Julianna Term 4 Week 4

Posted on October 28, 2021 by juliannam

Hi Everyone,

Thank you to those people who have been doing maintenance jobs around the school every little bit counts and saves on employing a tradesperson.

For anyone still wanting to come and do some work in the weekend the drains have been cleared at the entry points at the front gate and on the basketball court. Weeding behind the classrooms of Sarah, Leesa, Jess and Emma has been cleared. Looks so much better! Please look to the Maintenance list for jobs still not done.

 

Have a lovely weekend

Cheers Julianna

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Preschool News: Term 4 Week 4

Posted on October 28, 2021 by katrinaa

Hello everyone,

Seems for the most part we’re all back in the swing of things at preschool, which is fantastic. There’s such a lovely vibe in our class at the moment. Everyone is so eager to connect with each other and the environment. The days seem to be flying by now as they are so jam-packed. Often we’re running out of time to fit everything we’ve planned for our day in!

We’ve started group times with the children, picking up exactly where they left off. We’re hoping that we can finish the astronomy program we started in term 2, though it’s going to be somewhat condensed. We’ve done a quick review of what we learned previously. It’s fantastic to see the children recalling that stars need Hydrogen for energy to live, and when they use up all their Hydrogen they turn into red supergiants before collapsing inwardly and then exploding. Nebulae, molecular clouds, and nuclear fusion were all topics of discussion throughout our review of astronomy this week.

We’ve been blessed with some beautiful warm weather this week that’s enabled us to get stuck into some gardening. Our preschool space seems to really be coming alive with all the beautiful flowering plants’ Oscar’s Mum, Jane, brought in for us. The hands-on experience the children are gaining throughout these experiences is really valuable, enabling them to take ownership and pride in our play space. It’s been wonderful to see the children carefully tending to the garden as they settle into preschool each morning.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been participating in some PD relating to collaborative partnerships between preschool and school as many of our children make their transition to primary next year either at Currambena or at schools in our local community. What I found most valuable in regards to this was shifting our mindset in regards to COVID-19 and lockdown, focusing on not what children have lost, but what they may have gained. Valuable time with their families, learning different ways to connect with others, and time to slow down and enjoy the simple things.

A humongous thank you to Oscar’s Mum and Dad, Jane and Andrew, for taking down the old fence paneling and placing up some new sheets while we wait for quotes for a new fence. They’ve also done a substantial amount of gardening around preschool which is looking so lovely!

A reminder to all families to please label everything your child brings into preschool to ensure it’s returned to you should your child misplace it. We also need everyone to back a broad-brimmed or legionnaire style hat for your child as well as apply sunscreen to them before coming to preschool in the morning. We’re getting the children to reapply it every 2 hours after this throughout the day.

That’s it for this week!

Love

Katrina, Michael, and Lisa

 

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From Jess Term 4 Week 4

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Jess

Dear Parents,
Wow – the children are certainly excited to be back! The classroom has had a very high level of energy all week with the children choosing a lot of running, chasing, adventuring, and cubby building games.

In classroom matters, we’ve begun looking at multiplicative thinking, sharing, and grouping, with the children learning about ‘groups of’ to make decisions about how to make things fair. Literacy stations have begun again this week and I’ve been delighted to hear all the children read in person and have noted the progress every single one of them has made during remote learning. Thankyou once again for all your support with this. Reading folders have now been sent home, so please take some time to read with your child for just 5 minutes each night. Now that remote learning has finished for the year, I’ve also given you all full access to the online Wushka program. If you find it easier, or if you prefer the titles, you can choose to use Wushka to access home reading books instead of the books that come home in the reading folders.

Our concert preparations have begun very slowly, and given that I’m not sure what sort of event I’m preparing the children for, progress has been slow. I suspect that the show/performance/celebration this year may not have quite the polish of previous years, but with everything that has been this year, I’m certain everyone will be delighted to see any sort of end of year celebration.

The silkworms have hatched and there are thousands of them! I forgot that raising silkworms is an exponential exercise with each year producing a significantly higher number of eggs than the last. Hopefully our poor old mulberry bush can keep up with the demand for fresh leaves…

The children voted to have a ‘Welcome Back’ class party today, so as you read this, it’s likely we will be boogying along to some ‘kids pop’ tunes on Spotify.

