Week 5 information

Sun chime Materials
Please have a look at one of the previous blog posts which mentions about our exciting STEM project of making a sun chime. If you were able to start bringing in any materials this week, we would be very appreciative! Any small, recyclable materials would be great!

Baptism Photos/Memorabilia

Over the next couple of weeks we will be exploring the special sacrament of Baptism. We are learning about how we become members of God’s family through this special sacrament. The children are invited to bring in a special photo/item of clothing/gift that they may have received at their Baptism to place on the prayer table and share with the class throughout next week. Photos of friends and other family members being Baptised are also welcome.  If your child has not been Baptised, a photo of your child when they were young would be a wonderful addition to our display. It is important to note with the children that God loves all people equally, even if they are not Baptised.

Teddies
The children are invited to bring a small teddy/soft toy to on this THURSDAY to use during our Friendology session. We will be focusing on how we meet and greet our friends and role playing conversation starters with our teddies.



Family Information Forms
At the Parent Info Night we included a family information sheet in our packs that went home. We are still waiting for some of these forms to be returned to school. Thank you to those of you who have taken the time to fill out the form. This information assists us to better understand your children and cater for their needs within the class. We are still waiting on the return on some of this information, so please aim to get these forms back to us as soon as possible. If you need another copy, I will pop some on the red table as you enter the classroom. 

Parent Help
Thank you so much to those of you who have volunteered to support us in class on the parent help roster. It is really appreciated that you are taking time out of your busy schedules to join us in Year One. It is preferred that we have just one parent helper each day (Mon-Thu) to assist with group work and class preparations and if there is a day where there is someone already, please come and see me to see if we can accommodate you into our rotations. 

Library Day
Wednesday is our Library day, we ask that all of the children bring their Library bags to school with their book inside them. Please keep these Library bags in the children's tubs and we will get them out just before our lesson. The clear Comprehension Packs are also due back on a Wednesday (in the trolley under the red table). Mrs Kemp will send you a reminder text if these are not back on a Wednesday.

Observation Survey
Some standardised testing will begin next week in Year One. The Observation Survey gives us valuable information about your child’s reading ability, writing vocabulary and phonics knowledge.
It is completed one on one with myself. During this time there will be a relief teacher in Year One (next Thursday and Friday).

Long....long Weekend
Don't forget this coming weekend is an extra long one! Monday is our Labour Day public holiday and Tuesday is a Student Free Day, while the teachers participate in some Professional Development.

Have a lovely week!

Miss Prowse 

Parent contact list and Face Book Page

Our lovely class reps have put a list for parents to fill out your details outside the classroom (on the information board) so if you could please fill this is as soon as possible, that would be wonderful.

The Year 1P Face book page is also below should you wish to join.

Have a great Sunday night!

Miss Prowse

Good Vibes in Science and our STEM project for Term One

Good Vibes experiment

As apart of our investigation into light and sound the year one children investigated how we can hear and feel sound. We investigated different things that can make sound eg. a hammer, a guitar and a splash. We then talked about how all these things can make vibrations which cause invisible sound waves to travel through the air.

As scientists, we decided to go one step further and see how these vibrations and sound waves could be seen by the human eye....using hundreds and thousands.

We made a drum like surface using a bowl and some cling wrap and then we predicted what we thought would happen if we hummed near the bowl and put some hundreds and thousands on top of the cling wrap. We had three predictions to choose from: nothing would happen, the hundreds and thousands would change colour or the hundreds and thousands would move and vibrate.  It was very interesting to gather some of the students predictions.

We then got into groups of three and conducted our experiment and found that the hundreds and thousands could dance when we hummed near the bowl. The children loved finding out about vibrations and sound waves and were interested in finding out how sound reaches our ears.

If you'd like to view or conduct the experiment at home, please click on the link below for the video.

Seeing sound experiment 



STEM Project (Friday Week 7)

Over the next two weeks the children will be presented with a problem that they have to solve duirng our Science time, please have a read of the brief below which I will be presenting to the children this week.

