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
Every day is a special day in the Kindergarten. The children are beginning to relax and let go and I am enjoying getting to know them all too.
This week the children have been drawing, sewing and finger knitting. We continue to jump imaginary waves, dig sand castles, and catch fish, in our “Down to the Sea” morning circle. At story time the children listened to a story based on an Aboriginal dreaming legend, “How the Kangaroo Got its Pouch”. Lots of beautiful beeswax figures and animals emerged during our beeswax modelling in response to the story.
Please think about attending our Parent/Teacher Night on Wednesday 1st March at 7 pm. It’s a wonderful opportunity to learn about your child’s day at Kindergarten, meet and connect with other parents in the group, and ask questions about the Steiner approach to your child’s education. RSVP to Karen in the office.
Food and rest for your little Kindy workers on the weekend. They need their sleep and rest.
Cheers,
Francine, Freya, and Zenith
Class 1/2
Week three is nearly over and all children in Class 2 have now finished their pencil cases. It was lovely to see their proud faces upon handing over the filled pencil case and to hear their friends clapping and genuinely be excited for them. The Class 1 children have received all their crayons now and are able to draw and write in rainbow order.
We have finished our first Main Lesson and are on to our second Main Lesson – Fairy Tales for Class 1 and Fables for Class 2. During Main Lesson we split the class so we can focus on the specific year group needs.
All the children are learning the songs, verses, and movement sequences well for Morning Circle and it is coming together nicely. Both Class 1 and 2 children now share their news during morning fruit break and we are practicing listening quietly to our friends. We baked bread, worked our beeswax into spirals just like in our main lesson story and even though we have finished our form drawing main lesson we are still continuing with form drawings.
We are using the bricks outside our classroom to walk the letters we are learning and to draw them ourselves. Writing and shaping letters can be tricky – there is so much to remember: the shape, size, getting the order right of where to start, stop and finish. Writing on the golden pathway certainly tested some children’s patience and resilience but the more we practice the easier it will get.
Class 2 has been working on constructing sentences with a focus on correct punctuation.
More and more friendships are forming across Class 1/2 which can be seen in the children playing together but also mingling and mixing now at snack, recess, and lunchtime.
We wish everyone a nice weekend – stay cool – and look forward to seeing you at our parent information night next week!
Isabelle and Amy
Class 3/4
We are having such a great time on camp that we don’t have time to write much, but here are some pictures and a video of a conga line in the river!
Thanks to Lindsey, Paul, Martin and Karen for all the help!
Julie and Meredith
Class 5/6
This week we have been enjoying various artistic activities as we hear stories from Ancient China. All the chaos from Pan Gu’s egg is beautifully illustrated by the yin and yang Tao symbol, and as a class we spoke about the interrelatedness of all the states of the world and life upon it.
This artwork will be the cover art for our Main Lesson books. The students then created clay relief sculptures of China’s geography, with hands-on being a perfect medium to really understand the landscape and its challenges. They also identified key points within a source document about this geography and engaged in the process of writing it in their own words, then self- and peer-editing before practicing their cursive handwriting to write it into their Main Lesson ‘textbooks’ created for each new study block.
In our daily Maths Practice lessons, we tried a beautiful (and complicated!) knotwork form drawing whilst hearing the story of the sacrifice of St Valentine – it was a challenge but the brain gymnastics honing spatial and symmetry skills were worth it!
We also continued our review of the four operations with addition and subtraction, using word problems to devise our own algorithms and predicting our answers with estimation. Next week we will look at multiplication. Each student will attend a quiz to help them set their goals for learning the rest of their multiplication tables.
NAPLAN for Class 5 is now being held 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.
Below are some dates for your diary please:
- Tue 21 February: Parent/Teacher Information Evening 7-8pm in the Class 5/6 room.
- Mon/Tue 27-28 February: Class 5/6 overnight camp at Yarramundi
- Mon 13 March: Swimming Fun Day
- Wed 15 to Fri 17 March: Class 5 NAPLAN dates (more information to follow)
- Tue 21 March: 5.30pm St Michael Play, families welcome
- Tue 28 and Thu 30 March: Parent/Teacher Interviews (information for booking with Karen will follow)
Enjoy your weekend,
Steph and Lee