Preschool News Week 5 Term 3

Posted on August 22, 2019 by katrinaa

Hi everyone,

The weeks continue to fly by in preschool this term. So much is happening we run out of time to fit it all in some days!

Preschool took part in the book parade last Friday. It was a very low-key event for many of the children. It was their choice as to if they wanted to participate with many of them preferring to observe the first part of the event, lots of them did however stand in front of the school and let everyone know who they were dressed up as, everyone also took part in the parade around the school.

This week we’ve had two authors come and present at the school. On Tuesday we heard from Jess Black and on Thursday we had David Hunt. It’s lovely to see so many of the children recognise the picture books they have written. For the preschool children David Hunt’s The Nose Pixies is definitely a story they love. A huge thank you to Susan Hunt, Kai’s Mum and casual teacher at Currambena for organising her brother to come and share his skills and expertise with us. Last Thursday in craft the children took part in decorating bunting as part of our book week celebrations. The bunting will be sewn together and displayed in the Library.

We’re now halfway through our unit on Astronomy. This week we’ve been learning more about our planet. When earth was first formed there wasn’t any life on it as it mainly consisted of volcanoes. We’ve looked at the different layers of the earth, with every child having the opportunity to make a model of earth out of plasticine, that when cut in half has the 4 layers that form earth.

Currently there’s a huge interest in preschool around pets. The children take great delight in pretending to be a dog or cat. We’ve made a pet parlour, creating bottles and sprays to pamper pets that visit. Next week we are planning on bringing out the sewing machine and making some animal ears and tails.

A friendly reminder to all families that intend on having their child continue in preschool in 2020 to please send me an email and let me know what days you would like your child to attend. Thank you to all the families that have already done this!

As always thank you to everyone for your continued support in helping our preschool function so efficiently by taking home our laundry. We also really value your input no matter what it is. If you’d like to come in and read some stories, do some cooking or just spend time with us please let us know.

That’s it for this week!

Love

Katrina, Michael and Hannah

 

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Jess’ Class Term 3 Week 5

Posted on August 22, 2019 by Jess

Dear Parents,

Here we are at the end of term 5 and what a fabulous one we’ve had so far. Thank you to everyone for making the time to meet with me to discuss your beautiful children, it’s been an absolute pleasure to chat with you all and to celebrate the children’s journeys so far.

This week we’ve had a flow over from book week with two authors talks. On Tuesday. Jess Black came in to talk to us about her love of animals, her family, her books and how she comes up with her characters and adventures. It was a wonderful session and the children showed fantastic focus throughout. Today we have David Hunt (Susan Hunt’s brother) coming in to talk to us. His children’s books include “The Nose Pixies” and “My Real Friend”. I have no doubt it will be a fabulous session.

On Tuesday, with Rosie’s class, each child drew their own invention, discovery or evolutionary change that they will be contributing to our “Future World”. They will begin to build a model of this next week and when they are finished, we’ll put them all together to create a vision of a possible future. If you could please collect any clean, interesting recycling from home this week that would be wonderful. Boxes of all shapes, tubes, bands and any other materials you come across would be very much appreciated. If you could keep these at home for the moment please as I don’t have a lot of storage space at school.

We’ve also spent wome time this week on Picasso. The children are learning about his life and his art in preparation for a school excursion to see “Picasso and His Dog” at Glen Street theatre next Thursday. We also have Boori visiting on Tuesday shich I know the children will love.

This means there are no literacy stations next week. Thank you to all my volunteers for understanding.

Also, nits are back! Please check your child’s hair and treat if needed. I’ve included a link to NSW Health with recommended treatment options for you to choose from. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/headlice/Pages/treatment.aspx

Have a lovely weekend,
Jess x

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Rosie’s Class Term 3 Week 5

Posted on August 22, 2019 by rosieh

Dear Parents,

Great to see most of our class back to school after lots of sickness last week. We still have a few children away so I am continuing to remind everyone to wash their hands and throw tissues away. Hopefully we’ll be back to a full class next week!

After some great progress with I statements last week, we spent some time thinking about clear messages. We have added lots of examples to the back display board as a reference. I hope to see the children using it and we have already had lots of opportunities to practise. I am so impressed with their progress already! They are trying hard not to use blaming language and are giving one another small prompts in moments of conflict. If you need some reminders about I statements or clear messages, please come and look at our board. We are all learning together!

