Mead Room

Dear Mead Room Friends,
This week we have really begun to explore colour. The children have been bringing in RED items to share for Show and Tell, a lobster, yummy red tomatoes and even red undies! We have explored mixing colours with red to see how they change, sorted shapes into colour piles, and looked through different coloured water to see the world in a new colour. The children are beginning to recognise colours in all sorts of places - even on their shoes, clothes and Miss C's lips! Many children have expressed a preference for a favourite colour and others just love them all. Let's talk about COLOUR
“Red is a colour. I like red” said Eden
“I like green. Green is a colour.” added Oscar
“I like green too!” said Andre
“But green is my favourite colour!” said Oscar
“There is light and dark green.” suggested Susannah
“Pink is my favourite colour. I love pink.” said Molly smiling
“I think orange is a colour too.” suggested Andre
“What about brown.? We can see brown.” said James W
“Purple too.” yelled Gwen showing us her purple clip from her hair
“I can see blue too. Blue is in the sky.” said James pointing outside
“Oh look there is silver on my shoes. Silver is a colour too!” said Susannah showing us the silver flowers on her shoes.
“I have black on my shoes. Black!” added Gwen “Mrs Lock you have black shoes too.”
“White is a colour. There is lots of white.” said Molly

Kind regards
Emma, Susan, Cristina and Heidi

Cooper Room

Last week Chloe brought a paint roller to show the class at show and tell time (she had been painting the house with her dad in the holidays). Everyone was interested in having a go at roller painting and we thought that this would be a good extension of our work with primary colours. The children used the rollers to create large bright paintings, stretching their arms up high to make big rolling marks. They found that when two colours overlapped new colours were created and when all the colours were painted on top of each other it made brown...
"Well I changed it green" said William.
"Look at mine... blue, yellow, orange" Asher showed us.
"When you mix it, it turns into a different colour" explained Sebastian R.
"Oh look, it's turned green" said Jacob, "I put yellow on the paper with the roller and then dark blue went over it when I used the roller."
Kind regards,
Cooper Team

Chapple Room

Dear Chapple Parents and Friends,
Week two has been very busy, but lots of fun. We completed our first successful exscurion- thank you to the parents who helped! We have also been working hard in the Chinese Kitchen. Many dumplings, chicken chips and choccy biscuits have been coming from our pretend kitchen. Some children have been experimenting with chopsticks, fry pans and corks, whilst others have been busying themselves waitering and cooking. It has been a wonderful opportunity to develop many skills, including working with others, taking turns and sharing roles. We are looking forward to taking this further in the coming weeks.
Chapple Room Team

Miss Gray returns from holidays next week but will be leaving us on February 22nd as she has decided to further her career and will be studying Early Childhood at University this year. She will continue to work with us in a casual role . We will appoint a new assistant to the Chapple Room as soon as possible. We wish her all the best in her studies this year !

Edgerley Room

This week in Edgerley we continued to explore the world of colour at the easel, on our table tops, at our drink shop in the garden and even in the city!! In the classroom we enjoyed mixing colours onto paper plates and exploring and describing our results. We discovered that you could make lots of different types of the same colour. At the easel we discovered that you could make even more versions by adding white!In the garden we began to discuss colour combinations and mix them up like potions to create drinks for our customers at our drink shop. We discovered if you mix red, yellow and blue you can make coke!!! (We also discussed that Coke is only a sometimes drink and we limited our customers to only a little bit!!) Finally we enjoyed a trip on the public bus into the city to see Cotton and Wrinkle in the show White. Come and have a look on our wall to see some pictures of this wonderful excursion.We would like to welcome Amelia Kasauskas to our class and thank Miss Rachel for all the work she has done with us in the last semester.Kind RegardsMel, Pip, Sinead and Amelia

Clipsal Excursion

As many of you may know, the Early Learning Centre takes an excursion to the Clipsal 500 every year. We have had many queries from parents who would like to be a participant on this excursion.Three Year old and Four Year old Thursday classes will be taking a short trip to the track and, as in past years, we will sit to watch part of a race, walk to see the go carts, cross the bridge for a snack, walk through the display alley and then return back to school. It is a short trip but is usually noisy, dusty and can be warm. As in past years we will not be able to attend the Clipsal unless we have a strict ratio of 2 children to 1 adult or better. Parents who are planning to join us must buy their own tickets. PAC offers this service through the school website. Log on to http://www.pac.edu.au/ and follow the prompts through Event Bookings through to Clipsal 500 to purchase a ticket at the discounted rate of $23.50. We apologise for the short notice but this needs to be done by Thursday evening 9th Feb ! This ticket enables you to attend our excursion but also to return to the track for the remainder of the day. Parents who already have an event pass do not need to purchase an extra ticket. Parents who miss the PAC ticket deadline will be required to purchase a full price tciket at the gate on the day. This is a wonderful trip that is a particularly good opportunity for fathers to join us. We will visit the track on Thursday the 1st of March and no child will be able to attend without a signed permission slip that teachers will distribute closer to the date. In the intervening time if you have an interest in joining us please make your interest known to Mrs Dry via e-mail at jdry@pac.edu.au
Thankyou
ELC staff

