Specialist Subjects

Physical Education

GYM P-2

The term kicked off with our junior grades attending their gymnastics lessons. It's always great to see so many kids having fun and learning lots of new skills. 🤸‍♂️

TABLE TENNIS

Grades 2-6 then had a go at table tennis. Mr Mayes kindly gave up the music room for two weeks and we had heaps of fun. It's the first time we've done table tennis as part of the PE curriculum and it was great to see the kids having a go at what can be quite a challenging sport. Safe to say, I've already booked it in with Mr Mayes for next year. 🏓

DIVISION CRICKET BLAST

We had 3 teams enter the Division Cricket Blast Competition. Coached by Mr Jacobs, Mr I and Ms B, the kids had lots of fun out at Catherine McAuley College in Junortoun. Mr Jacobs cut a frustrated figure as Mr I's and Ms B's teams both tasted success 🏏

BIKE ED.

Grades 3-6 students completed four sessions of Bike Ed. over a four week period. We worked on riding skills, bike and road safety and in week 8, put it all together for a nice, long ride to the Botanical Gardens. It is always amazing watching kids learn how to ride a bike during these lessons 🚲

Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy your holidays 🎅

Important Dates Coming Up:

Term 4

HOLIDAYS!!!

- Mr. Smyth

Music

Grade 5-6 -

What a fantastic end to the year! The Grade 5 and 6 students were tasked with pooling everything that they had learned over the year regarding all the instruments, song structure and performance, to create their own original song.

The vast majority of performances were amazing, with several having jaws drop with how good they sounded. They blew me away!

Grade 1- 4

Every second year, the Grade 1-4 students create a Christmas Rap album, creatively titled "Christmas Rapping"... I'll pause to let you recover from the cleverness of the title.

The students are tasked with generating unique ideas for the raps (not boring or generic ones) and then they vote on which one they like the best. This year features songs like "AI Christmas Curse", "World War Tree" and "Santa Gets Captured (Twice!)".

Then we brainstorm ideas of things could happen in the song, before I go and write the raps to fit some royalty free beats.

Finally, we record the students rapping their lines before it is edited together and uploaded for all to hear.

You can listen to and download the album to keep from our school's Bandcamp page, here:

https://epsomprimaryschool.bandcamp.com/

Grade Prep -

Prep students finished the year off playing various drama games to build a sense of resilience and teamwork. They also played several of our instruments, selecting appropriate notes to play along with various Christmas songs.

Thank you, students and families, for another outstandingly fun year. So many of the students developed their musical skills in a huge way and I can't wait to keep it going next year. 2025 sees the return of our EPS Production for ALL Grades 3-6 students, but more on that next year.

Have a safe and happy Christmas!

-Mr. Mayes

Visual Arts

Another wonderful year in the art room has come to an end. We stepped outside of our comfort zone this term with many grades exploring textiles and fabrics with projects, skills and preparation tasks for 2025. As always we have been blown away by the immense creativity of our students, but more so of the incredible growth that so many of our artists have shown, if the final term is anything to go by, 2025 is going to be big in the art space. Thankyou to all of our students for sharing their works from home, their passion and love for just being creative and free. The student gallery will get a reset of the holidays so come back ready to showcase and display your works.

Wishing all of our artists a safe and colorful holiday break!

-Mr.Pocock

Auslan

Students have been learning about entity.

An entity handshape can be used to represent people or objects. The 1-handshape could represent a person, a flat palm facing down becomes a motor vehicle, or 1-handshape with palm facing down could depict an animal.

Below are some different examples of entity, including person (hand with only pointer finger up vertically), transport (flat hand, horizontal) and a football/soccer ball (pointer finger only one up). Although these signs can be used to show how many things you’re talking about, they are used to show different actions that that particular entity are doing.

Thanks for a wonderful 2024, Merry Christmas and have a safe and happy New Year!

-Miss E