We have also spent some time thinking about friendships. We discussed different traits we see in friends. We sorted these into three categories;

Friends ALWAYS, friends SOMETIMES & friends NEVER.

Come and see our posters to read our ideas!

Our projects are making good progress. We have voted to increase the challenge element this term so our projects need to include:

A presentation

A poster

A model or something else to show (some examples include; photographs, fake snow, space ship models and even an experiment)

We have some interesting topics this term including; sleep and dreams, geysers, blue marlin, electricity, space and Christmas! It’s always great to see the children so deep into their learning, using resources to grow their knowledge and answer their curious questions.

On Monday, we learnt about Pablo Picasso and his 23 names! We looked at famous paintings by the eccentric artist and learnt about two styles; line drawings and cubism. First, we tried drawing a sausage dog (just like Picasso’s dog, Lump) with 1 line! We giggled as we tried to draw without lifting our pencils off the page. We will continue to explore Picasso’s styles leading up to our excursion next Thursday.

On Tuesday, we were joined by the author Jess Black. Some of her titles include; Mr Walker, Keeper of the Crystals, Bindi Wildlife Adventures and Little Paws. The inspiration behind lots of her books are her own naughty dog and her imaginative daughters. It was great to meet Jess and hear some of her stories. You can find some of her books in our library (they’re even signed!).

During our Future unit with Jess, we have been busy designing and planning our future world. Luckily we don’t need to ask the council for planning permission! This future world will include new inventions, new discoveries, new species and some new sustainable choices. We would love for you to keep collecting bits and bobs for building over the weekend and bring them to school on Tuesday.

Thank you to Caroline & Shan for organising a fantastic book week which ended with a colourful parade of characters and costumes. Check out the photos!

Next Thursday, we will be travelling into the city by bus. The whole school will be watching a theatre production of ‘Picasso & his Dog’ at The Glen Street Theatre. We will all have lunch together on the green before entering the theatre. The children need to bring comfortable/closed shoes, lunch, a jumper (it can be cooler in theatres) and a water bottle. I’m looking forward to watching the puppets come to life!

Thank you Meggan & Simon for taking away our huge bag of laundry and bringing back fresh towels!

 

Other dates this term:

Friday 23rd – Knitting scarves with Meggan and Kylie

Monday 26th – Drumming workshop

Tuesday 27th – Building our future world

Tuesday 27th – Borri’s visit

Thursday 29th – Picasso & His Dog (whole school theatre excursion)

Monday 2nd – Drumming workshop

Tuesday 3rd – Jump Rope 4 Heart – Don’t forget to sign up online!

https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/jump-rope-for-heart/kids

Thursday 5th – Sarah Doret covering Rosie’s class

Thursday 19th – Open School

Saturday 21st – 50th Birthday Celebration

 

Have a lovely weekend!

Love Rosie x

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Sarah’s Class Term 3 Week 5

Posted on August 22, 2019 by Newsletter Editor

Sarah sends her apologies for the lack of news this week and will tell all the week’s news in the next newsletter!

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Leesa’s Class Term 3 Week 5

Posted on August 22, 2019 by leesaj

Hi Everyone,

Thank you to everyone who attended last Friday nights documentary ‘6 weeks to Mother’s Day’. The soup and bread was delicious, and it was a beautiful film on Thailand’s first democratic school. Our book week parade on Friday was awesome, so many costumes and lots of fun being different characters for the day.

During inside time this week we have continued to work in groups with Sarah’s class for PE. We visited the Bomb Park on Tuesday afternoon to explore some of the games and this will continue over the next few weeks. Next Tuesday could all children please wear joggers, a hat and bring a drink bottle.

On Monday we started the week with a Picasso abstract face drawing using oil pastels and crayons. These turned out amazing and the colours were jumping off the page. We will continue to explore Picasso’s life, paintings and influences over the next week in preparation for our whole school theatre excursion next Thursday. The production is called Picasso and his dog and the children will need to bring a packed lunch, drink bottle and wear enclosed shoes for this excursion.

In Mathematics we have continued to explore fractions, decimals and money. We have completed a range of activities around number lines, rounding, multiplying decimals by 1000 and worded problems.

Poetry this week involved investigating what a cinquain poem is, looking at some examples and then we had a go at writing our own. We will continue to look at a range of other poetry as the term progresses.

