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
Wattle Room
The children in Preschool have been lovingly preparing food for the afternoon tea meal they share together. This week, the children made pancakes with Nat. They talked about the ingredients and where they came from. They chime in with, “milk comes from cows”, and “eggs come from the chickens in our chicken coop”. Then as they work, the children sing songs together to acknowledge the wind, the rain and the Earth for the role they play in helping the gardener to grow the grain. This provides the children with an understanding of the process of our food; from farm to table, and our gratitude spills over into the day, with warm sunshine smiles as we get to munch on the delicious blueberry pancakes, we have made together. It just feels like home.
Boronias
Autumn in the Boronia Room is being celebrated with full vigour. We have enjoyed continuing to collect leaves, creating various Autumn leaf crafts, and singing our Autumn songs. We have been practicing our ‘Orchard Play’ morning circle daily, which tells a little tale of a pony who needs a new horseshoe so that they can come with us to the orchard. We are very excited to be performing our morning circle for our families and friends at our upcoming Preschool Harvest Festival. We have been listening to the Indigenous story of ‘How the Kangaroo got its pouch’, and have been learning some facts about kangaroos, and the Dharug word for Kangaroo buru.
Helpers and donations needed please:
One project that I would like to begin with the children, is to make some bunting for our whole school Autumn Harvest Fair on Saturday 24th May. We would like to ask if families have any spare colourful fabric scraps (please, no black) that we can use to make thin strips for tying. This tactile activity will allow the children to continue to strengthen their hand-eye coordination, as well as fine motor strength, and will provide a good opportunity for them to contribute to something bigger that will benefit the wider school community. Parents are of course welcome to help out a few minutes here and there at drop off – I will have some coconut twine and fabric strips ready to go.
Blessings,
Jasmine.
Kindergarten/Boronia Room
In the Kindergarten we have been busy building our Autumn Harvest table in preparation for our Festival. We have been adding the finished Autumn Leaves and multi-coloured Harvest baskets that the children have made to our Harvest setting. The mood and the sense of excitement is slowly growing as we practice our morning circle songs and verses ready for the last day of term.
This week’s story was an Aboriginal dreaming tale about “How the Kangaroo Got it’s Pouch”. It was a gift to all the Kangaroo’s mothers from Baiame (the great sky spirit) for an act of kindness shown to a poor, blind and old wombat.
Our regeneration planting work is ongoing and remains strong. This week we planted 9 new trees and grasses with the support of Annie. The children have now planted just over 20 new plants in the bushland around the library and they are all doing well.
I have included some of the children’s Autumn Apple tree drawings this week for all to see and enjoy.
Have a great weekend. Rest and recover.
Francine
Class 1/2
Class Two have drawn some amazing free hand shapes this week. Exploring how two squares can make an octagon, and two triangles can make a hexagon. Class One have been counting their way around the school, going on nature treasure hunts in the bush and on the playground.
Our trip to the pine forest was lovely and cool on a warm Autumn afternoon. A number of children built a ‘hospital’ and had fun playing make believe being patients and doctors. Others discovered a jacky dragon and peacefully watched it basking on a log. We are so fortunate to work and play in our bush playground.
Our Teddy Bears’ Picnic at Katoomba Community Garden was so much fun. We were lucky with the weather which allowed us to play games and enjoy a delicious picnic amongst the Autumn leaves. We drew interesting plants and finished our teddy bear nature treasure hunt with a refreshing fruit feast. Thank you to the parents who were able to make it on the day to join in the fun.
Enjoy the weekend,
Kath and Class 1/2 Assistants
Class 3/4
We are having a beautiful week.
We have been busy with nimble fingers making window stars from kite paper. Big then tiny then enormous. This has led to making chatter boxes and paper aeroplanes like we have been born to do it and our lives depend on it.
We have also drawn and then painted some beautiful trees of life, inspired by local artist and elder Uncle Shane Smithers. These show the roots touching mother earth and the branches reaching up to father sky.
In gardening we started building a fence out of stripped white mulberry branches. It was amazing to see this start to come together.
We have been looking at whole numbers, expanding them out into place value houses and putting them back again. So, 1487 becomes 1000 + 400 + 80 + 7. This is still proving tricky for some, and I promised we will do it lots until it isn’t!
We have been looking at grammar and been introducing characters from the Grammar family. Nouny-name Grammar is 2 years old and walks about just naming everything – tree, dog, truck, as she is learning to talk. Verby-Do Grammar is her 6-year-old brother who won’t stay still. Nouny says Duck and Verby says catch. Nouny says hill and Verby says I will roll down it. They also have another big sister Adjectivia-Describe Grammar who is 9 and she just describes everything. Nouny says duck and Adjectivia-Describe says “oh so little, and cute”! Nouny says tree and she says “oh it is so big and beautiful”. Georgia B assured me she was older than any of them and so yesterday we discussed that many of the class have entered into the stage of the even bigger brother who is over 10 called Adi-Verb How Grammar. Adi is trying to bring order to the world and add meaning to how Verby does things by saying gently, slowly, calmly, quietly, politely when Verby-Do is running and tumbling and Adjectivia is staring about, thinking how cute or pretty things are. Anyway, on and on we will go with this Grammar family…
Looking forward to parent/teacher interviews and our excursion and the holidays are getting closer. It has been a big term!
Kind regards,
Jeneva and Meredith
Class 5/6
We have started in our third Main Lesson unit for the term: Botany. It seems to be bringing a certain lively enthusiasm that is lovely to witness. We have chosen a tree to study as part of this lesson. This week we have been returning to our same chosen tree and drawing it. The children’s feedback is that the more they look, the more details they see…we’re identifying them with their Latin names as well as their common names and a ‘pet’ name.
The class have been hearing stories and writing about what the warmth of the sun does for the earth and for flowering plants; what roles air and water play in this life-giving cycle.
We are also relating these ideas to that of the Indian creation gods and the notions of creation, death and renewal.
I love how this type of education brings different subjects together that enables ideas to integrate, those which are often taught in isolation.
We are continuing with our maths Practice lessons, which will also tie into our data collection for Botany.
The Class 5 children are learning about decimals and the Class 6 children are revising and, if ready, doing extension work with Minh.
The class has an increasingly happy and harmonious feel to it as the term rolls along. Please note, that some children may need a little more food in their lunch boxes as the weather changes. Also, some children have had really, really tiny ticks on them. Please check out any skin irritations (they are minuscule!)
Have a lovely weekend.
Warmly,
Julie and Lee.
