Prep Team News

Hello Prep families,

We hope you all enjoyed the extended Melbourne Cup long weekend. We cannot believe we are now half way through Term Four! We are looking forward to many exciting events and activities in the lead-up to the end of the year.

Our Willy Kid theme this fortnight is ‘Willy Kids are Honest’. We read ‘Pig the Fibber’ by Aaron Blabey, and discussed why Willy Kids should be honest, and how we can demonstrate honesty at school and at home.  

Prep Swimming Program

This year, the Prep students will be participating in the Warm Water Swimming Program at Sweeney’s Swim Centre in Altona. The program is a six day “learn to swim” program, across three weeks. 

This week students came home with a note about these sessions which will take place in weeks 8, 9 and 10. Permission and payment can be completed via Compass. Please return the completed medical form to your child’s classroom teacher ASAP. In the lead up to these sessions, we recommend that students practise drying and dressing themselves at home, to ensure they can confidently complete these tasks at the end of each swimming session.

A timetable for parent helpers has been placed outside each of the Prep classrooms.  If you are able to come along and support your child’s class at a swimming session, please add your name to these timetables ASAP.  Please note, all parent helpers must have a valid Working with Children Check and have completed the online volunteer registration found on Compass.  Thank you for your support.

Please also note that on swimming days, Prep D will be unable to have lunch orders due to arriving back at school during the second half of lunch. Please pack a regular lunch box on these days. Thank you! 

Presenting Whole Assembly

In preparation for the Prep students performing at a whole school assembly in the last few weeks of term, your child brought home the lyrics to the catchy song ‘Eastern Rosellas’.  If you could please help your child to learn the words and practise with them at home, it would be much appreciated.  Apologies in advance for the earworm!

Eastern Rosellas song - listen here 

Term Four Specialists 

This Term, all Preps will attend Specialist classes. These include Visual Art, Music, French  and Physical Education. Please see the weekly timetable below.

Parents, could you please support your child to return their library books on their given day. Please also ensure your child is dressed in their P.E. uniform and is wearing runners on the day that they have P.E. Students remain in their P.E. uniform for the entire day. 

Curriculum Focus: Weeks 5 - 6

Reading - Students will continue learning about appropriate reading behaviours, including pointing to the words as we read and taking a breath at full stops. They will also discuss text features such as full stops, capital letters, exclamation marks and question marks. As part of our Little Learner’s program, students are continuing to explore digraphs, with our current focus being the long e sound (represented by the digraphs ‘ee’, ‘ea’ and ‘y’). 

Writing - Students are continuing to develop their letter formation and sound knowledge to write sentences. In particular this term, students will be reading narrative texts as a class. Students will then summarise these stories by writing a few sentences about the characters, setting, problem and solution from each text. We will also explore non-fiction texts as part of our Inquiry Unit, and use these texts to record information. 

Numeracy - Students are revising place value. We are revisiting a range of games and activities to reinforce understanding of this concept.

Inquiry - This term, our inquiry topic is ‘What do living things need to survive?’ Our big topics will include: What are living things and how do we know they are living? What do different things require to stay alive? How can we help these things stay alive? Do living things need to be in the right place to stay alive?

Homework - Each Monday, students will be given an activity to complete at home that relates to our weekly sound or maths focus. The activity in their ‘Home Learning Book’ will be collected each Friday. Homework in Prep should take no longer than 15 minutes.  

Respectful Relationships - This term, our Respectful Relationships topic is stress management. Activities will assist students to recognise and identify their own emotions, describe situations that may evoke strong emotions, recognise and identify how their emotions can influence the way they feel and act, and develop self-regulation strategies. 

Prep: Key Dates Term Four

Warm regards,

The Prep Team–Caitlin Sullivan (Prep S), Claire Davies (Prep D) & Georgia Grainger (Prep G)