Prep 

INFORMATION

🍎 Prep Transition #3 - this Wednesday

We have our third Prep 2026 Transition session this Wednesday. As usual, our current Preps will head straight to the amphitheatre outside the BER with their school bags. They will spend the morning completing some fun CBL activities with their buddies.

🏊🏼‍♂️ Swimming - next week

We will be doing our one-week swimming program next week. Students are expected to manage themselves as much as possible during this time, so it’s a great idea to spend this week preparing! Please support your child to:

• Dry themselves after a bath or shower

• Dress themselves, including practising how to undo and do up buttons

• Take off their socks and place them in their shoes (this helps with finding them later!)

• Pack their own bag, so they know what they brought and can locate their belongings easily

We have included further information below about the week ⬇️

Grandparents Day is coming! - Monday 8th December, 12.15 - 1.30pm

🍭🍬Graduation Lolly Buffet Donations

✍🏼 Whiteboard markers

Some students are running low on their whiteboard markers, and a few have already finished their allocation. If you’d like to, you’re very welcome to send an extra marker to school, which we will put straight into your child’s bag for them to use. If not, students will still be able to take part in all activities using their clipboard and writing paper instead.

CURRICULUM

📚 Phonemic awareness: reading and phonics

We are learning about word endings and how to read and write them. This week, students will explore the endings –ed (as in pick → picked) and –ing (as in think → thinking).

Our focus will include:

• Learning the phonemes (the sounds the letters make).
• Practising the graphemes (how we write the letters with correct formation).
• Reading longer words 
• Reading short texts that include the focus long vowel sounds, as well as previously learned digraphs.

We will review previously learned heart words and learn the words any, many, been and into

What can you do at home?

• Help your child read the take-home book, decodable passages and Heart Words from their book pocket. Aim for fluency by the second day of reading. 

As your child reads, encourage them to recognise familiar words instantly and only sound out unfamiliar ones.

• Enjoy bedtime stories together to build vocabulary, comprehension and a love of reading.

• Work through the optional UFLI home pages if you’d like some extra phonics practise at home.

📝 Literature: reading responses and writing 

Our Mentor Text is Wombat Stew by Marcia K. Vaughan. Students will explore characterisation by looking closely at the different characters and comparing their traits. They will complete comprehension activities to demonstrate their understanding of the story. To finish the week, students will write their own creative ‘Wombat Stew’ recipe and then make a collage to match their writing.

All of our Mentor Text sessions include plenty of writing opportunities for students to apply and extend their learning. This week, they will also create another narrative using a picture prompt. Students continue to develop their handwriting and letter formation skills using their Sky, Grass, Ground writing books.

What can you do at home?

• Practise 'boss letters' and then practise its cousins (see below).

• Build in authentic writing experiences like writing a shopping list, birthday cards, wish lists or notes for family members. 

• Say it, then write it – Ask your child to say their sentence out loud first, then write it down.

• Check for capitals and full stops – Remind your child to start with a capital letter and finish with a full stop.

•  Practise writing the Heart Words, taking care to notice the tricky 'heart' parts in the word.

🔢  Maths 

This week, students are extending their understanding of shapes beyond squares, rectangles, triangles and circles. They will have fun matching shapes to spaces using tangrams and discovering different ways to sort shapes, including by their corners and edges. To finish the week, students will create a sandcastle paper construction using a variety of shapes.

What can you do at home?

• Explore shapes in the environment by finding shapes around the house, in the garden, or while out and about (eg. windows are rectangles, clocks are circles).

• Do puzzles together that require noticing shapes and, at times, flipping pieces to fit them correctly.

•Shape construction play: Use building blocks, tangrams or craft materials to make pictures or models using different shapes.

•Shape drawing and tracing: Practice drawing and tracing various shapes on paper, or create simple shape-based crafts like collages or cut-outs.

🌏 CBL - Discovery