Jess’ class Term 2 Week 8

Dear parents,

What a busy and fun week! The highlight was of course the excursion into our beautiful harbour city. The itinerary worked like clockwork and the children managed themselves very well given the large amount of walking and some periods of waiting for the ferry/ lollies/ toilets etc. Sydney certainly put on a good show with beautiful weather and when we reflected on our favourite part of the day, the children mentioned everything from the bus and ferry ride, the lolly-making, playing on the cannons under the bridge and the sketching of the cityscape. It was lovely that some parents could visit us at Dawes Point Reserve for lunch. A huge thank you to our wonderful parent volunteers who were with us for the whole day, we really could not have done it without you!

In English, we had fun practicing when to use the articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’. The children enjoyed sticking the right article on objects around the room including themselves, their clothes and their body parts.

We learnt that the word ‘quadrilateral’ is the word for any 2D shape that has four straight sides, four vertices and four angles. It was good fine motor practice, to use pipe cleaners and straws to create these for our front door display.

In our lesson about oceans, the younger children had fun with a small science experiment that demonstrated how penguins keep themselves dry and warm with a coating of waxy feathers.

Looking around the classroom this week, I noticed that it is covered in children’s work, lists, signs and instructions. To the untrained eye, these random scribbles can look messy, but they are actually indicative of the children feeling ownership over their space and they are often quite meaningful. I really resist the urge to take anything down that children have chosen to display until I’m sure it’s obsolete.

Happy times!
Jess