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
Term 2 is a Reporting Term for all Classes in the school. Kindergarten is offering Parent/Teacher interviews along with the delivery of the Kindergarten Mid-Year Progress Reports. I will be conducting these interviews on a Monday and Wednesday afternoon in Week 8. Please book your interview via our online booking service as soon as it becomes available (you will receive an email with a link). Sessional (Little Kindy) children do not receive school reports, however a progress interview can be arranged upon request.
The children are starting a new morning circle that tells the tale of “Snow White and Rose Red.” This circle takes the children into the mood of winter, which has made its dramatic appearance outside our windows and in the playground this week.
We were busy at work again this week with Annie, digging more holes in the hard, dry earth, planning lots of small native grasses near the Tea Tree Room. We are so proud of our regeneration efforts around the school. The children have become very organised hole diggers and confident planters, thanks to Annie. We have one more week gardening and planting with Annie before she takes a break for this term.
Thank you to everyone who helped and supported the Autumn Fair last Saturday.
Cheers for now.
Francine
Class 1/2
As I have been unwell this week, I send a big thank you to our class assistants and wonderful relief teachers Amy, Soumya and Jess who did an outstanding job continuing the planned learning activities and routines of Class 1/2. Thank you also to the children who worked together as our school family to be kind, inclusive and respectful towards each other.
We warmly welcome Lydia to our school, it’s lovely to have a new friend in Class 1.
We have begun our new mathematics-based Main Lesson “The Four Helpers.” This week the children have heard about the adventures of General Divide, King Counting and Queen Equals also made an appearance. The focus on division has given the children opportunities to practice the concepts of sharing fairly, even numbers and groups.
After a few wet weeks, Class 1/2 were fortunate to have a sunny Wednesday to venture into the bush for a walk. Playing, digging in the earth and exploring in our bush playground is a grand way to spend the afternoon with friends.
Class 1/2 continued the process of making lanterns for our Winter Festival. The spiral in Class 2’s painting imitates the walk the children will take on the Winter Solstice. If you have any lids from glass jars, please send them in to assist with our lantern making. Also, kindly keep the evening of Thursday 26 June available for one of our favourite school community celebrations.
Enjoy the weekend,
Kath and Class 1/2 Assistants
Class 3/4
Class 3/4 did an amazing job showcasing their talents at the Autumn Fair. The violin playing was an absolute highlight. The children also selected pages they were proud of from their Main Lesson books, and these were arranged all over their desks along with examples of their paintings, craft, pottery and beeswax models. It was satisfying to see the pride and delight they felt in this process and how alive the room felt displaying this bounty of the children’s work. Thank you to the parents for your help making the day wonderful.
It has been a great week to gather in close for stories, as the cold wind has whirled around outside the classroom. We heard the Blue Willow story, and the children loved drawing this and retelling it in their main lesson books. We then extended this by painting the story in watercolour. Their drawing, writing and painting work was truly beautiful.
We also heard about King Olaf building a church with the help of a troll, Marilka being thought of as lost and the panic in the village, and two farmers who wanted a wall built between them and ended up with a bridge instead. See if your children can retell you any – or all! – of these tales.
We have nearly finished our class novel Marsh and Me, two more chapters. We continue to read “short Waldorf stories and poems” as we eat our recess and lunch. These are full of interesting messages and morals, we are not always sure we get, and involve many tilted heads, but we enjoy them, nevertheless.
In gardening we discovered it was quite challenging to draw garlic! Annie described the cycle of watching and acting, and watching and acting in the garden, as “like a dance with nature”, which sounded so lovely we wrote the quote in our permaculture journals. To Meredith’s and my surprise, many tiny green caterpillars had “decided” to return to the classroom with the children and kept appearing covertly throughout the day.
The cold weather has come and lots of illnesses are starting to emerge. Please send your children with warm clothes and plenty of nourishing food.
Warm regards
Jeneva and Meredith
Class 5/6
Class 5/6 have, by all accounts, had a good week. I write this on my return on Thursday after being unwell this week. Thanks again to Jess and Sayoko who took the class in my absence. They completed beautiful artworks, worked on the BODMAS maths processes and written haikus.
We begin our new Main Lesson this week, Geometry, which sits snuggly and perfectly, between ancient Babylon and Egypt, the civilisations whom came up with many ideas that are essential to geometry today – through their ideas on how to measure time, architecture, and inventions – and our next Main Lesson: Ancient Greece. It’s also planted right when we will be working on our Winter lanterns which hold geometric mysteries and our emerging awakening to the stars in the cosmos and the spiralling in towards the Winter solstice.
I love how our curriculum embraces these elements and fits them where they need to be for a style of learning that begins to bring a whole picture of our world.
Thank you to everyone who attended and helped at our Autumn Harvest Fair. The children and Mare played beautifully on the day. Thank you for missing other events in order to attend, it is much appreciated. It was a very busy, full and lovely day. It takes a village as they say….
Have a lovely weekend,
Julie and Lee
