Kai

Kai

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Hello everyone,

Where has the year gone? This time next week it will be December! Only a few short weeks left of the school year at Currambena with loads to fit in before our time together comes to an end…. sniff, sniff.

The countdown is on and the preparations for the preschool annual end of year Thank You Afternoon Tea are beginning to build momentum. After lengthy deliberation with 32 preschool children the afternoon tea menu has been decided and we’ve begun preparing some of the food and organising the event. Thank you to everyone that RSVP’d as it’s helpful for us to know how many people we are catering for.  The very astute preschool children are ensuring they taste test many of the menu items as part of their quality control processes, so our supplies are running low.

In group time we’ve been practicing serving our guests at the afternoon tea. We’re amazed to see the children independently grouping into groups of 2 with the preschool teachers choosing one person being the server, the other the guest. It’s also lovely to see children pairing up with people they don’t usually play with, with a few new friendships developing as a result.

As always Music, Spanish and Craft have been highlights of the preschool week. The children have been working in craft sessions to create a t-shirt to wear at the afternoon tea. In Spanish they’ve continued to actively engage in Carolina’s fun Spanish lessons based on the children’s learning through Polyglots, and in Music Phil has been developing the children’s ability to interpret and read written symbols.

Thank you to Zoe, Sia’s Mum, for coming in last week and running an amazing Cheerleading class for preschool, it was a lot of fun and a great opportunity for some of the preschool children that are really interested and skilled in gymnastics to further develop their skills.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the big event, next Thursday, 2pm. If your child doesn’t usually attend on a Thursday, please bring them in at around 1:50pm to assist us with the planning.

Love,

Katrina, Michael and Lisa

 

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Hi all,

We have had an interesting week this week, we have been wrapping up our unit of work on crystals and gems. I was away sick on Monday and Sarah D and Meg ran the day together. In the morning Meg dressed up as a Miner and had made some little geode rocks for the children to break. The children loved mining their minerals and discovering different crystals. Meg and Sarah also made some icey deposits that the children mined away to find more crystals. This linked in with our persuasive writing as the children are drafting their final persuasive writing posters.

The children also had a great time walking up to swimming for a play on Tuesday afternoon. It has been amazing seeing their development in walking to the pool, swimming independently, getting dry and ready and finally walking all the way back to school.

Our Monday and Tuesday literacy groups were covered by Sarah D and Meg on Monday. For Week 8, 9 and 10 – email me your availabilities. I need one person Monday morning 9:30-9:50 and one person Tuesday morning 9:30-9:50 in week 9 and week 10. We are walking to the library on Monday afternoon, we will leave at 1:25. We are also walking to the pool on Tuesday, leaving at 1:25.

Please email to confirm if you are able to come in to help.

Next Wednesday is Summerhill Day where children choose to sign up for different activities run by the teachers. If you have an interest and an activity for about 30-45 minutes you would like to share with the children, send me an email.

Week 10 Tuesday is our Beach Day – send me an email if you are free and would like to help out!

Wishing you all a safe weekend.

Vinnie

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Hello everyone,

We’ve had a gorgeous time this week. We’ve welcomed Roxie who is currently in year 10 on work experience into our class for 2 weeks (she’s also Vinnie’s sister!). It’s been lovely to have her new energy in the room, and the children have certainly loved getting to know her.

We’ve continued exploring 3D shapes this week through modelling with plasticine and have been having fun with creative writing. Amelia took the group for a lovely lesson about worries and how they can be managed including by making worry dolls. I have since followed up with a beautiful book called “What do you do with a Problem” by Kobi Yamada.

On Wednesday there was a wonderful spontaneous lunchtime session of play which involved setting up a theatre with rows of seats and tickets to a puppet show. I love to see the children take such ownership in the classroom and to be involved in such inclusive and creative play.

Jess

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Hi everyone,

We have had a very busy but lovely week with the group, with a few new additions to our routine as we countdown the last few weeks of school, including a pillow person and Kris Kringle letters!

This week we started looking at tallying and making graphs. We looked at pages from the book we explored last week, ‘Silly Billy’ by Anthony Browne, and used the book to tally of the number of hats, shoes, birds, polka dots and worry dolls on specific pages.

