Jess and Susan’s Class Week 2 Term 1

From Jess:

There has been a lot of interest in building marble runs this week. The children discovered that the metre rulers have convenient slots through the middle, which allow marbles to travel effectively around the classroom. This has become a fun group activity that supports community building. Outside, in the sunshine, the children have also enjoyed mixing nature-based scents and sharing them with each other.

We learnt how to read large numbers this week with some children able to read numbers into the trillion! Once they learnt the trick, there was no stopping them…

We also started our class novel, “Blueback” by Tim WInton and shared our knowledge of figurative language. The language in the book is quite descriptive and the vocabulary can be difficult so the children are doing a great job of listening and engaging.

I’m very pleased with how the children are interacting and it’s been lovely to see new connections being made each day. Hopefully the little cold that went around the class has run its course and we have everyone feeling better next week.

From Susan:

On Tuesday this week, we charged up to the pool in record time and got lots of swimming time in. Special thanks to Jane, Oscar’s mum, for walking with us and assisting with some swimming instruction. We started in the lap pool with some floating assessments and progressed to demonstrating some lap swimming in any chosen stroke. We then moved to the leisure pool for some free play.  As the weeks progress we will practice some more safety skills, work on some stroke development and hopefully improve some stamina. Please remember to pack goggles, and it was wonderful to see so many practical shoes for walking up and getting dressed quickly to maximise time in the pool. Also, a reminder that we don’t get changed at the pool, so pack something to throw over a damp cossie for the walk back to school.

Thursday was action packed with measuring how far we could spit a sugar plum seed (with hygiene measures in place, of course) and introducing perimeter.  Elders started PIPs and the younger ones watched a video on poisonous plants and took some notes. We continued the ERICS and handwriting program and played a new game called backwards noughts and crosses.

Have a happy weekend

Jess and Susan