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!
Preschool
Wattle Room
“A sprinkle of sunshine, a sprinkle of snow, a sprinkle of flour for our sticky dough”. It’s bread week! We have had the pleasure of being able to knead, roll and stretch our dough together, and add some tasty additions to our bread, including rosemary, dried apricots and dates. Rhiannon has shared a lovely new dough recipe with us – so we are no longer having so much ‘sticky’ dough! The children have been enjoying the smell of freshly baking bread as they play – what a treat!
It has been a bit of a soggy week, and Wednesday brought with it the first bit of sunshine we have seen in a while.
The children have been little rays of sunshine themselves, being warm and welcoming to all the new friends joining us at Preschool. It’s so touching to see them taking new friends by the hand and showing them around, smiling and sharing with them.
The Preschool Autumn Festival will be on Thursday 10 April from 2-4pm. Please come along and join us with some songs, autumn activities and something warming to eat for afternoon tea.
Boronia Room
The children have been highly engaging with their imagination, and it’s a delight to witness. The children were adding their own scrawling “writing” on the parent sign in sheets, and I thought it would be a nice idea to get some clipboards out for them. The children quickly took the boards into their play and suddenly a pop-up hospital sprung up on the verandah. The children were making patient notes as they asked their patients lots of questions and patched them up. There were lots of broken legs and sore fingers that needed make-believe bandages. This is such a good example of how children take in their world and make meaning of their experiences through self-directed role play.
Just a reminder that the Preschool Autumn Festival will be on Thursday 10 April from 2-4pm. Please come along and join us with some songs, autumn activities and something warming to eat for afternoon tea.
Lesley and the Preschool team
Kindergarten/Boronia Room
Thank you everyone for a fabulous First Term together. The children are amazing, absolutely beautiful and fun. We can hardly wait to share our Autumn Harvest work with all our families and friends next Wednesday 9 April. Please come to school at the later time of 10am with a plate of yummy Autumn food to share for morning tea.
We are building our Harvest Scarecrow this week in time to stand proudly in the garden as part of our Autumn Harvest celebrations.
When you come next Wednesday ask your child to show you our regeneration planting above the library area. We have now successfully planted about 24 native plants over the last weeks. I am so proud of the contribution these little active and loving hands have been able to make to our school environment. Many thanks go out to Annie who has guided these young people in the art of growing, planting and caring for the land and our world.
Wishing everyone happy and joyous holidays.
Francine
Class 1/2
Our Monday gardening lesson with Annie was very productive. The children worked in groups to remove the pumpkin and cucumber plants from last season to make way for new crops. One child observed they had made a ‘weed castle’ (not a sandcastle haha) and the chickens had a big feed. Some keen eyes found an Eastern Long Neck Turtle in the vegie patch, special thanks to Meredith, Harper and Henry for organising a rescue and release!
Class 1/2 are enjoying their weekly visit to the school library. Sharing a beanbag with a buddy, reading with a friend or enjoying a book with a grown up is such a pleasure and a fun way to build on our growing literacy skills.
What a treat to see Sayoko this week. Sayoko always has fun games and stories to share during Japanese language lessons. The children were full of stories about the Emperor and Empress and so proud of the origami dolls they made.
It’s been lovely to catch up with so many parents this week in our Parent/Teacher meetings. For those who couldn’t make it, please drop by to make an alternative time. I always welcome the opportunity to discuss children’s growth and development.
Enjoy the weekend and looking forward to Trivia Night!
Enjoy a restful break and see you all for Term Two adventures!
Warmly,
Kath and Class 1/2 Assistants
Class 3/4
Class 3/4 had a wonderful excursion to the lake on Tuesday. It was perfect weather and autumn colour made things glow.
We played on the equipment and set a great example of BMSS community behaviour, sharing the playground with babies, toddlers and preschoolers.
We took along our novels and read under trees, on park benches or with friends stretched out on blankets, like we were all very grown up and sophisticated. We sketched ducks and trees and clouds and each other. There is something deeply satisfying about holding a clipboard, a fact noticed in every child!
We also played along the shore, balancing on logs, on what the children called “team duck” or the “duck’s life” and I heard someone say, “this is the life for us”. Which I thought yes, yes, it is. This is the life for us all.
We returned to school by lunchtime with only the grownups really tired, and a few giddy green ones, regretting spending so much time on the merry-go-round. A life lesson I tried to warn them about, but they had to experience for themselves, it seems.
Back at school, cubbies have been big, handball is on trend, and origami seems to have petered out for now. We are having ten-minute sessions of “vanishing” from the room to play outside in nature and then return back to work, which we are calling “vanishing time” because it adds excitement and imagination to transitioning really quickly and quietly without disturbing the other classes. And saying ok “lets vanish” never seems to get old.
Fortunately, the children seem settled and happy, even though we have one foot in the holidays, by now. You never want to clock into holiday mode too soon at school. You want it to sneak up on you like a lovely surprise.
Thank you for everyone making the huge effort to attend parent/teacher interviews. It has been lovely speaking to the grownups for a change.
Wishing you a lovely holiday break.
Kind regards
Jeneva and Meredith
Class 5/6
Somehow this term has just been in the blink of an eye, but gosh, we’ve squeezed a lot in!
Class 5 worked hard fitting in class work, NAPLAN tests and rehearsals for the St Michael play. We have worked through three Main Lessons: Ancient India and Persia, Fractions, Decimals and Percentages and Botany. On top of this we’ve dabbled in geometry, painting, perspective drawing, as well as all the regular activities, such as Italian, Dharug, PE, and music with Mare and maths with Minh.
The class have been sewing elephants for Ancient India Main Lesson, carving wooden desk plaques, embroidery (if they started it last year) and they will be coming home with some Easter craft.
In Morning Circles we have been singing, working on our fine and gross motor skills with copper rods and reciting poetry.
We feel very proud of how the class have progressed this term. Their writing skills have taken varied and winding twists and turns and in Maths, they have become fast mental calculators. For part of the Botany Main Lesson, the class chose a tree in our bush playground to study and draw over the period of about 1 ½ weeks. Their skills in visual perception have grown as a result!
I have given the class an assignment to do at home. The due date is the second Friday of Term 2 (9/5/25). They then have the choice to start it (and /or complete during the holidays) or when they return to school.
Thank you to everyone who attended the parent/teacher meetings. If you didn’t book in, but would still like to meet, please contact me and we can make a time for early next term.
Wishing you all a happy, safe and adventurous Autumn holiday.
Warmly,
Julie and Lee
