Around the Primary Classes
ELC
Clay Echidnas
Last week, while exploring playdough, Mylah carefully inserted matchsticks into her creation. Miss Jess commented that it looked like an echidna, which sparked interest among the children. Inspired by this conversation, Stella intentionally created her own echidna using the playdough and matchsticks, demonstrating how children's ideas can influence and inspire one another during play.
On Tuesday 4 August, the children celebrated National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's Day by listening to the Dreamtime story of How the Echidna Got Its Spikes. The story captured the children's curiosity and naturally connected with their previous playdough experiences. Building on this emerging interest, the children were invited to create purposeful clay echidnas, carefully shaping the bodies and adding spikes.
This experience encouraged children to revisit and extend their prior learning while engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives through storytelling, creativity, and meaningful discussion.
Kinder
This term, Kinder are learning about Australian animals and their habitats. We are exploring Australian animals through quality literature, imaginative play in our classroom, creating beautiful artworks, playing in nature in our Nature Play sessions and visiting wildlife sanctuaries.
Prep
Weather and the Water Cycle
In Prep, we have been talking about the weather each morning and learning about the water cycle during Science Week. When we had a rainy day recently, we used our creativity to make artwork showing ourselves enjoying the rain!
Year 1
Year 1 have been learning about animals, habitats and life cycles this term. We were fascinated by the vast changes in a frog's life! Here are some sentences and oil pastel artwork about frogs.
Year 2
In Art this term, we have been talking about the impact of colour, colour families and contrasting colours.
A colour family is a team of colours that belong together! Just like you and your families share things in common, colours in the same family look alike, feel alike, or start from the same base colour.
It's an easy way to group colours together - like the Red Team, the Blue Team, or the Warm Team! Contrasting colours are colours that are total opposites! When you put them right next to each other, they clash in a fun way - making both colours pop out and look super bright, bold, and easy to see.
We used these symmetrical butterflies to demonstrate both these artistic concepts. We are also using these themes in our Arts Festival pieces. We can't wait to show you what we have been working on in Week 7.
Year 6
Already this term, our Year 6 students have visited Parliament House on two occasions. Our first visit was full of information and provided a unique and impactful experience for the girls. They were delighted to sit in the House of Assembly and participate in a role-play, allowing them to apply the knowledge they had developed about the Tasmanian parliamentary system in Term 2 and experience the workings of Parliament for themselves.
The girls were also treated to a tour of Parliament House, with highlights including sitting in the Legislative Council Chamber, meeting the Honourable Meg Webb, and visiting the Parliamentary Museum in the basement of Parliament House, which the girls found both “spooky” and intriguing!
Our second visit allowed the girls to view the House of Assembly from the Public Gallery. It turned out to be quite the sitting, as our politicians returned following a seven-week break. The girls were delighted to be welcomed by the Honourable Speaker, Jacqui Petrusma, and received plenty of waves and smiles from our politicians as they observed the proceedings. The girls then moved to the Legislative Council Chamber, where we were once again warmly welcomed by the President of the Legislative Council, the Honourable Craig Farrell MLC.
Across both visits, the girls represented Mount Carmel College with great pride and enthusiasm. These experiences have certainly fuelled their excitement for our upcoming visit to the Parliament House of Australia in September!