Specialists

Science week

The HEPS community celebrated Science week last week with students enjoying a range of activities across all grade levels. The activities ranged from dancing with AI generated robots, coding mazes and stories, listening to a story from a science research boat, exploring chemical science, making circuits, exploring light and sound and robotics and engineering a range vehicles and structures. The week ended with our annual grandparents and special person day, where students enjoyed sharing their passion for science with our special visitors.

Please enjoy some photos from throughout the week.

Production Props in the Art Room

Production is creeping closer and the art room is full of props and T-shirt costumes that we have been excitedly preparing! Every class has been getting involved, while we use lots of paint, glitter, paste and sticky tape to make, create and decorate the costumes and props. Tee shirts have been screen printed and decorated, tortiose shell ‘hats’ are painted, table place settings with giant cultery arranged, sunflower scultpures covered in papier mache and painted, giant trees and buildings designed, signs made and lots of other props are being finalised. Our HEPS value of teamwork is being demonstrated in the art room every day by students who are working together so well to create everything we need for the stage! Our community has also been heavily involved with making props and assisting me with production related tasks this term, so I would like to extend my thanks to all the parents and carers that have volunteered – you are so appreciated and I know your children love having you here to help during art lessons! Please enjoy a few photos and a sneak peek of some of the props and costumes!

Art News

Foundation, Level 1 and Level 2

We have been learning all about different types of LINES! Lines are everywhere! We have talked about them, searched for lines in the Art room and all around us, drawn them in different ways and even sung a song about them (search The Line Song, Scratch Garden to listen and sing with your child/children)! All students explored oil pastels and the resist technique with a water colour wash over the top.

Foundation students have created friendly little line monsters with ears, goggly eyes and a toothy grin! 

Level 1 have been learning about abstract art works using a variety of lines.

Level 2 showcased their use of lines inside an animal shaped outline. 

Level 3 

Students began the term reading The Colour Monster story by Anna Llenas and responding with an artwork. They followed this by drawing a simple, symmetrical shape on folded paper and cutting it out to create a positive and negative composition. They were challenged to create an artwork using positive and negative space with a theme, such as nature, or shapes, things you find in the kitchen, or food and so on. The students had fantastic ideas to contribute to our discussions and chose their own theme, drawing only the outline of their positive space in their sketchbooks on their plans. There are a few steps to follow and their art is progressing well towards the final painting stages.

Level 4

Collagraphs, textures and printing have been explored by students this term. It’s been wonderful to hear the gasps of delight from the students as the paper is peeled back from the collagraph and the printed texture is revealed! We discovered that some textures print better than others, but it is also important to get just the right amount of paint on the roller and finally apply the correct pressure by hand to smooth over the collagraph to make the print. So much learning and discovery has resulted in some impressive, printed artworks. 

Level 5 and Level 6

Students have explored tonal quality using a variety of mediums, such as grey lead, colour pencil, oil pastels and paints. They mixed and blended paints to create light, medium and dark tones and all the tones in between. 

Level 5 students chose either a cube or a hexagonal style artwork to show off their mixed tones and brush work. 

Level 6 students created a geometric composition using washi tape to mask areas before painting. Pattern and detail were added using paint pens in complimentary or contrasting tones. 

International Craft Club

Our International students enjoyed exploring different crafts during Thursday lunchtimes. They chose coloured wool to wind around two sticks to create a kite to hang up as a decoration. They also made marbled paper – a technique where dye floats on the water and is then transferred to paper. Many patterns and colour combinations were created with all of them unique and interesting. 

EAL

This fortnight we say goodbye to the last of our international students. We have been so lucky to have had so many wonderful students and families. Thank you to everyone who has helped to support these families, thank you to our HEPS students who have helped with translations and for being such wonderful smiling faces in our classrooms, thank you to the wonderful HEPS staff for being so flexible and friendly in helping our international students settle into our classrooms. 

Thank you to Mrs Hayes for encouraging this great meeting space and for giving up her time to run this club.

SPORT

After the level 3-6 students attended an amazing workshop incursion delivered by Downball Australia, which is owned by Ex-HEPS school captain Noah Philp, a team of 20 students were selected to represent our school in the first ever state Downball tournament on Friday 11th August. We walked down the hill to the Maroondah Nets to participate in the tournament. The students played multiple games both in their teams and as individuals. All students did extremely well and displayed great sportsmanship to the referees and opponents. A special mention goes to Harry Simkin who was successful in his individual endeavours and made it to the overall individual final, however a controversial decision saw his campaign to become state champion come to an end in 5th place. Congratulations to all involved and we look forward to more downball opportunities next year.