Specialist News 

Visual Arts

Exciting Beginnings in Art Class! 🎨✨

The first few weeks in art class have been all about creativity, courage, and kindness! Our young artists have been learning that mistakes aren’t something to fear—instead, they can lead to new and exciting ideas. By turning ‘oops’ moments into opportunities, we’re building creative resilience and discovering that every masterpiece has a story.

We’ve also been focusing on respect—respect for our materials, our classroom, and, most importantly, each other. Taking care of our brushes, sharing supplies, and encouraging our peers helps make our art space a place where everyone feels welcome and inspired. Alongside this, we’re practicing kindness towards ourselves, knowing that every artist has their own unique style and journey.

This year in art, students will be exposed to a wide range of both historical and modern artists, art styles and art mediums and processes. Students will be encouraged to talk intelligently about art and see the beauty in the world around them. They will learn how to use the elements of art and the principles of design.

As part of our whole-school collaboration, we are working on a beautiful community collage that will be showcased at our upcoming Wominjenka Festival stall! Every student is contributing a piece, representing their creativity and connection to our school community. We can’t wait to share this special artwork with you all!

If you have any questions or concerns throughout the year, or you would like to donate to the art program, assist in hanging art, or if you have any particular art skills you would like to share with your child’s class, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can reach me on Monday’s and Wednesday’s at Bittern Primary School or via Compass. 

Stay tuned for more artistic adventures ahead! 🎭🎨

Ms. Roberts

PE/SPORT

And we are away.

PE

The Term One focus across the school is Fundamental Motor Skills. Therefore, we will be concentrating on the development areas of throwing, catching, striking, kicking, bouncing, running, jumping and their application to game situations.

Younger students will focus also on rules, boundaries and safety procedures whilst older students will beging to look towards more complicated movement sequences and various roles within teams.

St Kilda Visit

Last week we were lucky enough to have St Kilda players visit and talk to our year 4-6 students. The students asked some great insightful questions they had rehearsed, including one in Japanese.

Thanks to players; Mitch Owens, Jack Sinclair, Jackson McCrae, Ryan Byrnes, Angus Hastie and Harry Boyd. We'd post photos but unfortunately our ipad was flat.

District Swim Sports

First up is we have 11 students ready to represent the school at District Swimmming Sports being held at Crib Pool on the 27th of Feb. This for 10 year olds to 12/13 year olds.

What champions. 

Some parents have asked, why are there no trials? I'll call it evolution for now. We did have House Sports, then in school trials, then after school trials.Shrinking populations and students that are competent enough has shrunk our particpant base making logistics and ability to release teachers difficult.

The good news. Bittern PS is on the way up and we have held various District championships by being strategic in how and what we enter. In the case of swimming, you can also assist by increasig the pool of particpants in getting your child stroke competent and confident. Which is really a core safety skill all students need to possess.

Summer Lightning Premiership

This currently in week 8 and we have chosen to focus on volleyball. So stayed tuned for students to start setting, digging and spiking balls.

Mr E

Auslan (Australian Sign Language)

We are excited to get back into the new year and learn some more Auslan (Australian Sign Language). The Grade 5/6 students lessons will take place every Monday, while Foundation to Grade 5 will have their Auslan lessons on Wednesdays. These sessions provide a fantastic opportunity to learn a new form of communication, and we are already having a lot of fun practising. 

Recently, we've been signing about our holidays, sharing experiences, and learning how to express ourselves in different ways using signs. A key focus of our lessons has been on developing expressive skills, particularly the importance of facial expression when signing. In Auslan, facial expressions play a crucial role in conveying meaning and emotion, so we’ve been practising how to use our faces to match the signs we make. It’s been exciting to see the students really engaging with this aspect, and everyone is improving their ability to communicate more clearly and effectively. We look forward to seeing everyone continue to grow their Auslan skills throughout the term!

Miss Bacon

Performing Arts 

In music over the next few weeks we will be focusing on learning the song 

Shordi Krik (Shorty Creek), an indigenous song sung by the students from Barunga school on a trip to their local creek where they play and swim. Our whole school will be singing this song at assembly. We will be recording our performance to present at the Womin Djeka festival on Saturday 1st March at Emu Plains in Balnarring. 

We would love you to come along to the festival on Saturday 1st March. It would be great to have our students present their art work as well as join in on this catchy song! 

Mrs Herbert