Welcome back for Term 1, 2011! We have had many new children join us in the Langley room this week and our older Langley children have welcomed them with open arms and are helping them settle into classroom life. To celebrate Chinese New Year, the children have been practicing using chopsticks and we have been looking at the Chinese Dragon and recreating images at the easel. We have also begun our investigations around our Unit of Inquiry, Noiseworks. We have been looking at different ways we can create sound and noise. Felix discovered he could create a drum with the pots and pans and chopsticks!
“I’m making a drum, ra, ra, ra, ra, ra!” he cried.
“Welcome my show. It’s my drums I’m playing, her it comes” he added.
Many of the other children came and joined Felix and created their own sounds. We look forward to a noisy term of investigation!
Kind regards,
Jess, Kerry and Jennifer
Mead
Dear Mead Parents,
The children have done a fantastic job for their first week in the Mead Room. They have settled in with very few hiccups and seem to be enjoying the challenges that come with moving up to the 3 Year Old room!! We have sung many songs, played getting to know you games and had many free choice activities. A popular attraction has been the computers - we have two in our room, with age appropriate programs and games, and these have generated great excitement. We look forward to a busy, happy and interesting term ahead.
Best wishes,
Emma, Susan and Emma
Cooper
Welcome back to all the Cooper families! Everyone was pleased to return to Cooper Room this week and the children quickly set about exploring the room, catching up with friends they hadn't seen over the break and telling us all about Christmas and their holidays. The children were particularly fascinated by the large Chinese dragon mask displayed in the glass case outside our room - they were full of questions about it and keen to create their own. We selected bright papers, patty pans, bottle tops and various other collage materials and the children made their dragon heads on paper plates.
"That one’s bright and colourful" said Deacon pointing to the mask display, "mine’s not. It’s going to be scary one… I’m gonna use some of these bottle lids."
Fergus was busy sticking on bottle tops, "I’m making lots of scales, mine brother wants lots of scales" he said.
Some of the children chose to represent the dragon in paintings. Tom described his painting, "It’s a dragon and those are fireworks" he said splattering the paper with fluorescent pink paint. On Thursday in Chinese the children showed Lao Shi their creations and discussed the traditions and festivities of Chinese New Year with her. There was great excitement in the room about this celebration - "Yay, it's Chinese New Year" exclaimed Zac, "Happy New Year everyone!"
Kind regards,
Ali and Susan
Kind regards,
Ali and Susan
Chapple
Welcome to the Chapple Room for 2011! We have had a fantastic and busy start to the term. We learnt about Chinese New Year and Lao Shi our Chinese teacher told us the story about the animals in the Chinese Zodiac. We made colourful Chinese lanterns and blew paint onto black card to create beautiful fireworks. We have been making lots of wonderful noises for our Noiseworks unit and have especially enjoyed listening to music on headphones and drumming, tapping, clapping and even singing to the beat! We loved listening to the rain-stick and making light and heavy rain sounds by turning it slowly and quickly. We are looking forward to exploring more sounds and noises next week!
Warm regards,
Suria, Sinead, Ciara and Sue
Edgerley
Dear parents,Welcome back to Edgerley class for 2011. The term certainly got off to a busy start as children jumped right into our “Nosieworks” unit, investigating the different types of bells at the bell table. We wanted to investigate how bells make noises and looked very closely at the varied shapes.
“They hit together and so it spins” said Jamison, describing the single cymbal bell
“It rings like that because it has a whacker. The whacker whacks it, it’s hitting the wall (inside the bell)” said Eddie, explaining how the Indian prayer bell worked
“These have balls inside, you have to shake it and then it makes noise” said Alex, describing how to use the sleigh bells
“It goes right on his neck, he don’t have hands so he push it, he wobbles it and it goes ding ding” explained James as he swung his shoulders side to side, displaying how a cow would use a cow bell
