Classroom News - Kindergarten

Welcome to Term 3

Welcome back to Term 3! It has been great to see all of our lovely Kindergarten faces return from the holidays refreshed. We welcome Henry into our Kindergarten class this term.  All the boys and girls in Kindergarten have shown him such kindness as he transitions to our school.

This week and Monday of Week 3 we will be holding parent teacher interviews. Because of current restrictions, these will be held over zoom, from the comfort of your home or workplace! We would like to speak with all parents to discuss last semester reports, and to set goals for the remainder of the year. 

English 

Our reading has been taking off this term. We have been pushing the children in class, and it is exciting to see the reading strategies they are developing! We must thank all the families who have been returning their home reading folder and / or reading diary to receive more home readers. Reading at home has an impact and the resulting improvements are visible. Remember at this point of their reading there will be words and phrases that your child has not learnt that they will need help with when having a look through the book.

These two weeks we have met two new friends, and we are so pleased we did! u and b are two of the trickiest letters. Often children confuse the /u/ sound with the /a/ sound, as well as confusing the formations when writing. B and d reversals are the most common, and we are teaching a fun way to remember them. We have to think of a bed. If we put our thumbs up on both hands and join them together they make the shape of a bed. Our left fist makes a /b/ and our right fist makes a /d/. The picture below will help, and feel free to refer to this if you notice the reversals at home. 

Maths

This term we have been learning about whole numbers in Maths. We have been focusing on numbers to 20, while really honing in on our teen numbers. We have been learning that our teen numbers contain one group of ten and ___ more. It is a tricky concept to learn, but will make place value a breeze when learning about higher numbers. To help with this we have been using ten frames to show one lot of ten and how many more, as well as grouping things like paddle pop sticks.

To help with our number identification we had some fun and played snap with playing cards. It is amazing how fun games like snap, memory and any dice game like Snakes and Ladders or Monopoly can help with our counting and number identification. What a great way to learn!

Religion

This term we have been learning about the story of Abraham and Sarah from the Old Testament. This story focuses on the promise God makes to Abraham and Sarah, and how he fulfils his promises. While learning about this beautiful story, we have acted it out using our story box and even made our own promises!

Science

In Science this term we are learning all about forces. Some of the forces we have been looking at so far are pushing, pulling, rolling and sliding. We have investigated how size, weight and shape all impact the way something moves and we may have to use a larger force to move it. 

It may come as no surprise to you that we will be needing recycled materials again. On Monday of Week 3 (26th July) we will be making our own toy that can move. If you have any toilet rolls, lids, bottles, or anything that can roll would be ideal! Also any recycled materials that can be attached to these will be helpful too. We will be designing our toy on Friday, so you may get some instructions over the weekend with items they need. 

PDHPE

For PE this week we are lucky enough to be attending gymnastics! We will be doing gymnastics for 4 weeks on Wednesdays until we return to our regular PE that will be on Thursday. We had an absolute ball playing lots of games and learning different positions. We are looking forward to the next few weeks and seeing how much we progress with our movements and confidence!

CAPA

We are looking at fireworks this term for CAPA. We started by watching some incredible videos of different fireworks. We were in awe of the magical displays! Each firework was different from the other, in their colour and movement. Mrs McMillian showed us what a firework with streamers would look like, and next lesson we are going to have a go with streamers too! We got the opportunity to embody a firework and show how we would move. We all moved in such a variety of ways, just like the fireworks on the video!