Fabulous Foundation

Term 1 Week 6 - Friday 10th March 2023

We are already more than half way through the term, and the students are absolutely thriving! We are so proud of each and everyone for their courage and growing independence. It has been an absolute joy watching the friendships that are flourishing as they learn to communicate, share and play with one another.

We have been so excited about the arrival of our new chickens, and have been talking about how we need to have calm bodies and voices around their coop, to ensure they don’t get startled by us, as we are much bigger than them. The students have been very keen to welcome and visit the chickens during recess and lunch!

What we are learning:

Phonics (Little Learners Love Literacy)

We start each day with our Little Learners Love Literacy program, and the students are thriving with this routine! So far, we have learnt the letters m, s, f and a. Throughout the next fortnight we will be learning the letter p and t. We have been learning our heart words, My, my, I, and The, and have been learning about when we use capital and lowercase letters. We have also been learning how to ‘clap out’ words when we are sounding out new words. It would be great for you to practise doing this with your child at home!

Writing:

During writing, we are getting better at the correct posture when sitting on our chair, and how to use our crocodile grip to correctly hold onto our pencil. We are also working on tracing letters, especially those that we are focusing on in our phonics lessons. We have also been enjoying our ‘Mat Man’ exercise during writing. This song allows students to sing along as we create all of the lines and shapes that are used in writing our letters, a fabulous and engaging pre-writing activity!

Reading:

We continue to have a weekly mentor text in reading. This week we are reading a sesame street book called “H is for homes”, which explores the different houses that people live in around the world. We read this text each day exploring different parts of the text. We have been adding various words to our word wall each week and students have been using these words to create their own sentences. The new words from this weeks mentor text are underground, world and home. We have also been learning about syllables and clapping our syllables in our names and words from our word wall. As always we use prediction to have a guess about what the story will be about and ask questions about the text before, during and after it to support their comprehension. We end the week by asking ourselves if we liked the book and why. When reading at home, this is a great way to end a reading session, helping us to improve our reading comprehension.

Mathematics:

In maths, the students are having so much fun learning how to countdown from 10, using a rainbow parachute to ‘blast off’ when we reach 0. We have also been learning about ‘tall and short’ things. We have ordered ourselves in height order, and we went on an adventure outside to find 3 objects that we could put in order from shortest to tallest.

Inquiry:

In Inquiry, we are proudly exploring the different types of family celebrations. This includes, Birthdays, Ramadan, Easter and Hannukkah. Please could each family in Prep send in ONE photo of their family that your child can show to their class? This can be a simple family photo or a family photo at a birthday/wedding/Christmas etc. We will then display our ‘class family photos” in our classroom.

We have planned to do this activity Week commencing 13th March.

Please feel free to email the photo to Narelle or Michaela

Leader In Me:

We have continuously been using 7 Habit language when we are in class and out in the yard. In prep, we have been focusing on ‘ Be proactive: You are in charge of yourself’ and ‘Synergise: Work together to do better’. We have realised that when we help each other, and work together to clean up our classroom, it gets tidied much quicker and looks much better at the end!

Specialist Days:

Monday - Health

Tuesday - Art/Culture & Music

Thursday - Art/Culture & PE

Friday - Auslan

Important reminders

*Week 7 is the first week that prep students come into school on Wednesdays.

* Monday the 13th is Labour day public holiday, and Tuesday 14th is a student free day, so we will see all of the lovely prep faces on Wednesday 15th!

*Please continue to check the blue pouches nightly, as we use these to send notices home

*We are finding that some jumpers are being taken home with the wrong name on it. If you could please check your child's jumper to ensure it has their name on it, that would be fantastic!

*Please ensure that your child has a substantial lunch such as a sandwich/roll/wrap or thermos for example for lunch along with a snack (cracker/yoghurt) and fruit or vegetables.

*Hats need to be worn for every lunch and recess outside play, if your child does not have a hat they know they need to stay under the undercover shelter outside. *Please be sure to put on sunscreen each morning before arriving at school.

*Daily we have a fruit break, we kindly ask that you please pack your child a piece of fruit or a vegetable to snack on during this time.

*Please have your child’s drink bottle filled with water only.

Foundation Photos