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
This week in the Preschool, we started our transition to Bush Kindy. Each week, we will build on the children’s bushwalking skills and incrementally take them further, whilst becoming familiar with their local environment. The goal is to make it all the way to the Mini Oval, which is no mean feat when you have tiny legs navigating the rocky bush track!
The Boronia children have led the way with some exploring of the big Primary School and its beautiful bush setting. They explored the Knoll, the pathways around the school and the veggie garden. On Friday, the Wattle Room children will have their own chance to explore the school and some of the bushland beyond.
We value bush play and outdoor experiences for the simple fact that the environment can be an incredible teacher. The outdoor environment allows for a perfectly balanced sensory experience, it inspires imagination and creativity and enhances the development of healthy risk evaluating (which supports children in assessing and setting their own boundaries and challenges). Plus, it’s a lot of fun! If you have some spare time on a Monday or Friday, why not organise to join us on our treks, and help to build a fort or practice some knot tying!
The Preschool Team
Kindergarten/Boronia Room
This week our story the “Little Star” was about a little star that wanted to become a little star fish and make its new home in the sea. The children made colourful window transparency star fish, to link the star fish image and the message of finding new friends and a sense of place with their own experience of coming into the Kindergarten.
Our Summertime themes are coming to their end as the early days of Autumn approach. We will move from jumping imaginary waves onto our new morning circle called the Pancake Mill next week.
The children’s turtles all hatched into the Kindergarten last week and now the busy crafters are shaping their first piece of finger knitting into shells for their little sea friends. Well done to all the young enthusiastic sewers in the full-time group.
A reminder to parents to contact Karen regarding your intentions to attend our Parent/Teacher Evening next Thursday 27th February at 6pm.
Have a great weekend,
Francine
Class 1/2
Welcome lovely families to Week 4! We began our new Main Lesson exploring Fairy Tales and Fables. As it is a literacy-based Main Lesson, Class One began familiarising themselves with letters and deepening their sound knowledge, while Class Two are charging ahead with their spelling words and independent writing.
The children are really enjoying the powerful mood of wonder and wisdom when the tales are told in the traditional form of oral storytelling. As adults, we understand the characters in these stories to be metaphors for qualities in life rather than literal representations of people.
The child hears the stories in a different way than an adult, they identify with every character in the story, with their virtues or their weaknesses and, in listening to the story, enter into a magical realm of pure imagination which is the heart of childhood.
We have a few soft toys and cars coming from home, it is best if children do not bring toys (e.g. cars or soft toys) to school. The reason for this is that we don’t want favourite toys lost at school and we would like children to play with what is here inside, and outside in our bush playground. Please have a chat with your child if you think that they are bringing things from home.
Finally, the weather has been glorious and sunny this week which allowed us to play in the sandpit, pine forest and gardening with Annie. Kindly pack extra clothes next Wednesday so that we can have waterplay in the sandpit.
Enjoy a relaxing weekend,
Kath and Class 1/2 Assistants
Class 3/4
We have been focusing on our independent writing this week, looking at neat writing of a good size, punctuation, letter formation, spacing, spelling, and interesting ideas that are our own. To make this easier and engaging we have been describing beautiful artworks. Many students have started doing a daily sentence with Meredith as well as reading and handwriting, to support their skills.
We looked at the artwork in Leonard the Lyrebird and Class 5 joined us as we drew lyrebirds inspired by local artist Eloise Short. There was impressive focus and calm from Class 3/4 and the visitors during this activity.
In Gardening, Annie introduced the idea of diversity and how our garden is healthier and stronger when there are lots of different varieties. She explained this also includes temporal diversity, where plants are at different stages of growth. This weekly permaculture knowledge is so valued and valuable!
What else? We painted some dreamy sunrises and sunsets, had free choice beeswax modelling, drew circle mandala designs, played in the pine forest, and continued to learn many songs with sign.
Before recess and lunch play, we have started saying and using sign for the following “verse,” crafted on the weekend from the needs of the group:
Our head is calm,
our words are kind,
our heart is open,
our hands are gentle,
we are ready to play.
It seems to have a beautiful grounding influence on the children.
As a staff we have decided that bringing toys from home is interfering in students focus in the classroom and friendships in the playground. So, we would like to request toys to stay at home. To make this transition easier for some students we will provide extra school toys and sports equipment in the playground as needed. I told the children I have a great collection of toy cars at home I can bring in to share, which raised a few eyebrows, and one child said, “But why do you have toy cars Jeneva?”
The other source of some frustration for a few students, is we now have fruit snack at 10.10am. This is approximately 20 minutes later than some had it last year and some bellies notice it and make it known. If it is possible to make breakfast “heartier” or bring a before-school snack that may help the transition.
Kind regards, go lightly.
Jeneva and Meredith
Class 5/6
I am sure by now that you have heard about our class camp. I have to say, the children were fantastic: they organised their belongings and tents with a great deal of care. Walking as the sun was setting to the Beehive Pagoda was a beautiful experience. The children were tired after the heat of the day, but they dug deep to find their will and determination to get back to camp. Sitting around the campfire was relaxing and the ‘bush television’ calmed everyone. Possums and Swamp Hens visited us, but no eskies were ransacked!
Kayaking the following day was bliss… gliding along the big wide Cudgegong River (a feeder to the Murray/Darling Rivers), we saw how the geology of the area is so different to the sandstone country of the Blue Mountains. Granite, basalt, and sandstone erodes and ages in different ways and herein lies the reason for the beautiful monolithic pagodas.
Thanks to Paul for taking us to see some rock art and for refining our sight to the landscape around us. And thanks to everybody who contributed. It was a lovely camp.
By the way, this week we are building upon our skills of ‘taking care’ (of our work, our communication with others … fine tuning how we meet the world). We are working on fractions; some people are working on interest rates (!) and we have been practicing writing with ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ speech during our Ancient India Main Lesson.
Have a terrific weekend,
Warmly,
Julie and Lee