On Tuesday we were very lucky to have the author Jess Black visit our school. She spoke about her inspiration for her published books, which were her two daughters and the family dog. Jess then read the beginning of the novel ‘The Tales of Mr Walker’ which is about a Labrador and his adventures in a grand hotel. It was a great session with lots of questions from the children and great ideas on how to begin a narrative.

In our topic Material World we looked at materials being natural or processed. We explored that materials that have been around for a long time can still be improved by adding or removing properties. Did you know that the glass contained in our current mobile phones is called gorilla glass? It is glass that has been chemically strengthened to make it more damage resistant.

We have started to prepare items for our stall that will occur later this term. We made lavender, grapefruit and peppermint bath salts and placed these in small glass containers. Next week we will continue to make bath salts and bath bombs.

Important Dates:

That’s it for this week! Have a lovely weekend.

Leesa

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Wendy’s Group Week 5 Term 3

Posted on August 22, 2019 by wendyp

Hi everyone.

Many thanks to Sarah Dovet for taking the group on Monday and Tuesday, with help from Brooke and Corinne and Vinnie, while I attended a course called Rock and Water. It was a fascinating program, a mix of martial arts concepts, games and exercises with a strong relationship to our conflict resolution methodologies. Our group will be doing some of the games and activities in the coming weeks so you’ll hear more about it I am sure!

BOOK WEEK continues to be a great success! The dress-up parade last Friday was lots of fun and on Tuesday we had a visiting author, Jess Black, talk about her books. The children reported that they really enjoyed hearing how she based her stories on incidents from her life. Today, we have another author, David Hunt, coming to talk to us! He is also an historian and so we’ll be hearing some history as well as about the picture books he has written. We have moved our art times around this week in order for everyone to be able to have time with David. The other great success has been the bunting which all the children helped to decorate! Lots of fun celebrating the books we love!

In class, we’ve been making 3D shapes and discussing properties and features. We’ve been learning about sentences and clauses and revising punctuation and practising neat, fluent handwriting. There’s also lots of music going on in the room and some very creative games and construction activities.

The coming week is very busy! We have the first of two drumming workshops on Monday, Boori visiting on Tuesday and then a whole school excursion to the play “Picasso and his Dog” on Thursday afternoon.
Reminder that Jump Rope for Heart Day is Tuesday 3rd and PIPs are due on Friday 6th September! Canberra is 11th till 13th. Please pay now if you haven’t already.

And then the big birthday party celebrations! Please speak to Julianna if you are able to help with any aspect of this…. there is another job to do which was not included last week… please offer your time if you can help with this, especially if you are a Facebook person!

Have a great week. Love, Wendy

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Julianna Term 3 Week 5

Posted on August 22, 2019 by juliannam

Hello everyone,

Thank-you to Leesa and the parents who helped with our soup and movie night. Various people commented on what a great movie it was.

This week we have more softfall bark being delivered to top up the area around the tyres and a few bare spots. Oh what joy! More little bits of bark to fill up your washing machine.The electrician has been with us for a couple of days doing electrical tagging of all our electrics and  the plumber is coming today to investigate the smell wafting around the deck and the corner of St Elmos. Later next week Only Greens will be doing some pruning of trees along the  preschool fence. Meanwhile in the office, business as usual and working on the preparations for the 50th celebrations.

50th Birthday celebrations Many thanks for all the immediate responses requesting for Organisers, Creators and Doers!

We still need people for:

  • An immediate search for alumni students pre-2012. We have a list of parents and students with addresses only and sometimes a phone number. If there are a group of parents willing to take a couple of dozen off the list each  and start fossicking  that would be a fabulous beginning.
  • Our tea & cakes table
  • The set-up and selling of our merchandise on the day ( caps, Tea towels, bags, scarves & pens)
  • Helpers Saturday morning for set-up and decorations
  • I am sure there will be more jobs popping up as we get closer to the event

A Currambena book has been  returned in error at Willoughby City Library

Murgatroyd’s Garden  By Judy Zavos. Is there anyone that can pick it up please?

UP COMING EVENTS!

