Wow... We are Over Halfway Through the Term!

Bug Catcher Construction

Over the past few weeks we have planned, designed and written a procedure for the creation of our very own bug catchers. In the following week, we are asking the children to bring in any materials that might be useful for the construction of their own design. Please talk to your child at home about what they would like to collect and bring into school by next Friday. Any materials that are special for your child’s own design should be placed in a plastic bag with their name on it. Any materials to be shared can be placed loosely in the boxes that will be set up in the classroom.

Some useful materials may include:

•         Clean empty jars/lids
•          Plastic milk bottles/juice containers
•          Mesh/netting
•          Pipe cleaners/string
•          Anything else you can think of!

 

We will be putting our designs together from 11:30am – 12:30pm on Friday 9^th June. During this time, we are seeking the expertise of a few parent helpers to assist us with construction. If you would like to come along and help please email me or let me know in the classroom.

Public Holiday/Pupil Free Day

A reminder that the children start school on Wednesday next week due to the public holiday on Monday, as well as the staff Catholicity Day on Tuesday.

Think Mentals

Please note that Unit Four in your child’s Think Mentals book is to be completed by next Friday 9^th June. Thank you to parents for marking the work as you go and for giving your children feedback as they work through these tasks.

Friendology

In Friendology we have been learning about Friendship Fires and how to ‘put them out’.

Some information that may be a good discussion point around the dinner table:

How to Confront a Friendship Fire:

1.       Find a good time to talk, just the two of you.

2.       In a calm, serious voice, retell the situation.

3.       Explain how it made you feel.

4.       Listen to their side and truly try to understand their perspective.

By following these steps, we can extinguish even the most difficult Friendship Fires!

Happy week to you all!

Miss Prowse

Week 5 Information

Good evening parents,

I hope you have had a lovely weekend. I keep saying it to people but I can't believe that we are half way through the term! Just a few messages this week...

Snails are needed for Science

As a part of our Science Unit for this term, we have been looking at insects and this week we will be looking at snails. We require some snails for observation this Friday and as the weather is lovely and wet at the moment, the snails (technically) should be out. If you are able to bring in some snails, either before Friday or on Friday, I would be very appreciative.

Think Mentals and Mathletics

My other blog post must not have made it up last week but this is just a reminder that Unit 3 will be due this Friday 26th. As mentioned previously, when your child has finished the unit, I would love them to bring it into school and pop it in the green tub at the front of the room. Please don't go ahead to other units, as I would like to go through certain concepts with the children.

If your child finishes their unit quite quickly, I have placed some Mathletics tasks for the children to complete. We are learning about time at the moment and loving using the program in class to reinforce the explicit teaching.

Assembly Week 6, June 2nd

As our assembly is next week, the children have been practising the poem and songs in class however as we have lots to cover within our day, I have asked the children to have a go at practising the 10 Loopy Caterpillars at home. If you were able to spare 3/ 4 minutes to go through this with them, it would be greatly appreciated. After the assembly, the children will be required to change back into their sports uniform so if you were able to pack their sports uniform in their bag, that would be wonderful.

Family Mass
We have had a wonderful response to the Family Mass this Saturday at 6pm however, if you're not able to make it, that is no problem at all.

Phew, I think I got through everything!

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Miss Prowse

Year One Family Mass 27th May

Good evening parents,

This is just a friendly reminder that our Year One Family Mass will be held on Saturday May 27th at 6pm at Our Lady of the Southern Cross Church. We are hoping that you and your family may attend where pizza will be provided by our wonderful P & F. If you are definitely able to make it to our Mass and your child would be willing to do a job eg. giving out booklets or helping with the collection etc. please email me and I will coordinate this with Mrs. Meyer.

Thank you for your on going support and have a lovely weekend.

Miss Prowse

Week 4 Merit Award Winners

Congratulations to Olivia and Cody who were this weeks Merit Award winners. You are both Year One super stars!

Miss Prowse

Practising songs for our assembly

Good evening parents,

Without giving too much away, please find the videos below of the two songs that we will be singing in our assembly. Please feel free to play it for your children so they can practise their wonderful singing and hopefully it doesn't get stuck in your heads (as it does mine).

A note will be coming home tomorrow regarding parts that your children will play in our assembly.

Thank you

Miss Prowse

Making salad tomorrow!

Just a reminder that the children will be making their salad tomorrow so we would love any veggies (or fruit - tomatoes) that you have grown yourself or have in your fridge. It doesn't need to be anything huge, just enough for one serving of fruit or veggies.

Thank you for your on going support.

