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 children are working hard to complete their drink bottle holders ready for this week’s whole school bush walk. The bush walk will mark the end of our second term together.
Sadly, we will be farewelling Chiara Murer and her beautiful family on Tuesday. Chiara will be very missed from our small group. We hope that Chiara will return to visit us at one of our Festivals in the future.
We have now completed our mid-year Kindergarten parent interviews and reporting. I thank all the families for attending. It has been a delight and a pleasure to meet and talk with everyone about their children and their development.
Last Friday evening we marked the longest night in the Kindergarten with a very special Winter Lantern Walk and Spiral. I would like to thank everyone who helped and contributed to making the evening so special. I extend special thanks to the choir of three Lily, Sharmila and young Imajica, who sang for our community during the Lighting of the Spiral. The evening was so beautiful, moving and bonding.
I thank everyone for doing such a great job supporting their children and maintaining the school routine throughout the term and I truly look forward to more adventures with all the children in the next term.
Wishing everyone a relaxing and restful Winter break.
Warmly, Francine
Class 1/2
We began our week with a walk to Turtle Rock. It was a beautiful sunny day to explore our environment, stretch our legs and navigate different terrain. The children made ‘campfires,’ sketched, splashed, and ground rocks. Looking forward to our whole school bush walk next week so we can do it all over again!
Welcome Violet to Class 1, we are all so pleased to have a new friend join our community.
Our Main Lesson, World Stories, has been gathering momentum, through Ukraine, China, Hungary, and Indonesia. Our stories have been entertaining, often amusing and sometimes sad. Magic pumpkins that produce more clothes and shoes than you could ever require and storks that remove their feathers because a little girl is lost – but actually just feeding her goat. Thank you to the families who have shared their stories with us and if you have a book at home your child would like to share please send them in!
We have been familiarising ourselves with our beautiful recorders. The children heard a story of a small shepherd girl who longed to make friends with the other children in her village and through the gift of a wooden recorder she gained the confidence to make music and friends alike. Class 1/2 have been practising in the Winter sunshine and performing for their grateful audience with astounding confidence. Well done Class 1/2!
Our Winter Festival was uplifting and serene. The children’s lanterns were lovingly crafted, each a masterpiece to be treasured! I was so proud of our children for the reverence and peace they brought to the evening. Thank you to our families and community for joining us and helping to make the evening such a success.
Enjoy a restful holiday and thank you for your continued support this term.
Warmly,
Kath and Class 1/2 Assistants
Class 3/4
It has been 100 days, or 600 hours, the children and I have spent together and so we find ourselves halfway through the school year!
Every week I write this newsletter early Thursday morning, and each week it is hard to be sure if it conveys, with any real accuracy, the reality of the community and closeness that comes being in a class altogether.
It also seems unlikely that it describes the depth of fondness that grows around your heart, like a climbing rose, for the students, by supporting them gently through endless emotions, and growing understandings of themselves, others, and the world. This is alongside nurturing any academic learning journey, all of which are individual in pace and style as well.
It is akin to holding 25 kites at high wind. You stay grounded, while they spin around each other, beautiful as they fly. Your gaze watches them all at once, every twist and turn, dip and dive, rise and fall. Some you bring closer as needed, others you give more reach, and all you watch with care.
Teaching is wonderful, for it is a privilege to walk alongside the future. To show them their potential, encourage and reassure them that you believe in them. And step back when and where you can so they can learn to see and trust in this version of themselves too.
However, at some point they keep walking, and you stop, stand there and smile as they glance back and continue on with their journey. Yet we still hold all the fluttering kites in our heart for years to come, championing them on.
I am proud of everyone in our class and where 600 hours has led us to. We are kinder, happier, more harmonious, and more hard working and skilled with every passing day.
I feel strongly that winter is a time to retreat, and I wish everyone a holiday where they can hibernate like bears awaiting Spring in whatever version of a fresh start it brings your family.
I would like to say thank you to Meredith for the hours and care she has put into the literacy program this term, the progress has been extraordinary, and into everything she does for our class. She could do anything she put her mind to, but I am grateful that we are gifted with her calm, her song, and her measured, efficient joy. It helps to have another adult to share the challenges and the delights of the class and together hold the hope we feel for each beautiful child. I could not do it without her.
Warmest winter wishes
Jeneva
Class 5/6
We’ve had a really constructive and busy term. The children have become stronger and more independent in their literacy and numeracy. They are generalising their knowledge and skills across the board and seem like they are rapidly growing towards high school, though at the same time maintaining the joy of childhood that we all revere.
In their class projects, they researched well, included basic referencing (a great skill for further study down the track). They presented work with confidence in front of the class, increased their skills in visual perception, and applied it in drawings and written beautiful and unique pieces of work. Please read through their spelling and draft books, as well as their Main Lesson work.
Their understanding of Stage 3 mathematical skills is well under way and Minh has been a great support for the spectrum of abilities.
Lee and I are seeing an open and supportive group, who are kind and empathic towards one another.
Every day is big, hard, easy, full, and alive. It is a joy to teach your children.
Lastly, can you please send in a shopping bag so that work can be sent home next week. Please return the bushwalking note for next Wednesday. We hope you enjoyed the Winter Spiral and enjoy your child’s lantern in your homes. They worked very hard on them, with great results!
May you all have a happy and safe holiday.
Warmly,
Julie and Lee