Currambena 50th Birthday Weekend Celebrations – Open school Thursday 19th Sept,

Birthday festival Saturday 21st

TERM 4 Whole school Concert at Sydney Norths Leagues Club 14th Nov

End of year social Wednesday 18th December

Cheers Julianna

Something to reflect on “who I am, how I belong and what is my influence”

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Photo of the Week

Posted on August 22, 2019 by Newsletter Editor

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Preschool News Term 3 week 4

Posted on August 15, 2019 by katrinaa

Hello everyone,

This week we’ve been celebrating book week at Currambena. Every morning the preschool children have had the opportunity to join the rest of the school for a whole schoolbook reading. Each day a different teacher reads the school a story. It’s been lovely way to further build connections in our lovely little school!

We went to Lane Cove library on Wednesday. The librarians are fantastic, managing to select and read so many wonderful stories to us. The children are very engaged and can’t seem to get enough. If anyone would like to join us on a Wednesday to help with the walk up and back, please let me know. After a group discussion and lots of voting the children have decided that half the group will select

As families in preschool will know Hugo and his family have left preschool for the next two terms to travel around Australia. Elissa, Hugo’s Mum was one of preschool’s parent reps, so we are currently in search of a new one. If you would like to assist Abi, Hazel and Pepper’s Mum in the role please send me an email or come and speak to me.

We had the Responsible Pet Ownership Education Program in preschool this week. Evelyn and her dog Charlie came and spoke to us about the importance of children never approaching a dog without its owner being present. First you need to ask the owner and then you need to ask the dog. We learnt how to act if we felt a dog was going to attack us, learning some songs and actions along the way.

We’ve had many children away this week with illness. Seems there’s a virus going around with children having high temperatures and cold and flu like symptoms. We’ll continue to enforce cough and sneeze etiquette and make sure children wash their hands. The best way however to minimise the spread of illness is to keep unwell children at home where they can rest and recover.

Don’t forget that there is a whole school, book parade this Friday. Children are encouraged to come in dressed as their favourite book character.

Thank you to everyone who’s been doing washing for preschool. Thank you also to Sienna’s Mum, Christine for the donation of some new dress ups.

That’s it for this week everyone!

Love

Katrina, Michael and Hannah

 

 

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Jess’ Class Term 3 Week 4

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Jess

Dear Parents,
I can’t believe it’s the end of week 4 already. This term seems to be flying by!

We’ve been having a lovely time with book week, starting each day with a whole school book reading. Yesterday, I had the chance to share one of my favourite and quite delightful picture books called “Some Dogs Do…” This linked in quite nicely with the NSW Dog safety programme that followed where the children loved meeting ‘Charlie’ and learning to how to pat him safely and kindly.

Thank you to Caroline and Shan for organising the library bunting for book week. Thank you also to Shan for spending the day with us on Tuesday and helping all the children across the school decorate it with book themed drawings and words. I can’t wait to see it up! The library is looking absolutely beautiful at the moment and it’s so nice that it has become a really popular place for children to visit. If you could please help your children remember to treat any books they borrow carefully and to return them once they’ve been enjoyed so that others have the opportunity to enjoy them too.

We’ve been continuing our learning with Rosie’s class on ‘The Future’ and last Tuesday we had a fabulous lesson where the children wondered what environmental, biological and technological differences we might see in the future. Aliens, webbed feet, medicine to make us live forever, flying cars, mega-skyscrapers….who knows…

For the rest of the term we will be working towards building our own future city where the children will need to design and build something to contribute. For this purpose could you please begin to collect clean and interesting materials like boxes, tubes, jewels, rubber piping and anything else you think the children might need for their constructions please? If you could please keep these interesting ‘future’ materials at home for the moment as I don’t have a lot of storage at school!

Don’t forget our adult/family film screening this Friday night. You can watch the preview on youtube to check the suitability of the film for your child. If you choose to bring your children along, you are responsible for their supervision. Teachers are not on duty. If you are coming along and can bring some soup or bread to share please drop me a quick email just so we have an idea of numbers. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend this one, but I’m sure it will be a lovely community event.

On Thursday 29th August, the whole school is going to see a puppet play called “Picasso and His Dog” at Glenn Street Theatre. We will go by coach around morning tea and spend the rest of the afternoon there. I won’t need any volunteers for this one as Jane will be with us and we’ll be staying together as a group. In anticipation, next week we’ll learn about Picasso’s life and work.

Plans are also building for our 50th anniversary celebrations. Please see Julianna if you would like to contribute your time and ideas.

And.. don’t’ forget book week dress up day tomorrow!

Love Jess

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