Miss Prowse

Insect Safari in Year One

This term in Science we are looking at living creatures and how they carry with them a variety of external features and how each of these creatures live in different places for their need to be met. In our boy and girl classes, we set off around the school to hunt for insects. We talked about how different insects would be found in different places and brainstormed some of the places we could go around the school to find them.

The boys were very keen to get their hands dirty and loved digging around in the different places in the garden beds and down in the bush area near the oval. We took our ipads with us and worked in pairs trying to spot various creatures within the environment. We found many great insects and luckily no spiders to be found! The children then came back after their exploration and we shared our findings on the smart board by projecting them from the I Pad.

Here are some photos of the children exploring the environment for living creatures.

Keep an eye on the blog for your much needed help with snail collecting!

Many thanks

Miss Prowse

Week 3 Merit Award winners

Congratulations to Alexandra and Timothy who were this week's merit award winners. You are both year one super stars!

Miss Prowse

Think Mentals and Mathletics Info

Dear Parents,

Just a reminder that Think Mentals are due in tomorrow. Unit 2 is the only unit the children need to have completed. As previously mentioned, instant feedback from yourselves by going through and reviewing the children's answers are always a great way for children to reflect on their learning. 

We also had some parents ask about Mathletics...you beat us to the punch! So here it is...

Year One is now using Mathletics!

Mathletics is the next generation in learning as it helps students enjoy maths and achieve great results. 

About Mathletics: Mathletics is a web-based learning program which integrates home and school learning via the internet. Mathletics is based on the Australian Curriculum from the Early Years to Year 12 and is currently used in over 3000 schools!

There are thousands of students in schools across Australia, New Zealand,  UK, Singapore and the USA are accessing the site every day! 

Your child has 24 hour access to Mathletics by using a unique user name and password. These passwords have been taped to the inside of their reading file. 


We recommend that you spend time looking at the program with your child so that you can gain the greatest understanding of how Mathletics will benefit your child. 

Benefits of Mathletics 
• Students love Mathletics!
• Students are engaged and motivated to learn. 
• Mathletics is adaptive which means that it responds to the individual student’s strengths and weaknesses. 
• Students instantly know if they are on the right track and can work through the curriculum at their own pace. 
• Animated support guides students through concepts at their own pace which is like having a personal maths tutor 24 hours a day! 
• Live Mathletics fosters a stimulating and exciting online learning community. 
• Results flow seamlessly between home and school so you can stay informed of your child’s progress. 


I have assigned the children some tasks and they may complete up to four tasks over the week. Once they have finished this task, they are allowed to go onto Mathletics Live where they can compete against other children around the world! 

I have told the children about this wonderful resource and they are very excited about it. 

An app can be downloaded for the ipad for free called Mathletics.

If you could practise logging into mathletics with your child, that would be extremely helpful to save time in class.

Here is the link below for your children to start learning! Save it to your favourites tab on your computer.

http://www.mathletics.com.au/

If you have any questions, please just email me.

Have a lovely night

Miss Prowse 

Week 3 Update

Mathletics

Could I ask that all parents help their child to login to Mathletics at home during some stage of this week. We are having some issues with the program downloading updates at school. Should you have any problems with using the program at home, please let me know. If you notice that your child requires updates, please let these run through at home, if possible. 

Salad Ingredients Wanted!

As a part of our Literacy Program this term we are learning to write Procedures. Next week, we will be reading and writing a class recipe for a plant salad. Next Tuesday  we plan to make the salad, using ingredients from our own gardens (or fridges). We are asking that each child brings in one or two ingredients of their choice for our class salad. Donations of lettuce, tomatoes, celery, carrots, fresh herbs, etc are all welcome!

Winter Uniform

This week the children commenced wearing their full winter uniform. Please ensure that all jumpers have your children’s names on them to avoid them getting lost this winter!

Happy Thursday!

Miss Prowse

URStrong: Friendology in Year One

On Monday both Year One classes came together to talk about our wonderful new program Friendology 101. The children were very excited to bring in their stuffed friends to school and were very excited to get started.

Within this session, we spoke about the 4 friendship facts which were:

#1 No friendship (or relationship) is perfect
#2 Every friendship is different
#3 Trust and Respect are the two most important qualities of a friendship
#4 Friendships change...and that ok!


We learnt about how we can make a new friend or talk to someone new out in the play ground if we are looking for people to play with. We grabbed our stuffy toys and they became our focus for introducing ourselves to one another. We spoke about the importance of introducing ourselves and using the other persons name when saying hello.