We also looked at a book called ‘If…’ by Sally Perry. This book is filled with nonsensical sentences and ideas such as ‘If cats could fly…’, ‘If mice were hair…’ or ‘If music could be held’. We had a lovely discussion when we imagined one of our favourite songs, held it in our hands with our eyes closed, and pictured what it would look and feel like. Alana shared that the song she imagined was ’22′ by Taylor Swift. She described it has being red, because it is in the album ‘Red’, glittery and shiny as well because it makes her happy. The children then had their own turn at creating nonsensical sentences and pictures to match. We created a beautiful display wall of these ideas.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend and I will see you for week 8!

Amelia x

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What an eventful week we’ve had! The week started off with swimming where everyone practised various styles of swimming and safety jumping. They enjoy playing Marco Polo in the kids pool afterwards. In maths, we’ve continued our exploration of position in using grid coordinates to plan a town and create a 3D map. It was a challenging map to follow, but the children persevered and created a pop up town.

In the days following, the year 3s and 4s went on camp at Mowbray Park Farmstay, while the year 2s were split between Jess’ and Amelia’s classes. The children enjoyed boomerang throwing, in which most boomerangs came back! We went on a tractor ride to feed the farm’s eight horses. Hannah, the farmstay’s guide, talked about each horse’s personalities and background. This was interesting to know as some of the horses were bad food neigh-bours showing their greed and dominance in taking other horses’ feed. Then we went on to whip cracking which was a cracker of a time. The demonstration by Hannah looked easy, but actually trying it was another ballgame. Most of the children had a crack at it and enjoyed the noise it created and investigated different ways to create the sound.

Next we all had a go at being Robin Hoods archery extraordinaires. While archery does have a lot of drawbacks, the children cheered each other on as they hit the grass, targets and backboard. Following on, we experienced a lot of wildlife, an abundance of cows, sheep, guinea pigs, rabbits and a donkey to feed. Thank you to all the children as they treated each animal with respect and gentleness, as well as volunteering to help clean out the nursery animals’ shelters. Highlights for some of the children was the canoeing where most of them spent more time swimming, walking and capsizing than canoeing. It was an oar-some time getting stuck in the mud and beached. A special mention of each child’s determination, resilience and perseverance with working together to move the canoe around the lake and when they were beached or capsized.

On the last day, we were shown a natural horsemanship demonstration by Jacqui, co-owner of the farmstay. She demonstrated the loyalty and trust horses and trainers share with each other. As well as the non-verbal and non-touching communication that occurs after a couple years commitment of working together. What to look for in a horse that is ready for saddle riding and approaches to prepare a horse for riding. The children explored how difficult this can be initially as they played a game, where one group were horses and the other group were trainers. The trainers were given instructions that their ‘horse’ had to follow, but they had to do this without speaking or touching the ‘horse’. Some children used their hand gestures while others tried spelling out the directions. A fun and meaningful learning experience. Each night was spent watching a movie that was voted on and everyone gathered with their movie snacks to chill out together.

Thank you to the volunteer parent drivers for driving the children to and from camp, and to Gina and Jane for cooking up a feast, and joining in on the fun and experiences. Thank you to the children who went beyond their comfort zone and were amazing!

Hope everyone has a marvellous weekend,

Jo.

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Limerick by Kai
There once was a funny old deer,
Who quite liked the taste of old beer.
He looked at a star,
Got hit by a car,
That funny old beer liking deer.

Acrostic by Phoebe
Learning
Exploring
Advancing
Running
Numbers
Interesting
Never stop learning
Growing

Acrostic by Eitan
Cute
Adorable
Thing

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We are gearing up for camp now, with notes home, permission forms to return and emails full of camp information. Thank you so much to the parents who have offered to drive, camp or help with the jobs. You are all greatly appreciated. Please return the green form to me and pay the camp fee of $250 as soon as possible. We discussed agreements today and we looked at photos of Booderee earlier in the week. Excitement is building, needless to say!

Since this weekend is the second last before camp, please help the children check that they have all the camp necessities on the packing list. I do have a few cloth drawstring bags that I bought for $7 a few years ago, if anyone needs one. Plastic bags will not last the distance. Sturdy, camping plate, bowl, mug, knife, fork and spoon are essential. Let’s hope this current weather pattern moves on before we set off.

