News from Prep

Recently, we had our Junior camp experience. We spent the morning at the Melbourne Aquarium where the children learnt lots of interesting information about sea life. 

 After the Aquarium, we came back to school and had a delicious afternoon tea followed by an Art activity.  

We made our own aquariums. 

We had Tacos for dinner and ice cream. Then we got into our pyjamas and set up our sleeping bags and pillow ready to watch ‘Finding  Dory’. It was a big day, but the children were so well behaved. Below are some reflections from the children of the day.

Our Junior Camp Experience was so much fun. It was a fun day. I liked it a lot. I thought we were going to stay the whole night but we didn’t. I really liked the penguins at the aquarium.  I liked the sharks too.

Tiana

I saw the penguins.  They were my favourite.  I really liked the movie. We watched ‘Finding Dory’

Juliette

I liked dressing up in our pyjamas and getting into our sleeping bags. I liked seeing the jellyfish. I liked going on the bus. I sat next to Cynthia.

Jasmine

I liked going on the bus and going to the Aquarium . I liked watching the movie ’Finding Dory’. 

Sonia

My favourite bit was watching the movie and going in my sleeping bag. I liked seeing the stingrays the best at the aquarium.

Lucas

I liked the aquarium  and seeing the sea stars and sea dragons and the penguins.

I liked having ice cream after dinner. For dinner we had tacos. They were yummy. 

Emily

I liked the bus the best. I had never been on a bus before. I loved the sharks too.

Gabriel

At Assembly, we presented some of our favourite pieces of work from this semester. It has been a long time since we’ve had a whole school Assembly, so it was good to be able to share some of our work.

For our Narrative unit, we looked at the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Once we had discussed the lesson of the story, which is that the troll was left with nothing because he was greedy, we all took part in a play. Using masks, we retold the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff where we put on angry troll voices and used language we remembered from the text. 

Later in the week we used craft materials to make troll sock puppets. We discussed the characteristics of the troll and how we could use materials to replicate its scary features. Afterwards, we wrote about trolls, using adjectives such as grey, angry, big and scary. 

We continued our journey through measurement in Mathematics by taking a further look at mass and estimating. In class we worked in pairs and picked items to compare and make guesses about which was heavier and circled this in green.

We then tested our guesses by using balancing scales and then marked which item was actually heavier in red. This was a fun way to check our own work! 

In Spelling, we have been studying ‘th’ words. Some words have a soft ‘th’ sound as in ‘thong’ and ‘thunder’ and some words have a harder ‘th’ sound as in ‘feather’, ‘this’ and ‘that’. We played some fun flashcard games to help us learn them.

We have also been looking at words that end in -ock and -od. The children brainstormed some great words, for example sock, dock, shock, lock and clock.

As part of our Wellbeing Day we made pasta wreaths and they have been sprayed gold. These would make a good addition to the Christmas table or on the front door.

We also decorated our classroom. We have a nativity scene, a Jesse Tree and an Advent Wreath and of course we all decorated our own classroom Christmas Tree.

To practice our Christmas tree decorating skills, we used large leaves as our ‘trees’ and decorated them using fun materials that we pretended were tinsel and Christmas ornaments. The results looked just like the real thing. 

As a bit of a science experiment, we used a combination of Borax and hot water to form small crystals on pipe cleaner ornaments that we had created. We used techniques such as twisting our pipe cleaners around pencils or making them into Christmas shapes in order to get our very own handmade ornament and then left them over a few days in our Borax water as we waited for the magic to happen!  

We took a look at the Dr Seuss classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and replicated his heart growing three times its usual size. We did this by mixing bi-carb soda and vinegar in a water bottle and watched as the balloons we created with the Grinch’s heart expanded with carbon dioxide. 

In the lead up to Christmas we have enjoyed making a few different Christmas crafts.

What is a Jesse Tree? 

A Jesse Tree is a way of preparing for Advent by journeying through the stories on Jesus's family tree. We hung ornaments symbolizing an Old Testament Bible story about someone on Jesus's family tree.

Recently we said goodbye to Miss Wasson who has been with us for the last 6 weeks. We wish her all the best with her teaching career.

As this is our last newsletter for the year, I would like to thank all the children and parents. I have absolutely loved this year. The children have been fabulous and it always amazes me how far they have come both socially and academically in 12 months! 

Kind Regards

Mrs Margaret Maher

Prep Classroom Teacher