News from Prep

Recently in Literacy, we learnt about the letters e, r, z and v. We made zebras, roosters, elephants and volcanoes. We have also been practising how to write these letters correctly in the Victorian Modern Cursive font. We practised writing the traditional lower case z as the cursive z is much harder. We will transition to this later in the year.

We have also been practising writing simple sentences using the golden words. We have used sentence starters such as, 

I can see a…

I am a …

This is a…

That is a…

I am a …

The children wrote and completed the sentence with either a word or an illustration, making sure they started with a capital letter and finished with a full stop and then read back the whole sentence to me.

We also have been concentrating on words that rhyme, specifically -at words ( fat, cat, mat, rat, sat, bat, hat, pat) and -an words (, can, man, pan, ran, van). The children had to find the pictures of the words that rhyme, for example, there were pictures of a cat, a fan, a bat and a dog. This was tricky and will require more practise.

Another area that we have focussed on was identifying the sound at the end of a word and counting how many sounds we hear in a word, for example, c-a-t has 3 sounds while b-ee has only 2 sounds.

Harmony Day is observed each year on March 21, and celebrates diversity, aiming to foster inclusiveness, respect and the idea that people of all different cultures can make a valuable contribution to society.

Orange is the colour chosen to represent Harmony Week. Traditionally, orange signifies social communication and meaningful conversations. It also relates to the freedom of ideas and encouragement of mutual respect.

We all wore a touch of orange and made a beautiful poster by cutting and decorating hands and placing them around the world.

In Mathematics, we have continued with addition and introduced 2D shapes. We are able to describe these shapes in terms of corners and edges (sides). We made a poster using a circle, triangle, rectangle, square and oval.

 We also made pigs and pizzas using only these shapes.

As part of our Inquiry Unit titled  Community, we made good use of our Year 5/6 buddies by making a portrait of our family using icy pole sticks. 

For St Patrick’s Day recently, we made a shamrock and labelled each clover with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This was how St Patrick explained the Trinity.

Also in Religious Education, the children really enjoyed watching the parable of The Prodigal Son and we discussed forgiveness.

In Literacy during the last  two weeks of Term, the letters and sounds we focused on included: Dd, Jj, Oo, and Qu. 

We made ducks and decorated donuts.

We made jellyfish and green jelly.

We made quokkas and learnt some facts about quokkas.

Facts about Quokkas

Quokkas look like they are smiling.

They are the size of a cat with a tail like a rat.

Quokkas are marsupials similar to kangaroos.

They hop and keep their young in pouches. 

Quokkas are mostly nocturnal creatures.

Quokkas are herbivores. They eat grass, leaves and bark.

They can go without water for long periods because they extract liquid from food. 

Most quokkas live on Rottnest Island off the Western Australian coast.

For the letter Oo, we made Olaf from Frozen and then squeezed fresh oranges to make delicious  juice.  

A

This is how we write these letters in the Victorian Modern Cursive font.

We have continued our work practising writing and reading simple sentences. We know we must start with a capital letter and finish with a full stop. We have been using the high frequency words can, see and the. We have also been writing simple 3 letter words, by counting and writing the sounds we hear.

 In Mathematics we have also continued our work learning about 2D shapes. We made assorted rockets out of triangles, circles, squares, rectangles and stars.

We created a magnificent Shape City. We included buildings, houses, roads, trees, cars, trucks and buses. This was so much fun and the children used lots of shape language while they were working.

During the last few weeks of Term,  we were practising for our Easter Play and looking at the events in the life of Jesus that led up to Easter. We sequenced the events of Holy Week. 

Kind Regards

Mrs Margaret Maher

Prep Classroom Teacher