2020 Newsletter Term 02 | Issue 01

Welcome Back! Elouera has been exploring Autumn this term. We have been watching the leaves fall to the ground in the big garden, and we have noticed all the different colours you can see now – red, orange, yellow, green and brown! We have been using these colours to paint and we have collected some leaves and made impressions in the clay with them. We have been really enjoying eating Autumn vegetables for morning tea – it looked like a rainbow!

– Corinne, Debbie & Sarah

The Burbangana classroom has been learning all about Autumn and leaf structure over the past couple of weeks as we take advantage of our wonderful outdoor learning environment. The leaves are covering our yard and providing wonderful play and learning opportunities. We have explored various art and science activities which also included making our own volcanoes. After collecting leaves from the yard we made an Autumn collage, pressed leaves into clay to make ‘fossils’, created leaf characters for a puppet show and used them for printing and colour mixing.

Next week we will be recognising National Reconciliation Week by learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

It has been wonderful to see how much the children have grown over this period of isolation. We have seen learning explosions in reading and writing along with counting into the thousands. Thank you for your efforts teaching your children at home, they are truly seeing the benefits in the work now being accomplished at school.

– Amanda & Teresa

Welcome back to term 2. It has been a very unusual time since our last newsletter but lots of good things have come out of the often frightening and stressful time. We as a school have been reminded of what a community preschool really means with lots of care from and towards everyone. We have also noticed a slower pace to life which has been reflected in your children. They are calmer and more settled. We have loved all the work that was done while your children were at home and have followed one of the interests back into class.

Tristan took a strong interest in the planning of houses and we followed his interest while he was at home. Now we are all back this has been a strong topic of interest and we have brainstormed what a house is, drawn out plans of a house, drawn our own houses, and looked at houses around the world and different types of houses. We then built a Bedouin tent using bamboo and material. This investigation is still ongoing as the children continue to lead the direction.  

– Jenny, Jo & Angela

During these strange times the children’s inquisitive, questioning nature has not faulted.  The project that grew from finding some fungi in the garden resulted in all kinds of investigation into different types of fungi and onto their uses.  Drawing, writing, craft, making posters of fun facts and labelling the parts of a mushroom.  We even grew some Oyster mushrooms and made a delicious fried rice into which we added a capsicum from our garden and our own fresh eggs.  Delicious. Along the way we discovered fungi bricks, a sustainable building material and the children were fascinated so we then began looking at different buildings and how to make them complement our environment.  There has been lots of measuring, counting, estimating and calculations.  From planning meetings, architectural drawings and sketches we have begun building a building with gardens on the outside, solar panels and on it goes! It’s so much fun to have the children back and to follow their lead with their learning.  Take care everyone. 

– Dawn

We have been learning about nouns and adjectives the past few weeks.  We found objects around the classroom and garden and made noun books. This led onto a discussion about adding describing words to the nouns. For example a blue sponge. The children have been interested in playing the noun adjective game.

The bead chains have also been popular, with children choosing to complete the chains. The bead chains help develop children’s knowledge of numbers from the concrete to the abstract. The children also gain an understanding of number sequencing. We have also been using the short bead stair to make number bonds to ten. We played games to guess which numbers go together in pairs to make 10.

– Elizabeth

From the Aikya classroom, we would like to thank all the families for their support at home during this strange time. Everybody has been doing really well with school learning but I think we are all excited to be able to come back to school full time and spend time with our friends while learning and having fun.

We are happy to be back for two days at the moment and we are trying to get as much work done as possible, having many presentations, using the materials and starting research projects. At the moment, we are very interested in dinosaurs and we have been learning many interesting facts about different species. Some of the students have presented this work to the rest of their peers and it has been amazing!

We are looking forward to seeing everybody very soon. Thank you!

– Samantha and Laura

We have been doing sports on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with Aikya in the playground; we do obstacle courses, AFL ball skills, hoop jumps, bean-bag target throwing etc. The bean-bag throwing was an incredibly fun game, there was this one time where people got it in the target the first try!

Lately the Year 6 students have been working on algebra like binomial and trinomial equations; it has been challenging but we have made much progress during the short time we have been doing this and are getting much better.

The Year 5 and 6 students have been reading Frankenstein, it is a great book and we all enjoy it. We will be finishing the story this week and can’t wait to find out how it ends. 

One week ago we made Mother’s Day cards. We made flower bouquets out of cardboard and painted flowers inside and wrote a special message and tied it with a piece of string. Our Mum’s all loved it.

By Maya, Jessica and Leo.  

– Claire, Jessica & Philippa 

Dear Families,

Origami Club continues to remain an all-time favourite activity. This fortnight the children have enjoyed making various dinosaur origamis as well as sharing fun facts and knowledge they have on these dinosaurs. Did you know that Spinosaurus’ move their spines side to side to cool themselves down? Or that if a T-rex looks at you and you remain still it won’t be able to see you? These are only a few of the fun facts we have learned this past fortnight! 

The children have also enjoyed learning French knitting. The children created their own French Knitting machine using paddle pop sticks and hygiene rolls. Each session the children continue to work on their knitting, stay tuned to see what we create! Through this the children have strengthened their fine motor skills alongside their coordination. 

We have also enjoyed some time outside playing groups games such as 44 homes, pretend play, chalk drawing and skipping! As the weather gets colder, we ask that you please ensure a warm jumper or jacket is packed. This week the children have been asked to bring in recycled milk cartoons as we intend to create our very own miniature garden! We plan on planting flowers as well as herbs that can be cooked into our afternoon. If you have any recycled cartons, please bring them in!

If you would like more information about Primary OSH Care or our centre and how to enrol, please visit our website www.primaryoshcare.com.au

From Sarah, Ella and all the OSHC staff at Farmhouse Montessori OSHC Centre