Kindergarten/Boronia Room

This week we were welcomed with lots of sunshine – warming us up as we slowly approach Spring. 

The children were enjoying the beautiful weather and all the new Winter flowers that have blossomed in the recent days. They have been having lots of fun playing outside, mining for crystals in the sandpit and enjoying climbing the trees at the mini oval. 

They have also been very diligent in our morning circles as they learn to sound vowels and letters and in learning to write their names. It’s good to see steady progress being made. 

Wednesday was a special day for the Children as they celebrated the Japanese Star Festival ‘Tanabata’, where once a year the meeting of two stars in the Milky Way are commemorated. In this tradition wishes are written on small pieces of paper and hung up on the branches of a bamboo tree. Sayoko instructed the children to illustrate their wishes on paper that were then cut into stars and hung up on the school’s communal bamboo tree (the tree can be found between classes 1/2 and 3/4). They look wonderful and it was lovely to see the children around the tree and sending out a prayer for their futures. 

I encourage any families to go and visit the tree and add to the multitude of wishes that can be found there. 

Have a lovely weekend everybody.

We are looking forward to seeing you all next week. 

Francine and Maya

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Class 1/2

I’m very proud of our class…..Meredith and I have been off work for three days this week and the class have been held by their teachers (Amy and Rebecca) , the school, as well as by that daily rhythm that has become more familiar to them. The children kind of ‘hold’ themselves within the routines of each day. These are such a strengthening and secure qualities to have inside us. 

The class have been continuing with the, ‘Now and Then, Then and Now’ Main Lesson. We have travelled to the inland Paroo River in Northwest NSW, where tool trading used to happen (a special place that I once visited), we have looked at the ingenuity of fish and eel traps, the building of shelters and the respect for big old wise barramundis, like, ‘Uncle Silver’

Having feelings for place, such as the textures, smells and images that emerge when storytelling, allow the listener to feel more into the story. Teacher: What do you remember from the story? Student: ‘The bit of fleece that got caught on the splintered wood of the shearing shed’, ‘The boomerang found at the bottom of the river, still perfectly preserved, the bones on the kitchen middens…” My hope is that the children get a feeling for the country on which we live, through their own experiences and through the stories told in class. Ask your child what kind of country we live within in the Blue Mountains….

Have a lovely weekend, 

Julie and Meredith 

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Class 3/4

It’s been so wonderful to be back in class 3/4 this week! Isabelle has provided us some excellent and fun activities to continue the Main Lesson “Volume and Mass” – the children have been weighing items on various scales to see if they weigh more than, less than or about 1kg. They also filled containers with water or sand to work out their capacity in cups. Also thinking about weight and how to balance a scale – how much more do we need to balance them?

The class loved making playdough – carefully measuring the ingredients in measuring cups and spoons. They also loved playing with it! We then gifted half the dough to the preschool and kindergarten, hopefully they enjoy it as much as our class have.

We’ve been working on using interesting sentence openers and adverbs to add description to a piece of writing. A busy and productive week!

Thank you to all the children and parents for welcoming me back to be with the class whilst Isabelle recovers, and to Holly who has continued to hold the class beautifully and keep us right!

Warm wishes,

Soumya and Holly 

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Class 5/6

This week as we look at the final decades of the Roman Empire we have heard the story of the brave Celtic Queen, Boudicca and her resistance to the Roman army, the story of Julius Caesar, and today we will hear about the savage exploits of the Emperors Caligula and Nero. Throughout these stories we have been practicing note-taking, creating mind-maps to organize our information, and the students also presented some wonderfully creative skits on the Death of Caesar (which bodes very well indeed for our Class Play later in the year!). During our Maths Practice Lessons we have been working on area and perimeter, including the area of a triangle and we used calculators to check our work where decimals were involved.

Please could you remind your child to practice their touch typing on the online program log-in provided earlier in the year – great practice for future projects, high school work and NAPLAN testing! Also it would be so supportive for your child’s mathematical enjoyment if they could please work on their multiplication tables at home – most only have a few facts left to memorise. This increases fluency and a real sense of progress for each student. Just one fact this weekend (such as 9×9=81) would be fantastic! Many thanks.

Please email me with any questions, feedback or other information to support your child on steph@bluemountainssteiner.nsw.edu.au

Have a lovely weekend,

Steph and Lee