Happy Holidays!

May you all have a safe, happy and restful holiday.  Thanks for a great Term 1 and we look forward to another exciting term when school starts again in May.

We wish Evan, Jayden and Ella a very Happy Birthday during the holidays.  How exciting to be turning six - have fun!

Good-bye and Thank You, Mrs Edgar

Mrs Edgar has enjoyed working with all of us in Room, 5 but when an exciting job offer came up, she decided to accept it.  Mrs Edgar has been a Teacher Aide at our school for eleven years and has been wonderful!!  We have been so lucky to have her in our class and she has done a great deal for us.  We are going to miss her and wish her all the very best.

What were schools like in the past?

Some special visitors were in our class on Tuesday afternoon.  Benjamin's dad and his Great Grandmother, affectionately known as 'Ganny', came to talk to us.  They very kindly offered to tell of their primary school days and showed us photos from that era.  Even though there were many differences between schools in the olden days and ours, there are still some things that have remained the same.  

We all agree that we like being  at schools of today but would have liked having a swimming pool as they did in Ben's dad's day.  It was a real treat having a talk that was both authentic and interesting.  Many thanks, Ganny and Benjamin's Dad for kindly offering to share your experiences with us.

Literacy Learning

The children in our class are fabulous and they really extend themselves when they do their reading activities.  Here are some photos to document that.

Evan and Greer have written lots of chunk words.  

Rochelle and Georgia are reading and copying some poem cards.

 Nabeela, Herne and Natalya use whisper phones to hear themselves read.

 Ana reads books online.

 Hannah is doing some online reading and Charlotte and Lara work on their word building activities.

Jayden and Anton are reading stories from Sunshine Online.

 Charlotte shows the word families she has written.

Lara has written some three-letter words.

Hayden has written this poem.

Corbin and Herne are reading in a group with Mrs Edgar.

Applause for Anton

Anton was awarded the Player of the Day trophy  for his efforts at soccer.  Ka Pai to you, Anton!  We are proud of you and we hope you enjoy the soccer season.  May your team do well.

Fun Fridays

We always enjoy getting together with our Buddy Class and last Friday was no exception.  It had been a mufti and sausage sizzle day and just prior to the end of the day we met our buddies in the hive.  Mrs Sidhwa read us a funny story while our teacher showed the older children what to do.  Then we were divided up into four groups and we had lots of fun doing various activities -

Off we go on our treasure hunt ...

We traipsed through the maze and rolled down the hill.

                         

Looking for various natural pieces to pop into our boxes.

We needed keen eyes for this activity.

Our group sprinkled sand over glue numbers to reveal these.

How many numbers have you made with the sand?

Which number will this one be?

A game of hide-and-seek.

How well can you balance?

I hope I won't be seen.

Another Wonderful Day

We are making the most of the beautiful weather and today our Ball Skills lesson was held out on the field.  We have learnt so many new skills this term! Mrs Killeen has taught us three different passes - underarm pass, chest pass and shoulder pass.  We have also been practicing our footwork - stepping forward when we throw and stepping back when we catch.  Its great to see how much everyone has improved their catching and throwing skills and have become fast "snatcher catchers".  Next term we will be learning some basketball skills - that should be challenging but we'll be up to it!

Our chest pass champions!

Our shoulder pass champions!

Rock-Up

Rock up 1 from xxxsxxx

Love to Read!

We enjoy a doing variety of activities in our Reading programme.  These give us opportunities to read in various contexts, alone or in pairs, and provide lots of material for us to learn to read and understand the messages in print.

Georgia has been matching blend words.

Rochelle is building sentences.

Evan and Caleb are making notes about frogs from the books on the topic table.

Ella, Ana and Nikitha are reading big books.

Charlotte, Alishba and Greer are using books to create and respond to texts.

Brilliant Benjamin!

Benjamin was chosen as this week's Star Student in recognition of his enthusiasm and interest in learning about the environment and in all our topic-based studies.  He regularly contributes to class discussions and brings items of interest to share with us.  Thanks, Ben, for being so receptive and eager to learn.

In addition, Benjamin excelled at his first soccer match of the season this weekend.  He was chosen as "Player of the Day" and we are very proud of him!

Buddy Class Origami Fun

On Friday we enjoyed having a lesson on paper folding by our buddies.  They showed us how to fold a paper boat and a little fish.  We pasted these onto a background that we had made and we felt proud of our results.  Origami is really challenging and we hope to do some more soon.

Peachy the Peach Tree

We can see a pretty tree in the hive just below our classroom windows.  It has been aptly named "Peachy" and it is still a young tree, probably only three years old.  In the summer it bore just a few tiny peaches that were barely visible among its beautiful green foliage and weren't edible.  As the seasons change from summer to autumn, we are watching to see whether Peachy's leaves change colour.  Here is a photo of "our" tree.