100 Days of Prep!

Term Three is always a special one for the Lighthouse children as it is the term when we celebrate our 100th day at school. The fact that we couldn’t all be physically together wasn’t going to stop us from celebrating this momentous event. We decided it would be fun to wear party hats and party clothes to our zoom shindig and some of us decided to build cubby houses to mark the special occasion. Lots of Preshil teachers stopped by to help us celebrate and we even had a few characters from PlayWorlds past drop in to congratulate us on our big achievement. Some of us shared how we had counted out 100 hundred objects and placed them in a jar- we had tissues, beans, coffee beans, marbles, football cards, cents and lego. We discovered it takes a lot of concentration to count out 100 objects!

Memories from 100 days in the Lighthouse

Our Unit of Inquiry for Term 3 has focused around the Central Idea, "how humans use and dispose of materials has an impact on the environment". We began our inquiry by exploring how living things need each other to survive. We shared all the different connections we had to plant products in our day to day lives and spoke about the need to use these resources mindfully, or else they could run out. We shared the stories The Lorax and also Wangari’s Trees to look at examples of what can happen if a resource is not used mindfully. We were even lucky enough to have the Lorax and his glorious moustache stop by for a visit on National Tree Day to chat with us and ask how we could advocate for the trees, just like he did.

The Lighthouse Children have also been exploring the different animal products we use. Some of us drew food webs to show the complex ways that animals rely on each other. We had a go at grouping animals based on their functions and we also discovered there are many different ways that we can group animals. The children also organised plant and animal materials using a Venn diagram. Some of us placed the calligraphy brush in the middle of the diagram because it was made with horsehair and wood. We took a closer look at how honey is made and how the bees work so hard in order to produce the honey! And also how much they vomit throughout the whole process! With this in mind, we spoke about our responsibility to use products like honey mindfully and not to waste it.

The Lighthouse children will now start to investigate what happens when we have finished using these products. Where do they go? What impact does this have on the environment? To get us started, at home this week we will be doing a bin audit and sorting the waste into the following groups: food waste, paper/cardboard, mixed recycling, soft plastics and landfill. Once we have sorted the rubbish we will gather data about what we found on a tally chart, which will then be presented in a bar graph. I wonder what we will find and what action this might inspire?

How things need each other to survive

Organising animals into groups

Many of the Lighthouse children have spoken about how much they have been missing their Biggies! We decided that it was probably a good idea for us to reach out to them by writing them a letter. The Biggies were obviously thrilled at receiving their letters and wrote back to the Lighthouse children. I wonder who we could write to next?

The Lighthouse children have also been regularly checking in with themselves to see how they have been feeling, and also asking themselves, why am I feeling this way? We have been assigning colours and shapes to our feelings and we have also been listening to mindful podcasts on the smiling minds website to help us remain calm and happy during these challenging times away from each other.

Clinton Morgan & Sophia Tsolakis

The Fives Classroom Teachers

clinton.morgan@preshil.vic.edu

sophia.tsolakis@preshil.vic.edu.au

Rob's garden

Rob's work in the gardens at Arlington