2022 Newsletter Term 02 | Issue 03

This week Elouera planted all our winter vegetables and fruits in our newly covered vegetable garden! We bought a new cover to keep those pesky bush turkeys and possums away so that hopefully, come spring, we’ll have a full crop. We planted strawberries, purple cauliflower, white cauliflower, broccolini, beetroot, sugar snap peas, snow peas, garlic, brussel sprouts, leek, and spring onion. We also planted lots of daffodil, tulip, and ranunculus bulbs so we’ll have some spring flowers. We talked about what our plants will need to grow – water, sunlight, and good soil and we found lots of worms too!

There has been a writing explosion in the Burbangana classroom. Pre-writing and writing activities have been an activity of choice. The older children in the group are now understanding their role in the classroom environment and are developing into wonderful role models for our younger children. The younger children are witnessing their older peers writing and they want to do the same.

Learning to write in the Montessori classroom begins with practical life activities that prepare little hands, strengthening muscles and coordination before moving onto the language materials. Beginning with sound games , like I spy, that focus on hearing the initial sound of each object and then linking this knowledge to letter formation using the sandpaper letters starts the child’s journey into writing and reading. These sounds are then used with the moveable alphabet to label objects. Once a child has learned how to use the letter sounds to construct words, they progress towards joining words together into sentences of their own, and from there, there is an explosion of writing ability and enthusiasm to tell a story.

After mastering the skills associated with producing written letters and words, reading naturally comes as the next step. The child discovers that they are now able to see printed words on a piece of paper and decode their meaning.

The Farmhouse Montessori School takes the responsibility of embedding the culture and respect of our First Australians into our everyday learning. The children are aware that our school sits on the land of the Gamarargul people and that it is our responsibility to look after this land. Every day we respectfully acknowledge the custodians of the land the school is on and we allow the children to acknowledge this in their own voice. Reconciliation Week allows the children to discuss what they know and to learn more about the First Nations people. This week we used language, songs, Dreaming stories and art to express our acknowledgment of this culture. We finished the week by putting our handprints out the front of the school to publicly show our support for reconciliation.

— Jenny, Angela, Claire & Catalina.

This week in kindergarten we learned about reconciliation. This year we are challenged to ‘Be brave and make change’, so we can make change for the benefit of all Australians. During the week the kindergarten class read many books, composed stories using Aboriginal symbols and made these into our own little books. The illustrations in these books inspired the children to create their own artworks using techniques similar to those used by the Aboriginal artists displayed in the books we read.

At the end of the week the children made herb and cheese damper. Kindergarten students wrote out the recipe first, then gathered herbs from the Elouera herb garden and helped to chop them. All of the children were keen to add the ingredients and get their hands into the dough making sure it had a good kneed. The damper was delicious and warm.