Keep up-to-date with your child’s learning with these short weekly updates from their teachers. Click on the buttons below to go straight to your child’s class, or find out what others are up to!
Kindergarten/Boronia Room
King Winter arrived this week not only outside and around us, but inside our room too. He now has a special place in the middle of our big table, and he is also featuring on our new Morning Circle work.
It’s great to see that the children have been coming to school warmly dressed and well equipped for withstanding the blustery winds and the cold breath of King Winter. However, inside the classroom, the floor can be cold under foot. I recommend a flexible pair of indoor slippers for the children’s feet, that can be left at school, for the coming weeks and months ahead.
On Monday the children did a painting with three colours, that will be shaped into a Winter Lantern for the upcoming Kindergarten Winter Lantern Walk and Spiral on Friday 16th June at 5.30pm. A note outlining details for this event will be coming your way soon.
We welcome Alannah Howard to our classroom and school. She is working as a classroom Assistant in the Kindergarten on Monday and Wednesday. Alannah enjoyed a Steiner Education through her Primary School years.
Have a cosy and relaxing weekend.
Francine, Zenith and Alannah
Class 1/2
Last Thursday we were lucky enough to have Chris Tobin present a cultural immersion workshop to the class. We had fun learning some Darug language, seeing some traditional tools and dancing with Chris.
The Autumn Fair was great fun on Saturday – thank you to all the parents who helped make it a success! Class 1/2 did so well performing their Morning Circle in front of a big audience!
We’ve started copper rods this week in Morning Circle. They are another great way to practice balance, finger movement and left- and right-side integration of the brain. Plus – they’re lots of fun!
We also heard a story about King Winter waking up and starting to blow his cold wind over the land. It was a good time to talk about the start of winter, how it will get colder, the days shorter and we will start to go inwards, as signified by the spiral.
On that note, a reminder that the Winter Spiral will be on Tuesday, 20th June. We will need some parent helpers after school to help set up the foliage for the Spiral – if you can help, please email us.
Please ensure your child has enough layers, socks and appropriate shoes for school now that it’s getting colder.
Warm wishes,
Soumya and Amy
Class 3/4
We had a great day at FUTSAL last Friday!
All teams played really, really well. It was super exciting! Our class worked really well with their teammates. They played with great skills and kind competition. The girls’ team got into the finals and played a great game. They didn’t win the finals, but they easily could have! The school shirts looked really good. The bright colours were a standout on the courts. Thank you to the parents who rocked up on the day to watch and support. It was lovely.
Also, thank you to everyone who was able to turn up to the Harvest Fair. It was a really nice day. Our classroom with all the houses built by 3/4 looked amazing! All the classrooms looked great. It was great day all round.
This week I haven’t been in class very much. The staff had a ‘College of the Teachers’ Professional development day, working with Renee Gare on Restorative Practices. It was such an enriching day. This was a continuation on work we have been doing. I was also absent on Thursday and Friday and would like to thank Kath Turner and Jess McCann for taking the class.
We began our new Main Lesson: The Twilight of the Gods. This is a short unit which continues on with some of the Norse Stories. They are strong stories of deconstruction, reconstruction and hope.
We will be working on sanding, decorating and sealing Norse-style swords and shields which have been skilfully made by Justin, Xavier’s Dad (24 wooden swords and 24 wooden shields!). I feel incredibly grateful to be able to ask our community to help support our children’s learning. Thank you!
Cross Country coming up next Thursday, 8 June.
Have a great weekend,
Julie and Meredith
Class 5/6
It was so wonderful for each student to select and display the work of which they were most proud for our Harvest Fair Open Classroom last weekend! The students able to attend did a wonderful job of sharing elements of our Morning Circle. We hope all our class families enjoyed their day!
In our Geology Main Lesson this week we have been looking at the processes of weathering, erosion and deposition. It was so interesting to consider that 400 million years ago, there was nothing but ocean reaching all the way west from our current beaches to the top of the Great Dividing Range! Lee kindly brought in some basalt and other rock samples she and Bruce collected from the Yarramundi River, where fragments collected after the basalt layer broke up over time and gravity and the elements did their thing!
Yesterday, Sayoko brought some beautiful stories around the movement of tectonic plates and resulting volcanic activity under the ocean which caused the 2011 tsunami in Japan, and the changes to the Earth’s surface there including the survival of a lone pine tree. From this tree, a violin was made and played by exceptional musicians as the country began to heal.
During our English Practice Lessons this week we have begun drafting our entries for the NSW Government’s ‘Write On!’ competition. We have been listing our daily encounters with new, rich words to use in our creative writing, and reviewing the ‘best of’ entries from last year to look at pieces produced by other Stage 3 students that were held in high regard and asking, ‘What makes this an engaging piece of writing?’.
As part of our current ‘Word Spy’ unit, we are looking at literacy techniques such as story questions, onomatopoeia, portmanteau, and creative use of capital letters and punctuation within the text to ‘paint a picture with letters’. This also allows us a great opportunity to hone our editing skills and analyse our work.
This week the class has also consolidated our current fractions learning through games, painting the paper for our Winter Spiral lanterns, drawn some beautiful Autumn ginkgo and liquid amber leaves in exquisite detail, and run the first full practice of the Cross Country.
A reminder to please let me know if your child needs support in finding information for their birth-stone projects – a trip to the library this weekend could be an excellent activity!
DIARY DATES
Term 2:
Thursday 8 June Cross Country: 9am (parents welcome to cheer or even compete!)
Tuesday 20 June Winter Spiral Festival 5.15pm
Steph and Lee
steph@bluemountainssteiner.nsw.edu.au