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
Kindergarten Spring Festival, Wednesday 24th September at 10.00 am.
We have been busy bees in the Kindergarten beehive this week. The children have been very focused on making and creating beautiful gifts for their fathers to surprise them this Sunday.
We thank our lovely student teacher Rose Mailing for being such a wonderful support and helper in our classroom with our ambitious projects this week.
Tuesday saw us all down on the mini oval with Amy, learning more Dharug language. Amy is a wonderful storyteller, this time she told the story of Djirrabidi (Red Belly Black Snake) waking up from its winter sleep, ready to go exploring for Spring. We also played “What time is it Dingu? “, where the children count in Dharug. It’s all great fun and when the sun shines, it’s even better!
Have a great family weekend and Father’s Day, to all the Dads and Grandfathers.
Francine
Class 1/2
Spring has arrived in the Blue Mountains and Class 1/2 enjoyed learning and playing in our bush playground. Our mathematics focus this week has been on addition, the children have been adding groups of objects, working with concrete materials and Class 2 have been practicing vertical addition.
Our Celtic Tales Main Lesson continues to delight as we heard about a tricky fellow who made soup from a nail and origins of the unicorn in Scotland. Celtic dancing is fast and fun and is bringing Spring joy to our daily rhythm. Our play, The Magpie’s Nest, is coming along. The children have been practicing speaking in chorus and memorising their lines for the big performance 6 pm, Thursday 18 September. All welcome!
Class 1/2 will be accompanied by Kindergarten to Burgess Falls this Monday. Please pack extra food, spare clothing (including socks) and study shoes as we are likely to be ravenous and potentially soggy from our adventure.
Enjoy a sunny weekend together!
Warmly,
Kath and Class 1/2 Assistants
Class 3/4
This week we continue to explore the seasons with Spring artworks. These were inspired by the picture book Tilly. We collaged a picture of the blossom tree adding our own branches and tissue paper, paint, and pastel details. These were enhanced by having eight Class 5/6 children in our room for the day due to Julie’s absence. It was lovely to have a 3/4/5/6 Class to share the range of their skills throughout the day.
We also practised our best descriptive writing using a picture prompt. The basis of good writing is an ability to notice and describe. So even this simple task of using beautiful language to describe a picture, can greatly enhance students’ confidence in writing.
Our fractions Main Lesson continued with adding fractions, looking at fraction charts and equivalent fractions. This has been an engaging mathematics topic and has shown the benefit of exploring and consolidating one maths area in the Main Lesson format over 2 weeks.
We also finished our class novel Brindabella and commenced a new novel by Martin Murray, a beautiful contemporary Australian children’s author. The story is called Molly and Pim and the Million Stars. This delightful tale explores a mother who collects herbs from the woods for potions and her daughter who is conflicted, wanting her family to be more like her friend Ellen’s. It is another story that has a sweet friendship between a boy and a girl, and within the story they develop an appreciation of their identity and sense of belonging to family and community.
Next week we are excited by our upcoming excursion to Gungaree, the Gully. The Gully is a very special place for the First Nations people of the Blue Mountains. We are grateful to have Uncle David King ready to guide us during this excursion.
The children seem to consistently finish most of their food early in the day and say they’re hungry. Many also frequently tell me that they have forgotten to have breakfast or got “none”. I am always mindful that children can forget many things, including the fact that they have very much had breakfast. And they tell teachers all sorts of things from home, through the lens of a child, which are no doubt more complex in practice, than how it is passed on. However, a discussion about breakfast and lunch, and how much they need, could be helpful. I have encouraged the children to be involved in making their own breakfast and lunch as we are working on independence and accountability.
Meredith continues to struggle with the flu and we’re missing her greatly. My voice plays hide-and-seek, appearing and disappearing. I have been using a lot of sign language, to reduce voice strain. Which is a novel thing I love anyway and have missed using this year.
There are a lot of germs around and it’s important that children still have a warm jumper and pants in their bag even if the day looks to be sunny.
Warm regards
Jeneva
Class 5/6
Class 5
This week Class 5 have embraced being the oldest children at school. The class worked on a group project – they chose the topic ‘plastic’ or ‘electricity’. They chose facts from books about what makes plastic/electricity and the alternatives; and presented information on a poster and to the class. They seemed most engaged with the group work aspect. We also did some “real life” maths activities, using shopping catalogues to work out costs, income, tax and profit. It’s been a pleasure to work with the class 5 children this week, thank you!
Soumya
Class 6
Class 6 had a full three days in Canberra. We visited Parliament House and sat and listened to question time in the House of Representatives. We visited the War Memorial, Questacon, the Royal Mint, Pod Park, the National Portrait Gallery, lots of playing and a bike ride around Lake Burley Griffin.
Lohan: “The Mint was really fun, because we got to see the robots helping to mint the coins.”
Tobin: “It was cool when we saw the Prime Minister talk in the House of Representatives.”
Hannah: “It was impressive that the Mint had their own coin.”
Akira: “The gallery had portraits of people eating flowers.”
Reeder: “I was super happy to be in the same room as the Prime Minister.”
Saar: “In Questacon the person running the Fire Show was great and told us lots of cool and interesting scientific facts.”
Molly: “The hotel felt like home and the gallery had nice colours.”
Louis: “Parliament was fun because it was really big.”
Julie and Martin: “The class are a kind and wonderful group. It was a joy being with them on this trip!”
Thank you to Soumya and Lee for taking such good care of Class 5 this week.
Have a lovely weekend,
Julie and Lee