Have a happy weekend,
Jess xxx

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Emma’s Class Week 4 Term 4

Posted on October 28, 2021 by emmab

Dear Parents,

Let the drama begin! We’ve been enjoying lots of drama games and activities this week to get the creative juices going as we start to think about creating a class play. I’ve talked with the children about how COVID-19 unfortunately needs to be included into our decision making about how and when the classes share their plays with the school community. While some things are beyond our control, we at least have control over the devising of the play itself. Over the next few weeks, we will be developing a performance together and hope to be able to communicate more details very soon. In the meantime, it’s been so much fun playing and creating together already.

The children are just loving all the time they have to play with each other and we have been slowly getting back into slightly more rigorous learning experiences, however I’m doing this very gently as we’re still adjusting to life after lockdown and I feel it’s really important for them to build upon their friendships and make new connections.

The class voted to have a Soft Toy Picnic next Free Friday 5th November. The children are invited to bring a soft toy and a picnic rug if they would like to.

After a beautiful week of spring weather at school, I hope the weekend is just as nice for you all.

Emma

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Sarah’s Class Week 4 Term 4

Posted on October 28, 2021 by sarahm

And just like that…. we’re back!

It was absolutely delightful to welcome the children into their classroom on Monday morning. I bottled the look in their eyes (as they walked through the door), wide with relief and excitement to be back and a little anticipation at what was to come. The first thing we did was all agree on the strangeness of being back at school together after such a long hiatus. Some shared news and then we began slowly winding the cogs to get the practice of collaborative learning back into motion. Totally as expected, it was a slow start, and at times throughout our first day it may have felt exhausting and arduous. However, the light bulbs started to flicker on Tuesday as I saw more of them starting to relax and go with the flow. I commented to one child as they took a deep sigh “Is it all starting to come back to you now?” “Yeah” they nodded calmly.

So, in our first few days together the children interviewed each other to discover the highs, lows, and interesting parts of their lockdown. This was a nice ice breaker which got them moving around the room engaging with each other. We began creating a wall display for our unit on Earth and Space and started the process of making paper mache planets. We pulled apart a new list of words also related to this topic for our weekly spelling, and practised drawing 2D shapes as accurately as we could. We also discovered different types of triangles and that some shapes can be regular and irregular. We had a Zoom incursion on the planets which had been booked a few weeks ago and saw some fabulous visuals of planets up close and personal. Our first class meeting mainly focused on explaining to Josh H how our class meetings operate. He said he has now ‘officially’ started at Currambena because he is ‘officially’ at the school. We also discussed the school concert and what it could potentially look like. We talked about the most important aspects of our concerts and what would everyone like to work towards and achieve within the confines of time and Covid restrictions. The outcome for my group is that they were all very excited to perform a play. So with that response we will get to work and hopefully make some kind of magic happen!?

An important reminder: Could you please make sure your child has a hat which can be left at school. Also, if they are allergic to generic sunscreen to pack their own. Thankyou!

And that’s a wrap for this week folks!

Take care and have a gorgeous weekend.

Sarah x

 

 

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Leesa’s Class Term 4 Week 4

Posted on October 28, 2021 by leesaj

What an exciting time we’ve had being back together these last few days! The classroom has been filled with laughter, chatter, discussions, and joy. Plasticine world has resumed with a Halloween ball, handball and outdoors games are back, and a new class novel ‘The Land of Stories’ by Chris Cofler is being enjoyed in our afternoons.

This week, we started a new Mathematics topic on volume and capacity. We revised the measurements for each of these concepts, including fractional and decimal forms.

Our sound for this week was ‘ou, ow’ as in cloud and flower. The children completed a range of activities on rhyming words, synonyms, antonyms, and breaking the sounds up of different list words.

On Tuesday, we explored onomatopoeia in different poems and how these words name sounds. We also completed an experiment on which crayon we should take to the beach. This experiment was part of our previous Science topic States of Matter which we completed during home learning. The children made predictions about which of the five coloured crayons would melt the slowest. Black, white, blue, green, or yellow. After taking off the paper, we then timed how long it would take for each crayon to melt with a hair dryer on a low setting. Lots of discussions occurred about why black melted the fastest and white melted the slowest.

The children completed an artwork of their representation of a particular planet or the Solar System for display in the classroom. A range of information and facts were shared during this time. Next week, we’ll be looking at shadows and sundials and using the outdoor space of the school. Could all children please remember to bring a hat for these sessions.

Throughout the week, as a class, we’ve had discussions about our end of year play. Due to current restrictions, we don’t know exactly how this will be shown, however, we are starting to write our script and the children are eager to start thinking about costumes and props.