I have posted this project a little bit early so you can start collecting materials for your child's design (all help would be appreciated!). I will also be posting up a time for parents who would like to come in and help construct the sun chimes with the students.

Below are some of the examples that I will be showing them:

Thank you for your ongoing support!

Miss Prowse

OLC Opening Mass

On Friday morning the children from Years 1-6 walked down to Our Lady of the Souther Cross church to participate in our opening Mass to begin the school year. The theme of the Mass was love and how we can be more like Jesus through our actions. All of the children participated respectfully and reverently throughout the Mass with the help of our Year Five buddies. Here are some photos of the children with their buddies. 

The church was filled with music for our final song OLC which everyone loved joining in the actions to. 

Miss Prowse 

A Full Week In Year One!

Wow, we have completed our first full week in the classroom! Lots happening in Year One with the commencement of Maths and Reading groups, as well as Art and Science when the children swap teachers on Friday mornings. Our ‘Play Projects’ are up and running on a Friday afternoon when we have a choice in our learning and an opportunity to use our creative licences. The children were having fun in some nature play with sticks and twine, imaginary play with our Kimochi Dolls and constructing from boxes as well as LEGO and Mobilo alongside the Pre-Primaries and Kindies. What a great buzz of learning happening in ECC! Some of our Play Projects are on display in the classroom for you to take a look at.

Here are some of the photos from the STEM circuits activity that was happening in Year 1P. James made a working circuit with a propellor...I can see a budding engineer!

Math Rotations
In class we have been focussing on numbers and number formation up to 100. We have been split into multi ability groups and have looked and worked with at different strategies for achieving the success criteria. We looked at how we can add numbers using manipulative materials, how we can form numbers correctly and how we can use a number line for skipping and jumping numbers. We have some very clever mathematicians in our class!

Homework
We begin today! Sight words, along with a home reader and you child’s Mathletics and Reading Eggs passwords will go home this week. We encourage the children to bring their homework folder to and from school every day and place it in the tub with the red or blue dot (depending on what coloured sticker they have on the front of their folder). Your child’s reading books will be exchanged by the EA’s on either a Mon/Wed or Tue/Thu basis.

Class Reps
Many thanks to our class rep volunteers for 2018 - Julia Thompson, Charlene Blechynden and Bec Hoar. As our P&F reps reiterated at Parent Night ‘many hands make light work’! Our reps have placed a family details sheet on the parent info board. You are invited to fill out your details to make it easier for our reps to contact you regarding any upcoming social gatherings or important information. Thanks ladies!

Observation Survey
Some standardised testing will begin this week and next week in Year One. The Observation Survey gives us valuable information about your child’s reading ability, writing vocabulary and phonics knowledge.
It is completed one on one with the teacher and during this time there will be a relief teacher in Year One.

Kiss and Drop Fridays
There was such an air of independence in our classrooms on Friday morning with both our parents and children making the most of Kiss and Drop morning! The children were as proud as punch to take ownership of their morning and come into the classroom independently. Thank you parents for supporting us with this.

Have a fantastic week!
Miss Prowse

Week 3 Merit Award winners

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

Miss Prowse

Investigating Sound and Light in Science!

We have had a fantastic start to our Science inquiry this term and the children have been very interested in learning about how sound and light is formed and how it travels and reaches the human body.

We began our investigation of where sound comes from and where around the school we can hear different sources of sound. We brainstormed what we knew about sound and what questions we had about sound which we found we had a lot - which is always a great start to our inquiry!

We assigned some children to be photographers and some to be sketch artists of what we found, I quickly learnt that the children had a very good ear for hearing lots of things including birds, Mr. Hogan on the lawnmower, the wind, leaves rustling along the ground and some children even swore they heard a ghost in the undercover area! The children loved sharing their findings on the ipads and we found answers to a few of our questions while we were exploring the school.

