Julianna Term 3 Week 5

Hello Currambena!

Thank-you to all our parents for the improvement with signing in and out, even ringing immediately to tell us if you have forgotten is a great relief.  Of course we would love everyone to keep working on this and a forgotten signature to be a rarity.

 THANK-YOU

To our organisers, for our beautiful fliers, and everyone who came to our Transition to Kindergarten night.

A special thanks to Fran and to Jo for presenting the evening.

 Activities coming soon…….

 Café

This Friday 28th August 2pm start

This is always a lovely social gathering so please come.

If you can provide a plate of something yummy that would be much appreciated.

 Dance social  Friday 25th September

We are hoping to have a bush band and if still cold –  Steve’s fire pit burning.

So mark that night in your calendar

 Special Thoughts….

Sending our love and support to Jackie, Michael and Katriona our thoughts will be with you all  next week.

 With love,

 Julianna

Welcome Leila Horn…..

Tommy Horn (of Fran’s Class) now has a baby sister. His proud parents, Ann and Mark, are even prouder. The baby, LEILA CONSTANCE TWYNAM HORN, arrived in a big hurry on Wednesday 19 August. She weighed 3.85 kg and is 51cm long. Ann and Leila look forward to visiting the school soon.

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Thursday 27th August 2009 Term 3 Week 5

lucy

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DEVELOPMENT APPLICATION…. Approved!!!!!!

BUILDTEAM NEWS
Primary Schools in the 21st Century
National School Pride
Building the Education Revolution – Commonwealth Assisted

Hi All,

Good News – our Development Application has been approved by Lane Cove Council! Our architects are busy with detailed design development of the plans and are assessing suitable construction companies for the tender process. We are still hoping we may be able to start the project in the October school holiday but the timing is tight and this may not be possible.

Speak to Aarhon Silver if you want to put some maintenance hours towards helping her clear out to old classroom – I’m sure she would welcome the help.

Our community consultation for our Landscape master plan is on 31st August from 7pm to 9pm. Please come along for a productive discussion on our playground and the vision for the school. This is your chance to give us your ideas about the bike rack, the play equipment, the basketball court, the vegetable garden, the vegetation, the trees, what’s missing? What we need to keep?…..

If you could please RSVP on my email or catch me around the playground and let me know your coming.

Have a great week.
Jess
(jkimber01@bigpond.com or 0411220111)

Preschool Newsletter Week 5 Term 3

Hello Everyone

The children have really responded to the shapes project. This week we have been exploring shapes found in nature – spirals, circles, cylinders, ovals and symmetrical shapes. This has led to looking at patterns in nature as well. Yesterday Elizabeth, Alexander’s mum, brought in  some of the stunning quilts she has made and is making to show us the shapes she used when making the quilts. There were triangles, squares, rectangles, crosses, hearts and stars.

We have also been looking at treasures and treasure boxes. We have had a look at Chris’ treasures and started painting treasure boxes. If anyone has any treasures or a treasure box they’d like to share with us come and show us!

We have also been singing shape songs and shape movements in Music with Tony. Gabriela has also been singing some Spanish songs. We have a Latin American show coming to preschool on Wednesday 9th September 2009 from 10.30 – 11.30 am. The cost for this will be $8.00.

Sisse has been doing experiments with flowers, seeing if we can make watercolour using petals and leaves. Last week the flower arranging was very popular. Thanks for all bringing in flowers. Yesterday Sisse is baked delicious Danish Cinnamon Snails with the children. 

Sally and Noel (Hamish’s grandparents) planted seed potatoes in tyres on the tanbark near the spiderweb with Sisse and preschool. We are going to add a tyre every now and then and as the potatoes grow upwards they will make new potatoes along the stem. We should be able to harvest them in December. Thanks Sally and Noel!

Thanks to everyone who comes on a Monday for signing the new park excursion permission form, and for everyone getting to school in time for us to leave at 9.30 am.

Thank you to all the people who have let us know their plans for next year. The list for preschool places is still up on the window next to the sign on sheet. I will take this down at the end of the week and then begin contacting people on the waiting list.

There is a Cafe on this Friday at 2.00 pm, so bring a cake (no nuts, chocolate or kiwifruit, but cocoa is fine) to be sold at the Cafe and then come and have a cup of tea or coffee and a slice of cake with the Currambena community. There are notices up around school with the details.

