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
This week the children heard the story about the littlest gnome who was sent to call the seed babies to bed for the Winter. In response to this story the children made little seed babies during beeswax time and put them to bed in little boxes under soft fleecy blankets. The little seed babies will sleep now until Springtime, when they will awaken as colourful flowers.
The children are practising the Winter songs in preparation for next week’s Winter Festival. We practice our songs as part of our Morning Circle work. I know the children are beginning to be excited by the thought of walking in the dark with their lanterns.
The drink bottle holders are starting to take shape and soon some finished water bottle holders will be ready for their very first outing into the bush.
Enjoy your long weekend.
Francine, Zenith and Alannah
Class 1/2
King Winter has arrived in Class 1/2 and the children have celebrated through story, craft and making a beeswax King Winter each.
This week we wrap up our Magic of Numbers (Class 1) and Fun with Maths (Class 2) Main Lesson.
Class 1 looked at how counting by 10’s can be quicker. A child in the story picked 8 bunches of multicoloured flowers with 10 flowers in each. We used Cuisenaire rods to help count by 10’s and 1’s, and also to practice number bonds to 10, some children to 20 or 30. Then of course made pictures with the rods. Class 2 finished off their lesson by applying place value to solve vertical addition sums. They have enjoyed using the MAB blocks to represent numbers into the hundreds and thousands and using them to build castles that we then had to count in the 1000’s, 100’s, 10’s and 1’s to find the total.
We also started our new Main Lesson on the local surroundings called “The World Around Us”. We are very excited to start exploring the flora and fauna of our beautiful Blue Mountains surrounds.
We are continuing with our copper rod routine in Morning Circle, it has been a joy to watch them slowly master the movements and verses. With Winter Spiral only a couple of weeks away we have been practicing the songs and started on our lanterns. The classroom was alive with creative chaos on Tuesday when we began oiling the paper. The children can’t wait to show everyone the finished product at the Winter Spiral.
This week we had Cross Country, which the children had practiced the course for, running with the rest of the school. We gave it all on the day.
Many thanks,
Amy and Soumya 🙂
Class 3/4
Our class are having withdrawals from the Norse stories and since we haven’t read The Sagas, we may skip back to them as we approach our new unit of work Freehand Geometry.
This unit links in well with our Winter lantern-making and our Norse Main Lesson. The designs require the development of spatial awareness – which is key to geometry. There are important skills to learn, beauty to create, observations of nature and the universe, all reflected in these forms. Balance, focus and a calm methodical sensibility is cultivated when working with geometry. It is satisfying and fun!
We have begun our lanterns for our Winter Festival – please take note of date and times for this beautiful event in the school calendar.
Next Thursday our class will go to the Blue Mountains Food Co-op Market Garden, as well as the co-op itself, to see where the food is sold.
Have a great long weekend.
Class 5/6
It was perfect weather for the much-anticipated Cross Country yesterday morning – not too hot, not too cold, and the rain held off.
All the students put in their best effort, and it was so great to see the enjoyment and pride on their faces at their achievements. Congratulations, everyone!
A reminder that the Birthstone mini projects are due Friday of next week (June 16th). Please let me know if I can help in any way, or if your child will not be able to submit their work on time – planning for completion is good practice for their future study!
We have been concluding our Geology Main Lesson with some work on the Mount St. Helens volcano, and the way the land changes through regeneration. We also looked at the sinkholes in Guangxi, China and what they have revealed in the rock. Next week during our Craft lesson we will use the mineral marvel that is clay to create a pot.
We have just begun our Geometry Main Lesson, and Class 5 were excited to ‘finally’ receive their compasses! As they learn to use these to create beautiful artworks (shhh… don’t tell them they are doing Maths!)
Class 6 are enjoying beginning to extend their work from last year. Plato said, ‘The circle is the mother of all shapes’, and it is certainly the basis of many forms. The students are seeing the importance of quality and accurate work to reach their goals. The Latin word roots of Geometry mean ‘measuring the Earth’, and therefore, our relationship to it. It is so lovely to work inside with beautiful colours and precision tools at this cool time of the year.
Class 6 have been creating their own choreography for their festival fire-sticks dance, and both classes have been creating their lanterns and practicing their music items. In addition to their geometry, during Maths Practice lessons the class has been working on creating equivalent fractions – please keep up the good work supporting the completion of learning the multiplication table facts as this really helps a lot! Thank you 😊
DIARY DATES
- Friday 16 June: Birthstone mini-projects due.
- Tuesday 20 June: Winter Festival 5.15pm
Steph and Lee