In our second lesson we talked about light and sources of light, the children loved finding light and dark places around the school and saw that the sun cast shadows on the bricks. The girls were quick to point this out! We found the lightest place was on the oval and the darkest place was in the hall behind the curtains, where no light could come in. We then went inside the classroom and experimented with refracting light. We used torches and found that when we used a glass and some water, we could make rainbows! The children took great delight in investigating different types of prisms and experimenting with light that could bend.

We are looking forward to discovering how sound waves reach our ears and how light enters our eye. Keep an eye on the blog for information about our STEM project of constructing a sun chime.


Miss Prowse

Parent Night Info

Thank you to all those parents who could make it last night. We hope that we have provided you with the information to make your child's time in Year One, one to remember!

If you weren't able to make it, please click on the link below which has our parent night slide show attached and if you require any further information, please email me. I will also send home your parent night pack with information for the coming year.

If you could please bring back the Early Childhood survey and the parent/Grandparent survey by Monday 18th of Feburary, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you and have a lovely night.

Miss Prowse

Year One Parent Night Slide Show

Electric Fry pans for Shrove Tuesday

Good afternoon parents,

As it will be Shrove Tuesday next week, we will be looking at procedures and how we can make pancakes, similar to the way people used to feast in celebration before Lent.

In order for this to happen we are after some electric fry pans to help cook our pancakes. If you have one we could borrow, could you please email us as we would love to take part in this celebration.

We would also love for you to talk to your child about something that they might like to give up (eg. chocolate, lollies, after dinner treats) or take up (eg. making their bed, unloading the dishwasher) during the season of Lent. We will be talking about our Lentern promises next week so if you could talk with the children about this, we would be very appreciative.

Have a lovely weekend! 

Miss Prowse

Week Two information

Good evening parents, 

Swimming is almost over for another year. My deepest thanks for getting your little ones organised and ready with their swimming bags, sip and crunch and fresh clothes to change back into. I know washing bathers and towels can be a tedious task, but we love you for it! 

Please have a read of some important information over the next week:

Homework Folders
If you have not yet brought your child's homework folder in from last year, please do so and we will continue to use it throughout Year One. If you do not have a folder from last year, please let us know, so that we can use one of the clear plastic folders we have at school.

Parent Information Evening
Stay tuned for this week's Newsletter which will outline further details about our whole school Parent Information Evening next Tuesday 13th February starting at 5.00pm and concluding by 6.15pm.

Readers and Sight Words
I am in the process of testing the children on their knowledge of both reading and writing a series of sight words. We will begin sending home sight word flash card rings from week 4 onward. We will also commence home reading from week 4. The children should have two different readers go home each week on either a Mon/Wed exchange roster, or a Tue/Thu exchange. The reason we have readers over two nights is to build their fluency on the first day and then comprehension on the second day. We would ask that your child bring their reading file everyday because we may test their sight words or have people they read their home reader to at school. 

Parent Help Roster
I have placed a Parent Help Roster outside the classroom for those of you who may be able to assist at school during our Literacy blocks in the mornings. The roster will commence from week 5. If you have any special gifts or talents that may be useful in our class this year(eg. cooking, sewing, singing or dancing) please let us know! We would love to have you come in and help us, or teach us something!

News
The News roster, as pictured below will go home at our parent information session next Tuesday. As we begin News from week 3, please refer to this copy of the roster. News ideas are suggested ideas only and the children definitely have a choice in what they would like to share with their classmates. I will endeavour to send the News bags home the night before to allow you some time to help your child prepare.

Have a restful night 

Miss Prowse

Our first day of swimming!

Have a look at us! First day of swimming and we had such a great time! I even had one little girl say "This is so much fun!".

We hopefully had no mix ups with shirts/shorts/thongs but please make sure all of your children's items are labelled. We will again take our sip and crunch to the pool and the children may come to school in their thongs and DO NOT need to change back into their sports shoes, they may wear their thongs until the end of the day. Yay!

I hope your littles ones aren't as tired as I am tonight!

Miss Prowse