Class News: Week 2, Term 1 2023
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
Welcome to the second week of Kindergarten. The children are very beautiful and we are getting to know each other as the children are beginning to relax into their day at school. If your Kindergarten child is coming home exhausted, remember they are working hard at school, running in the playground, digging in the sand pit, negotiating, sharing and playing. Getting to bed early and enjoying a good night’s sleep is important for your little one.
This week the children have been working together in Morning Circle. This circle will continue for three weeks, so there is lots of opportunity to become familiar with the verses, songs and movements that make up the circle. This first circle is called “Down to the Sea” in keeping with our Summer themes for the first 4 weeks of this term.
Storytime was a retelling of “The Owl and the Pussy Cat”, a fun nonsense verse by Eward Lear. During beeswax the children modelled different images of boats, cats, picnic baskets and other images stimulated by the story.
There will be a Parent/Teacher Night in Week 5 on Wednesday 1st March at 7pm in the Kindergarten Classroom. Please RSVP to Karen in the office and let her know of your attendance at the meeting.
Warm regards,
Francine, Freya and Zenith
Class 1/2
Welcome to Week 2, it has been a busy and colourful week so far.
This week the Class 1 children were excited to explore the whole play area, with many finding the swing, monkey bars and basketball ball courts to be lots of fun!
It has been wonderful to see both year groups settling in and forging new friendships both inside the classroom and the playground.
The children have had busy fingers, making pencil and recorder cases, showing great willpower and craftsmanship.
Our Main Lesson on Form Drawing has brought the children into their bodies as they explore the basic forms of the alphabet. Finger and hand coordination is developing as we work on straight and curved lines.
We managed to squeeze in a bush walk to the mini-oval, just before the rain returned on Thursday afternoon. The children flourished as they climbed, jumped, dug in the dirt, and built forts.
Can we please send a reminder to pack your child a change of clothes, a drink bottle, and a raincoat every day as the weather has been quite unpredictable.
We look forward to another vibrant week with you all.
Amy and Isabelle
Class 3/4
A super great week has flown by. We’ve hit the ground running…! The class feels really settled already, and we’re working out our routine around specialist activities like violin and recorder. We’re finding a groove that hopefully will feel smoother soon.
Our Main Lesson stories have taken us: up trees to place feathers, which allow young children to see beyond their immediate surroundings and to hold a healthy curiosity within themselves for all of their lives. We’ve heard how whales, seals and walruses came into being, how maize became such a treasured, reliable and revered crop for the First Nations peoples of North America, and how the healing waters healed a plague.
Our practice lessons have involved learning and collecting palindromes, defining and writing sentences, which are specifically questions or statements (next week we’ll work on commands and exclamations!). We have practiced partitioning in maths, and we’re learning how to have flexible approaches to our maths.
Our Morning Circles have been rhythmic with ‘baby llamas and mammas’ as well as gum boot dancing steps. We’re practicing rolling our ‘r’s and reciting our times tables.
The bread dough made by 3 students was of great consistency and our smoothie stall today, should be terrific. As should our first Netball session!
Looking forward to Monday when we practice setting up tents (a subtle reminder for students who said they have tents, to bring them in!).
Also Thursday is our camp and guess what..?! We’ll have Wiradjuri woman, Jo Clancy from Wagana Dance, joining us to teach us some special dance moves out in the bush!
Can’t wait! Don’t forget to swap readers.
Have a great weekend,
Julie and Meredith
Class 5/6
This week we began our Ancient China Main Lesson by hearing the creation story of the giant Pan Gu. Inside a great void there was an egg full of chaos: night and day, hot and cold, passive and aggressive, happy and sad, deluge and drought. Pan Gu burst forth from this, and the opposites separated. Pan Gu held up the sky as everything grew, and when he died his body formed the world (according to this myth, we are descended from his fleas and lice!).
The fertile plains of China, fed by the two rivers, was cradled by great mountains, desert and oceans. Being so isolated, China developed in its own way over many thousands of years.
This imaginative geography-approach to the study of ancient lands helps to draw the student in wonder, and we are now crafting our first structured narrative of the year, recounting this story with great enthusiasm! The students have also been drawing an amazing Chinese dragon, which always has four legs and long claws – did you know that they control the weather? We must let the BOM know J
In our daily Maths Practice Lessons, we began to review the four operations starting with addition and subtraction, and also practice from our Maths Mentals books, which cover content from all the strands for review and development.
NAPLAN for Class 5 is now in Term 1 and will be upon us before we know it. We will be doing practice in class (both online and on paper). If you wish to withdraw your child from the online testing, or believe your child will require additional support, please let me know ASAP as there is a form to fill in.
The class began their PDHPE sessions with Lindsey on Monday morning, with a beginning unit of basketball which was very well received, and they are steadily getting into class routines generally – it’s going to be a great year!
Please be sure to come to the Parent/Teacher Info Evening Tuesday 21st February – your chance to ask questions, hear the year’s plans, experience a class activity and, of course, be part of forming a supportive class community around each child. See you there!
Below are some dates for your diary please:
- Tuesday 21 February Parent/ Teacher Information Evening 7-8pm in the Class 5/6 room
- Monday/ Tuesday 27-28 February overnight Class 5/6 camp at Yarramundi
- Monday 13 March Swimming Fun Day
- Wednesday 15 to Friday 17 March Class 5 NAPLAN dates (more information to follow)
- Tuesday 21 March 5.30pm St Michael Play
- Tuesday 28 and Thursday 30 March Parent/Teacher Interviews (information for booking with Karen will follow)
Have a great weekend!
Steph and Lee