Thanks to Anne for all the really useful rolls of paper and thanks to everyone who does the washing so efficiently.

Love from

Sue, Chris and Gabriela.

Wendy’s Class Week 5 Term 3

Our Maths unit on data has been filling our days with very real information to graph in a range of ways. The data collected about how Currambena people travel to school was fascinating. Last week, Elaine ( our Scientist in Residence) helped us to collate and then analyse the data and to calculate that we generate about 170kg CO2 per day as a school in our travels. Next step is to figure out what we might do to reduce this! The walking bus sounds like a  good start!

Then we had our Rubbish Free Lunch on Wednesday where we audited the lunch waste in the afternoon. We have graphed the results which were very interesting. We managed to reduce our rubbish significantly between the two waste audits… see the report in this Newsletter.

Our third graphing exercise started this week with some daily times tables practise after which we are  graphing our individual results.  We have a whole group of emerging statisticians!!

This week we are also reading and writing poetry with great enjoyment. Please send in any books of poetry you would like to share with us. I hope you will read some of the original creations – and some transcribed for the joy of it -  in this Newsletter.

As well as all this, our friend Moses Aaron, story teller, is coming to our group this Friday for his final story-telling performance. He is retiring from storytelling and has asked us to hold a Soiree, where he will not be the only performer. Quite a few of the kids will be performing songs, reading poetry or stories or dancing. Then we will all walk up to Lane Cove for lunch together. Should be a fun day.

The piano players will also have the chance to perform on Friday at School Meeting. Good thing that lessons are back to normal schedules this week! Keep playing and practising and bring your books on Friday. We will take the keyboard down to the spare room for the meeting.

In other areas, Personal Interest Projects are now underway. Due date is Friday 18th September. Art/craft lessons with Chris are producing some wonderful creations on Thursdays. Colour mixing, charcoal drawings and special glazes have featured over the last few weeks. The children are learning some great new skills. Our Science Experiments have recently given way to our other activities but we still have a list of experiments to conduct… Bubble experiments are next!

Thank you to everyone who has come in for Parent Interviews. I have very much enjoyed talking about each of the children with you. Speak to me about making a new time if you were unable to make your interview.

Please also speak to me if you are interested in the possibility of going to Moree for the Y@G Aboriginal dance festival there in the week starting 21st September. It might be possible to go just for the first day or so to get the feel for it with a view to a future Currambena excursion/camp.

That’s all for now, except to thank Margaret, Peter’s mother for her donation to the school of an “Eye Clops” magnifier which can be plugged into the Tv and used as a microscope! That will be great fun for us all!

Have a great week.

Love,   Wendy

Olivia’s Class Week 5 Term 3

Hi Everyone!

Thank you to Wendy’s class who organised the rubbish free day last week. It was a real eye opener for all of us as to how much waste we produce from lunches. Also a huge thank you to Sarah for taking my class yesterday when I was sick.

In case you haven’t noticed, newsletters will be coming out on Thursdays for a while. Please let me know if you get the newsletter electronically so that I can ask for fewer paper copies to hand out.

There has been talk of having some piano performances in school meeting this Friday. I will be talking to my piano students to see if they would like to participate. If you are interested in seeing your child, please ask them if they are going to be performing first and then come to school meeting on Friday morning at 9.30 am.

That’s all from me. Have a good week!

Olivia

Aussie Kids Week 5 term 2

Hello everyone!

We hope you have had a chance to swim in the amazing reef that used to be the purple room. We were inspired by the reef that has been crocheted by hundreds of people, including the ever-creating Sue, that is currently on display at the Powerhouse Museum. The day after we made the reef, a crocheted sea slug and piece of coral appeared in the room. Thank you, Sue, for the beautiful and inspiring art!

We have been studying the letter t and blends including ch, reinforcing numbers to 30 and place value. We have been talking about the language around measuring length.

There has been a lot of talking among the children about getting married and babies and all the information around these topics. We will be beginning discussions soon answering their questions,  so if you would like to have this conversation with your child before we do, at home, that would be great.

Today we are having the discussion again about hats and sunscreen now it is getting hotter. Please send a hat each day. If you have any spare hats at home that you would like to donate that would be wonderful to build our class collection.

Michael joined us yesterday as Sarah was taking Olivia’s class. It was great to have him with us and he helped to write the wonderful descriptions of sea creatures and features that fill our reef. Come in and have a read sometime!

Take care!

Fran, Jo, Sarah and Michael