school life

foundation art

In the artroom Foundies have been exploring colours and how they make us feel. We largely agreed that yellow is a happy colour and we described the different types of happiness to match different yellows in artworks, from excited-fireworks-happy to the warm-comforting-happy of playing on the beach on a sunny day. We noticed how differently the world looked, and how differently we felt, looking around outside through yellow cellophane. We’ve worked individually and collaboratively to paint and draw what happiness looks like, and made 3D mixed media ‘happiness explosions’. This week we started looking at artworks that use blue to portray and evoke a range of more ‘quiet’ feelings.

While I have your attention I’d love to ask for your help in collecting plastic packing strips (the firm plastic ribbon that comes fastened around boxes) for an art project in term 4. If anyone works in a large office that orders boxes of photocopy paper, or a store or warehouse that throws always lots of packing strips I’d love to save them from landfill (for now) and give them a second life. Donations big or small can be dropped off in the art room. If possible, please keep them ‘straight’ rather than twisting or rolling them up.

You can follow what Foundies get up to in the artroom on Twitter @bnwps_foundyart

Kate McCormack

Foundation Art Teacher

news from NF

Last Wednesday was International Day of Families.

It celebrates the importance of families, people, societies & cultures around the world.

1/2A reflected on what family means, discussed the importance of family in society, reminded students that all families don’t look alike and increased awareness of families confronting challenging issues.

As a school we are working towards the ResourceSmart Schools Sustainability Certification and are presently targeting our ‘Waste Checklist’. 1/2A wanted to share the activity they completed for Autumn Family Fun Day.  Their goal was to include an element of sustainability, cultural safety & security and whole school community engagement.

Using recycled materials salvaged from the school community 1/2A made the following flags -

maths from EC

gardening / STEAM – term 2

Foundation

Foundation students in Term 2 Gardening / STEAM will be working on lots of creative activities around the theme of ‘patterns’. We will explore a variety of visual patterns that can be found in nature, including linear and branching patterns, explosions,

spirals, symmetry, fractals & tessellations.  This helps students appreciate the variety of amazing features that living things display, while also preparing students for an understanding of the less visible patterns in nature, such as the water cycle, which we explore more in later years.

Juniors

Term 2 of Gardening / STEAM will continue to see students exploring their outside world, with a primary focus on the weather. We will be observing changes in the sky and landscape, thinking about how daily and seasonal changes affect us and the living things around us; use technology to enhance our weather observations; participate in guided investigations to explore and answer questions relating to the weather; and develop skills in how to communicate our observations and predictions to others.

Middles

Students in the middle years will extend their inquiry focus of ‘survival’ into Gardening / STEAM class, as we get our hands dirty in the productive garden this term. We will be thinking about what living things (including humans) need to survive and how to obtain those needs in diverse and sometimes extreme conditions. Students will need to work together in teams as we tackle building projects, cook up a storm and dig into some scientific investigations to solve problems and answer questions about situations of life & death. Parent helpers would be particularly helpful during (Monday) classes from week 5 onwards this term, so please send me an email or Sentral message if you think you can help out for a class or more: Adams.Ian.I@edumail.vic.gov.au.