We played a game of conversation catch where we had to go up to another person or 'stuffy' and ask them three questions about their likes or dislikes. The children loved role playing this action and many of them said that they would go out and try it this week.

Below are some photos of both of the Year One classes participating in a Friendology mixer and then celebrating all our wonderful friendship learning with a Go Noodle. The children loved learning about Friendology.

Keep an eye on the blog for info about Friendship fires - how they can happen and how your child can put them out....independently!

Thank you for your on going support

Miss Prowse and Miss Rundle

Putting numbers in the place in Year One!

During Math time last week, the Year One children learnt about the concept of Place Value.

This relates to the Year One curriculum outcome of :

Recognise, model, read, write and order numbers to at least 100. Locate these numbers on a number line. (ACMNA013)

The children found out that place value means the value of a digit within a number, for example we found out that the number 64 was made up of 6 tens and 4 ones. We even had some very clever people who made some numbers over 1000!

We explored this concept using online games, songs, manipulative materials and then attempted to consolidate our learning with some Mathletics activities.

Below are some photos of the children exploring numbers using MAB's (Multi-based Arithmic Blocks)  - the materials you might have used in your time at school! We also played some great place value games in our Math books and we loved expanding our numbers!

We have been learning this great place Value song in class (be careful it really gets in your head) and I said to the children that I would put it on the blog so they could show you.

I hope you have had a lovely weekend and I will see you tomorrow.

Many thanks

Miss Prowse

Merit Award Winners for Week 2

Congratulations to Hudson and Matilda who were this weeks Merit Award winners!

You are both Year One Super Stars!

Miss Prowse

Information for parents

Good afternoon parents,

A few reminders for this week and next week.

Casuals for Catholic Day
Tomorrow is our casuals for Catholic day where the children may come to school in free dress for a gold coin donation. All the money raised will go to helping people in need within our community.


Fun Run Money
We had a wonderful time at the fun run yesterday and the children definitely ran their little hearts out! If you have not done so, could you please bring in your fun run money and hand it to myself. Remember all money goes towards helping our Year 5 and 6 students attend their camps this year.

News
News will begin next week with groups 1, 2 and 3 bringing home their news bags. Like previously discussed, the children may bring something relating to the news topic or something special to them that they want to bring in and show the class. Please feel free to send in photos or you tube links via email and I can display them on the smart board. Please see below for the roster of children and news topics.

Friendology - URStrong

We had a wonderful discussion and participated in some activities this week about being a good friend, how we can make friends and what to do if we have a problem. On Monday we will be using our stuffies (stuffed toys) to help us be brave and act out different scenarios that we could be faced with in the playground. If you could please make sure your child brings in their stuffy on Monday 8th on May to participate in this activity, that would be greatly appreciated. Please note that we only require a stuffy that is no more than 30cm big.

Thank you for your on going support

Miss Prowse

Week 2 Information

Upcoming School Events and Information for Year Ones:

Camp Fun Run

A reminder that the ‘Camp Fun Run’ will occur this Wednesday afternoon from 1:30pm. All children are required to wear their sports uniform for the day. Thank you to our parent volunteers who have offered their assistance on the day, we will be giving each child a card that can be pierced with a hole-punch as the students run each lap. If you are helping, please meet us down on the oval at 1:30pm and we’ll set you up with what you will need. You are also welcome to come along and be a part of our cheer squad! Following the fun run, donations can be made as a lump sum amount or per lap, as outlined on the form that went home last week.

Casuals for Catholics – This Friday

All OLC students are invited to wear casual clothes to school this Friday to raise funds for struggling members of our local community and diocese. The children will need to make a gold coin donation on the day in exchange for wearing free dress.

Mother’s Day Breakfast

On Friday 12^th May, all Mothers and Grandmothers are invited to attend the OLC Mother’s Day Breakfast from 7:30am. Please feel welcome to attend! If there are any Dads who would like to assist on the morning, please contact our class reps.

Homework

As per our last blog post, the Think Mentals Maths Books went home yesterday and are now a part of our homework program for Term 2. The children are only required to complete one unit across two weeks. Parents are encouraged to mark the work as each day is completed to give immediate feedback your children. Unit 2 is due to be completed by the end of week 3 (Friday 12^th May).

Please ensure that your child is continuing to practice sight word recognition at home, as well as nightly reading. Our sight word testing will begin again this week, please let us know if you feel that your child is ready to be tested.  Homework folders still need to be at school daily, as the children may use their sight words at school and also have their readers exchanged on their allocated days. We have had a few missing of late! Thank you for your ongoing support with homework.

Have a lovely week!

Miss Prowse