – Coming on Tuesday
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| What if all those missing socks haven’t disappeared at all… but have been sucked through the washing machine into another dimension? |
| That was the idea behind The Sock Dimension, the short film brothers Lachlan and Austin Macfarlane entered into Trop Jr (the junior arm of Tropfest, Australia’s famous short-film festival), back in 2018. Austin was just 14 when the film was named runner-up, and that success helped the brothers realise that filmmaking could be much more than a hobby. |
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| Fast-forward eight years and the Macfarlane Bros now have one million YouTube subscribers and around two million followers across their social platforms. They’ve studied film, worked in the industry and built a full-time career creating fun, effects-filled videos. |
| In our new Squiz Kids Spotlight, Bryce chats with the brothers about where their ideas come from, what it really takes to create videos week after week and why kids don’t need expensive equipment to begin making films. |
| Find it in your podcast feed on Tuesday! |
| Entries for this year’s Trop Jr close on 18 September, so there’s still time for your budding filmmakers to grab a phone or tablet, gather some willing actors and see where their imaginations take them. |
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A Phizz-Whizzing Roald Dahl Day
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| Clear a little room in your timetable for some gobblefunking, whizzpopping and possibly a scrumdiddlyumptious chocolate bar… or two. |
| Sunday 13 September is Roald Dahl Day, marking the birthday of the author who gave us Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach and a truly revolting collection of grown-ups. |
| We’ll be pulling our Roald Dahl Shortcut out of the Vault on Sunday, but if you’d like to use it in class during the week, you can listen to it here. |
| And because we love this one so much, you’ll also find two classroom activities on the episode page. Students can listen to a descriptive passage before creating a character of their own, or concoct a recipe for their very own Marvellous Medicine. |
| That should keep the classroom bubbling nicely. |
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Fun Finish: And the Ig Nobel Goes To…
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| The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes have been handed out, once again honouring scientific achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. |
| Among this year’s winners were researchers who recruited 1,000 citizen scientists to bury cotton underpants in more than 25 countries to test soil health. Apparently, the quicker your undies decompose, the healthier your soil. |
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| Other prizes recognised scientists who studied the aerodynamics of blowing your nose, designed a splash-free urinal inspired partly by the angle used by dogs, and identified that the upper class are more likely to steal candy from babies. |
| Then there was the research into cockroach milk, which found it contains more than three times the energy of an equivalent amount of dairy milk. But maybe don’t expect it beside the oat and almond options at your local café anytime soon. |
| Ridiculous? Absolutely. But each study involved a genuine scientific question, which is exactly the point of the Ig Nobels: serious thinking can begin in some wonderfully silly places. |
| You can browse some of the funniest winners in the ABC’s wrap-up or see the complete 2026 list. |
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Know a teacher who’d love this? Pass it on.
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| We love hearing from you! Reply to this email with any feedback, suggestions, or funny teaching stories, or hit us up at [email protected]. |
| And that’s it from us this week. |
| May your classroom conversations be meaningful, your young filmmakers wildly imaginative, and your milk remain totally cockroach-free. |
Have a most excellent week!
Over and out. |
| – Christie Kijurina, Squiz Kids Educator |
