Foundation News

Term 4 and hats

It has been a busy fortnight in the world of Foundation. The weeks are flying by and it's hard to believe we are in our final term of the school year. The students have demonstrated such strong growth in their holistic development and it is exciting to see this growth continue to flourish as the term progresses.

As we now have 'some' sunny days, we would like to remind all families that your child must have a hat in order to play outdoors. In Term 1 and 4 there is a strict 'No Hat, No Play' policy. If your child has misplaced their hat, please provide them with a temporary hat from home to use whilst you are sorting out a replacement school hat.

Investigations

This term, our investigative spaces have been revamped to align with our inquiry unit "How Do We Keep Safe Under the Hot Australian Sun?" and of course, based on the students current interests. The play spaces are designed for open ended use as students investigate, explore, manipulate, create and interact along with instruction in skills and knowledge in literacy, numeracy and other curriculum areas. Some of our new spaces this term include:

Florist
Ice cream shop/ cafe
Farmer's Market
Beach
Gym
News Room
Golf course design/ mini golf
Jewellery making
Road safety and construction

Each space is set with purpose to ensure there are varied opportunities for the development of the whole child that are authentic, relevant and meaningful. It is exciting to see the students are applying learnt skills during formal learning time into their investigative experiences and that their play has become more sophisticated and contextualised to their real life experiences.

Hope

Inspired by our Patron Saint, St Raphael, we have been exploring the value of 'Hope'. During our religion classes and Tuning In time, we have discussed the value and have collectively define hope as 'a belief we have inside us that can help us keep going, even when things are difficult. With the value 'Hope' in mind, the students reflected on all their learnings so far and have set new personal goals on what they hope they might learn, practise or achieve by the end of their school year.

Each morning in our homerooms, we have been selecting an affirmation card and use this as a positive mantra to live by for the day. We have found this to be an effective way to start each day with optimism and belief and a great resource to refer back to throughout the day to ensure positive collaboration and self belief is protected in our learning space.