Junior School News

Celebration Day

We put the final bird on the tree to get to a celebration day!!! Voting closed and last Friday was Board Games Day! Students brought some great games to school and we had a great hour at school playing everything from Uno to Twister! What a fun way to celebrate all those positive acknowledgements. This was also a great way to practise our skills of sharing, turn taking and communication. Great fun for all :)

Junior Sport

This year we are lucky to have Mrs Bertrand join us for Junior Sport on Monday's. We have been working on building our physical movement skills and our hand/eye co-ordination. We have been skipping, bouncing and throwing tennis balls, balancing eggs on spoons, and so much more!

This week our rotational activities all centred around the skill of throwing. We threw various different things at each other - frisbees, foam torpedoes and fox tails. Just to add some fun, we also jumped on round yellow pump style balls that shoot balls out to catch (see the pictures below.....do these have a name? lol). We had so much fun throwing and catching, working in pairs and being outside in the sunshine! I wonder what we will do next week?

Body Safe Education

The last 2 weeks in Body Safe Education we have been looking at our personal bubbles. We all have an invisible bubble around us and when someone gets too close to the space around us, it can change how we feel from safe to unsafe, trapped or uncomfortable. We practised walking around the room not touching each other and moving around without bumping into people.

After talking about our bubbles we moved onto asking consent. We all discussed how our bodies are our own and how it is nice when people ask our permission before hugging or touching us. It is OK to say no when someone asks for a hug. A nice way to not hurt someone's feelings is to say, sorry I don't want a hug today but I would love a high five (or a 'Jellyfish'). So we practised this. We all had hoola hoops around our middle and we have to move around and not bump into other people's bubbles. When we found someone we wanted to talk to we stopped before our bubbles touched (hoola hoops touched) and we asked for a hug or high five. If the person said yes, we dropped out hoola hoops, stepped forward for a hug then picked up the hoop and moved on.

WOW what a successful session we had. All the students just loved the activity and they were all respectfully asking before approaching each other. During reflection time students comments included:

"I loved hugging my friends and it was OK if they said no."

"I did not get upset when (name) did not want a hug, because he said he would like a Jellyfish."

"I noticed where I was sitting when we sat down, I am not in (name's) bubble."

"I like that I can say no to a hug."

"It was tricky not to hit the bubbles when we move around."