I hope you have all been enjoying reading the “My Time at Currambena” pieces from our Year 6 Leavers. This Newsletter is Kai’s turn… in his birthday week too!

We are continuing in class with our poetry exploration. Some of us have written out the whole of Rudyard Kipling’s “If -” over the past few weeks and we are continuing to read or recite poems of choice to the group. We have also looked at limericks, acrostic poems and haiku poetic forms so far. I’ll include some in this newsletter.

In Maths, we are finishing off volume and capacity, completing Unit 27 in textbooks and practising times tables as usual. It is fabulous to see how much progress the children have made in all areas mathematical over the term and the year!

PIP presentations for Term 4 have begun and I am hoping we will be able to fit them all in before camp! Topics are as varied as usual and presentations engaging and fun to see.

We were lucky to swim in the outside pool on Tuesday and I can see many of the children increasing in strength and stamina as they swim 100 metres or more each week. We practised diving and safety jumps as well this week. Some of the children are still quite resistant to putting on enough sunscreen… it would be great if you could please remind them at home how important this is now that the weather is hotter and the UV levels high all day.

Thank you to Yulia for her wonderful presentation on Thursday about her career in science. Children are always familiar with professions such as teachers, doctors, nurses, retail but careers in science are less visible. I really appreciate the time Yulia gave us preparing and presenting her session.

I think that’s all for this week!

Have a good one!

Love,
Wendy

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I started preschool in 2014, I don’t seem to remember much from preschool. I remember being good friends with Til and always playing with him and a kid named Carter. One memory I have is Patrick coming to school one day with hand sanitiser and saying if you put it on your hands and rub them together and run it makes you run faster. I also remember the huge achievement of climbing onto the cubby house roof in the bottom playground and how excited I felt that day. I remember Wendy’s class being built and I can’t believe that now I’m in the building.

I don’t remember a lot from kindergarten. I was in Jess’s class for two years, well, one and a half as I was away for eight months going around Australia. Sadly, Carter left this year but I made a new friend, Asher. Me, Asher and Til played together a lot that year. I also remember burning Amy with honeycomb. Sorry Amy :(

I don’t remember much from Rosie’s class. Eitan came and I became friends with him, and we played a lot of running games. In Sarah’s, I remember coming to school with a mullet that my brother gave me and I thought it was so cool until I saw myself in the mirror and everybody called me mullet man, so after school I went to the hairdresser to cut it off. I also remember the chickens. You would get assigned a day with a group of people to catch them and put them in the pen, and if one of the chickens wasn’t found someone would run in the class and yell “CHICKEN HUNT” and everyone would run outside and search for the chickens. We also had our first camp that year.

In Leesa’s it was Covid, and I found it so boring because I wasn’t with my friends. I remember having to make a contraption that was an everyday activity but way more complicated and I didn’t do very well. I remember watching Asher’s and being jealous of how good his was.

In my first year in Wendy’s I became good friends with Soren, Perry, Cooper, Ewan, Alex, Jana and Taal. I remember Soren somehow giving me the nickname of Kikkins and he still calls me Kikkins to this day and I remember calling him Borris, I have no idea why. I remember going to Little River. I went in a cabin with Pablo, Asher, Til and Eitan and there was a thing called Mud Mania where it was an obstacle course with mud covering all the obstacles.

This year, I became really good friends with Cooper and Ewan. In week 7 we went to Little River Camp for the second time. I was in a cabin with Asher, Til and Eitan and at 2am Asher and Eitan ran outside to the fire hose reel and thought it was Pennywise. We also made a movie, “It’s Worse Than Nuts, It’s Bananas”. We also did our last ever play. It was called “Jumanji: the Knockoff”. I had a lot of fun making this play.

My time at Currambena has been great. I love that we don’t have a uniform, we get to have a say in the rules and we get to go up to the shops on Fridays for lunch. It has taught me so many skills and I have been so lucky to have great teachers like Wendy, Leesa, Sarah, Rosie, Jess, Michael and Katrina. Currambena has been great to me and I’m sad to be leaving but also excited to be leaving and I wish all the best to the people still at this great school. Bye.

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