Week 11

Welcome back to school!

I hope you’ve had time to relax, have fun and catch up with friends and families over the two week break. We’ve heard some great stories from the children about how they spent their holidays. 

On Monday, we had our second KIDS UP FRONT, presented by Kjerstin and Rebecca on Halloween. The children decorated Halloween goody bags and Tami and Julianne handed out lots of goodies to fill them up with. We had so much fun! Our next KIDS UP FRONT will be on Thursday and our presenter will be Tara. 

We have begun our new POETRY unit this week and the children have been reading many of poems in class. We went to Michel Rosen’s website and listened to some of his poems. He is absolutely hilarious! Please ask your child more about Michel Rosen. Our children listened to The News by Michel Rosen and shared all that they observed about the characteristics of poems...this was used as a tuning-in exercise into our unit. 

In order to help us write poems, we made a Map of our Heart. In this heart, we included all that is important to us, for example, people we love, things we love to do, places we’ve been to, sports we like, foods we love and so on. We have already started to use this Map to inspire us to write different kinds of poems. The children are absolutely loving this activity! If you have poems you would like to share, please come and do so with our class or you could send us some of your favourite ones. 

This week we introduced Word Study. The children were introduced to new spelling patterns and had opportunities to sort pictures and words by paying close attention to these sounds patterns. 

During Maths, we have been measuring body parts using non-standard units of measure. We have also now introduced the very exciting standard of measure - the ruler! The children have been using the unit of centimeters (cms) to measure body parts and objects around the pod and our classroom. This is really exciting for the children and quite challenging! They have been learning that rulers are etched with markings that denote the measurement of distance and that it is important that they pay close attention to the starting point from which they measure any object.

The weather has been brilliant after weeks and weeks of hazy skies. Our children have been outdoors a lot more this week, enjoying clear skies and good air. This really makes you appreciate how important good air is to us and how it helps us to be healthy, both physically and emotionally. This has relevance to our new unit on My Body where we explore different parts of our body and how to keep it healthy.

If you have any x-rays or medical records, please send these in for sharing. If you have any expertise in this area, please do come and talk to our class. Please drop me an email if you would like to fix a time for this. We are always in need of experts! The children posted a long list of questions about what they would like to find out in this unit - this will drive their individual inquiry. 

Thank you to our parents Susanne and Julia for taking our first cooking class this week. The children enjoyed learning to make a healthy snack using capsicum/bell pepper boats stuffed with corn and chicken (optional). Yummy!

A big thank you to Kjerstin’s grandad for being our Mystery Reader this week - another first! 

Mr Kazly, who works with the Facilities department at our campus, received a hand made wire sculpture gift as a token of appreciation from our G1PTh students for all the technical work he does for our performances, such as Arts Festival, UN Day and many other events. Please ask your child more about it.  

Our Primary School celebrated Spirit Day on Friday to celebrate our first week back after the holidays. Here is a class photo showing the children in very creative costumes!

Here is a picture of Teo and Max taken during playtime taking their cleaning job very seriously! Well done for taking action!

Reminders:

• Forest Adventure - Friday, 6 November 
• PD Day for teachers - NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS - Monday, 9 November
• Diwali - Public Holiday SCHOOL CLOSED - Tuesday, 10 November
• Workshare morning 8.20am to 9.40am - Friday, 13 November
• Please sign and send in the Happy Lodge forms this week