Smiles across Hunter as students head back to school

This didn't stop her from becoming a "social little butterfly" in the weeks before Premier Gladys Berejiklian asked families to keep children home if they could, due to COVID-19.

Everly spent more than a month learning remotely, but didn't appear fazed returning to the fold on Monday.

"She's loved it from day one," her mum Lisa Wilson said.

"She's very excited to see her friends, but knows not all of her friends will be here.

"I think she'll learn a lot better here in this environment.

"She's quite social, likes to be surrounded by people and has a lot of respect for her teacher."

Big brother George is in year two and will return on Thursday. He's relished working through tasks at his own pace.

"I get in pretty early and then have the rest of the day to do fun stuff," he said.

George is looking forward to playing handball and trying the school's new outdoor chessboard.

Principal Colin Johnson said 100 of the school's 260 students attended on Monday, for a "really positive" first day of the staggered return to schools.

Of the 100, 70 children were scheduled to attend under the school's plan, while 30 had no alternative care arrangements.

He said the plan ensured students were with their regular teachers. It involved splitting nine of the 11 classes and each half attending on different days.

One of the school's two year five/six composite classes attended on Monday in a double sized classroom. The other will attend on Tuesday.

He said there would be no more than 12 children in one room.

"We'll only have one student at each desk and those desks we've ensured are a good 1.5 metres from each other," he said.

"We know there will be moments when they're out playing handball where they're closer than the 1.5 metres for a few seconds, those sorts of things, but we have a number of staff on supervision and we've talked through how that looks and what we'll do.

"Our kids are incredibly in tune, they've known what's happened in the community and they've brought that even to school this morning. We noticed straight away they're social distancing naturally."

He said there was ample hand sanitiser and teachers would revise "hygiene protocols" and explain increased cleaning of "high traffic areas".

He said teachers would set aside time in class for students to catch up before they start work.

"We know there will be some kids who roll through this and it won't make any difference to them... others maybe there's a bit more anxiousness and concern about what's happening and you want those kids to have a platform by which they're allowed to speak."

Julie Olischlager and her husband decided on Sunday to send daughter Sophia in on Monday while they work, as well as her scheduled Thursday.

Sophia said remote learning was "sometimes hard and sometimes okay".

"I'm feeling pretty excited to see my friends and the teachers," she said. "I feel much more relieved I can see them and not as stressed."

Mrs Wilson said she was sad her children were once again flying the coop.

"We had a great time doing a lot of fun things together. I had thought both my babies have gone [to school] full time, I never knew we'd get this time back all together.

"We created lots of good memories."

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