Thankyou to Vinnie for taking the class today while I’m away. That’s it for this week. Have a lovely weekend!

Leesa x

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Wendy’s Group Week 4 Term 4

Posted on October 28, 2021 by wendyp

Hi everyone.

We have been having a wonderful time this week. It’s so good to have everyone back on site and the playground filled with children and activity. There was a massive game of Capture the Flag yesterday and we were even able to have Buddies (outside) on Tuesday!

This week, we start our My Time at Currambena pieces in the Newsletter. Each of our Year 6 leavers will write about their Currambena experience for the Newsletter and we’ll include some photos from our collection. I hope you all enjoy reading what they write.

Our week has been filled with lots of chatting and games, Lego in the classroom, listening to stories, and getting back into our classroom routines. We are continuing to look at media and different ways of accessing stories, including, of course, drama… and we’re starting to develop our end of year play. This is such an important part of our year and the creative ideas are emerging thick and fast! It’s a secret though… so no more details yet!

In Maths, we are completing work on angles and shapes and doing some more on time, which links beautifully with our study of the Solar System.

We have also been talking about camp possibilities. Thank you to those who popped in for the Zoom meeting on Monday night and apologies again for the lack of clarity in my email. Once we are certain about camp actually going ahead, I will hold another meeting especially for those who are wanting to come and spend time with us there. I have requested a change of date at each of the venues I have tentatively booked (Bendalong, Booderee, The Basin and Lane Cove Discovery Park) in the hope that the later week (Monday, 6th December to Friday, 10th December) might make it more possible – in other words, we might be permitted actually to go. It also makes it easier for us to choose a date for the school concert… in whatever form we are able to have this!

Yesterday, Olivia started with us in our classroom as an assistant during our morning session. It was lovely to work with her again! We are all very sorry to lose Rowena this year, although there was a spontaneous round of applause in the room when she told the group she is expecting a baby! All very exciting!

Have a great week.

Love,
Wendy

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My Time at Currambena by Kiyanush

Posted on October 28, 2021 by wendyp

Hi, I’m Kiyanush for those that don’t know and I have been at Currambena for eight years.

I don’t remember much from preschool but my Mum said I liked playing with the plastic toy trains. In Sue’s class, I liked reading and playing with Lego and wooden blocks. In Marius’s class, I did my first PIP on America. In Sarah’s class, I played with polydrons. In Louise’s class and Leesa’s class, I liked the rats and climbing the rafters. In Wendy’s, I like algebra and 70 word spelling tests.

My friends were Charlie, Jai, Jay, Sean, Miro, Julian, Noah, Perry, Soren, Taal, Ewan and Cooper.

I liked Summerhill Days because I got to choose what to do. I liked Currambena because I got to do work at my level, I got to do Summerhill Day, the teachers and students were really nice and everyone knew each other much more.

I am sad to leave Currambena but happy to start high school at Steiner. I didn’t like online school at all because I was on screens for too long and I’m glad to spend my last weeks at school.

My favourite memory was making my first belt out of leather in craft. I was in Sue’s class at the time and had lots of fun.

And that’s my time at Currambena.

From Kiyanush

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Emma’s Class Week 3 Term 4

Posted on October 21, 2021 by emmab

Dear Parents,

After all the excited anticipation and nervous energy around our return to school, the children just got straight to business once they arrived and didn’t look back. I was delighted to see how much they enjoyed seeing each other again and how natural it was to launch straight into their favourite games and activities. It was also wonderful to welcome Remarius to our ‘real’ classroom. We have all come to know a him as a member of our ‘virtual’ classroom, but it was very special to finally have him with us at school.

This week we have been focusing on settling back in and we will be having a little ‘Welcome Back’ party in the classrooms this afternoon with games and (individual!) serves of popcorn. We have also dipped our toes into some addition strategies and started to decorate the branches of our new class ‘Poe-tree’ with imaginative poetry creations.

I’ve found getting used to wearing a mask all day in the classroom a little tricky. Although the eyes may be the window to the soul, I’ve realised that I use the rest of my face a great deal to communicate. My eyebrows have been working overtime! A number of the children have chosen to wear masks in the classroom and I have been supporting them in this choice.  I have also been reminding the children about sun safety and to wear a hat when playing outside, however a number of them don’t have hats at school. Please make sure your child has a hat at school with their name clearly labelled on it.

Have a great weekend everyone,

Emma

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Photo of the Week Term 4 Week 3

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Newsletter Editor

Sarah NL 2021 T4W3 Scarlett in Lockdown Term 3

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