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
The Kindy children are preparing for their Autumn Festival. We are practising our songs and verses and making finger knitting for our Autumn baskets.
This week the children have been enjoying listening to the story of “Johnny Apple Seed”. Johnny collects apple seeds from all the apples he eats, so when he goes out into the world, he plants apple trees where ever he works or stays. In response to this story, the children have made lots of beeswax apples and apple trees which can now join our festive nature table in the room.
Turtles, turtles everywhere, so it’s time to hatch all the baby turtles before the end of the term. It will be a big push now to the end of term to complete all the beautiful turtles in the group.
Don’t forget to book in for your parent/teacher interview. This is your time to meet with me and discuss your child’s development and unfolding during this first term.
Warmly,
Francine, Freya and Zenith
Class 1/2
Wow what a week! Firstly, we wanted to congratulate the Class 1/2 children on a fine performance in the St Michael play on Tuesday night. We were filled with joy watching them sing and perform with their peers.
Class 1 Main Lesson this week has focused on representing numerals, the children have enjoyed drawing depictions of the numbers 1, 2 and 3. The ancient way of writing numbers, Roman Numerals, was a big hit too.
Class 2 continue with their Mathemagics lesson this week by saying, writing and making number patterns. We have been counting in 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s and making connections to the patterns within the times tables. We have made more magical geometric shapes using wool on the 12-point boards and experimented with creating equidistant sides. Our stories have focused on the magic of stars and the shapes and patterns we can find in the constellations.
Both classes have been enjoying spelling lessons, Class 2 are creating some very interesting sentences.
We enjoyed celebrating and learning about Harmony Day last Friday with Soumya, the children soaked up the essence of celebrating differences in culture and nationality and shared some of their own stories. Thank you, Soumya, for sharing your wisdom and experience with our class.
Our skills and confidence in Netball have been growing by the week as we have begun mastering the catch and pass and shooting some goals too!! The children are not only developing physical skills but also a growing awareness in teamwork and resilience.
Thanks to the parents, carers and grandparents who are helping at Crafternoons. It has been wonderful to have you in our classroom.
We will have our Teddy’s Bear’s Picnic on Tuesday 4 April (Week 10) at the Rhododendron Garden in Blackheath, further information and permission notes will go out next week.
Wishing all our families a joyful weekend, see you all next week.
Amy and Isabelle
Class 3/4
Thank you to all our class and families who came to our St Michael play. The children performed tremendously and they looked great! Thank you for your support in helping them.
We are in the throes of the strength of our Norse gods, and I feel like it matches this time of year, in a cosmic sense: The equinox, the dragon in the sky, the change of season. It is certainly meeting the children’s internal energetic impulses (and sometimes external too!). The class is feeling happy and solid and we are enjoying the days.
Some children still don’t have a water bottle every day. Please help them to have a smooth running day, by making sure they bring the essentials every day.
Much appreciated,
Julie and Meredith
Class 5/6
Class 5/6 were very blessed to have Soumya share her story with us on Harmony Day last Friday. Soumya shared with us, through story, her experiences growing up with school peers who culturally were often different to her, and the struggles that brought with wanting to fit in whilst honouring her family’s way of life. Facilitating some very helpful and enlightening peer discussions, Soumya then ended the workshop with the question for us to keep pondering – who gets to decide whether someone ‘is an Australian’? Thank you, Soumya! Sharing your experiences and ideas will go a long way to supporting our senior students as they soon move on to bigger schools in an increasingly culturally diverse Blue Mountains and beyond.
It has been a busy week both with NAPLAN being completed, and of course final rehearsals for our very special St Michael Play, which was performed on Tuesday night. Congratulations to all our students! It continues to be extra-special to have the opportunity to come together as a community again to celebrate the seasons and to eat together. Learning more about the Equinox was a perfect ‘taster’ for our upcoming Astronomy Main Lesson later in the year.
We have begun our Ancient Egypt Main Lesson by hearing the story of Ra’s creation of the fertile land around the river Nile, and the gods Osiris and Isis who came to Earth to teach the people unity and farming. As we are finding in many ancient stories, good was challenged by evil, and it was their son, Horus who defeated Set’s malevolence.
We also heard about how the pyramids, before they became tombs, were actually holy places of learning for a select few, and were created through mystery and measurement – the accuracy of which was honed by the Egyptians! To this end, we are using accurate measurement to transfer an image of Tutankhamun using a grid system onto black card and we look forward to showing images of this work when it is complete!
During our Maths Practice lessons we have been revising division and also naming and measuring angles. Class 5 will be introduced to using a protractor next week.
Please book for Parent/Teacher interviews if you haven’t already, it will be a wonderful opportunity to discuss your child’s progress and set learning goals for the year and how we can work together to support this.
Dates for your diary:
Parent Teacher Interviews continue Tuesday 28 and Thursday 30 March (Karen has emailed the booking information).
Term 2:
Friday 5 May Futsal Gala Day at Katoomba Aquatic Centre – students will need their own transport to and from the venue: please arrange for any carpooling etc. (note home will follow shortly).
Enjoy your weekend,
Steph and Lee