Excursion to "White"

The children who are in Cooper, Edgerley and Chapple Rooms and attend on Wednesdays will going to the Festival Centre next week to see this performance by Windmill Theatre Company. Edgerley and Cooper rooms will be going at 9.00am and returning around 11.30am. Chapple Room will be leaving at 11.00am and returning at approximately 1.30pm. They will take lunch with them . (please note that the bottom of the excursion notice had the wrong time for Chapple room)
Any parents who are accompanying us need to bring their bus fare in small change , children travel for free. Thankyou to all who offered to help but as we had to purchase our tickets last year we can only take a limited number of helpers.

Jeanine

Excursion to "White"

Excursion to "White"

Softfall surface in the centre

Please do not walk across the rubber softfall area if you are wearing narrow heeled shoes as you will "sink " as some sections are softer than others ! (It also leaves holes )

Jeanine

Uniforms

Just another gentle reminder that pants or skirts MUST be in plain neutral colours (ie no stripes, checks, patterns or large logos). Any tops worn under the school T shirt must be plain white . As we are part of the school we are expected to adhere to a strict uniform policy,

Thankyou for your co-operation

Jeanine

Langley Room

A big warm welcome to all our new Langley children and their families! It has been an exciting and busy week as we settle into classroom life and routines and get to know all our new friends. Our unit of inquiry this term is ‘Conversations in Colour’ and the children have taken great pleasure in peering through the coloured water bottles as they discuss how their view changes and talk about which colours are their favourites;
“All bue (blue)” commented Max,
“Red, red, red” said Kristian excitedly,
“Everything changes colour” observed Thomas.

We are also inquiring into ‘Who We Are’ as we settle into the Langley room and would appreciate it if each child could bring in a family photograph to share with their peers next week.


Kind regards,

Jess, Kerry, Pippa and Amy

Mead Room

Dear Mead Parents,
Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely Christmas and holiday break. It is wonderful to see all the new little faces this week in the Mead Room. The children have been settling in very smoothly, becoming familiar with the more"grown up" routines and expectations, renewing old friendships and making new ones. Our week has very much been a 'settling in' week, with our focus being social and behavioural. The transition from the Langley Room is a significant one, so we are spending time discussing the dynamics of their new environment (in 3 year old terminology!). Our unit of enquiry this term is "Conversations in Colour" and the activities set up within the classroom have provoked discussions and explorations in relation to this. They are really enjoying exploring the larger outdoor environment too!
Best wishes,
Emma, Susan and Christina

Cooper Room

The Cooper children quickly embraced our new unit of inquiry, 'Conversations in Colour', when they came back to Cooper this week. We mixed coloured dye to colour our playdough, sorted coloured cars in their garages built with blocks, made new paint colours by mixing blue, yellow and red and mixed and matched transparent plastic colours on the overhead projector. The children also made collages with coloured celophane and tissue on plastic and tested them out on the overhead projector...
"I can see mine" said Angus and Bailey.
"You can only see the red" noticed Lily.
"It's just a rainbow. Some of the colours have gone away" commented Chloe.
You can check out the children's collage work on our Cooper windows when you go past!
Kind regards,
The Cooper Team

Chapple Room

Dear Chapple Parents and Friends,
We have had a wonderful start to the 2012 school year in Chapple Room. All the children have had a lovely time meeting new friends and catching up with old ones. We have started our exploration into our unit of inquiry, Conversations in Colour, and have had some in depth conversations about colours. We have listed our favourite colours, explored painting with primary colours and have had a fun time making our own kaleidescopes.
Many thanks,
Chapple Room Team

Edgerley Room

Wow!! What a fantastic first week of Term One we had in Edgerley. We all busily engaged in our new unit, “Conversations In Colour”. There was a lot of enthusiastic mixing and we made all sorts of discoveries, particularly about green. We also learned something new about the colour blue after sharing the story “Blue Chameleon”. Did you know that sometimes when people feel sad we can say that they feel a little blue? We created some very blue pictures with big sad faces… lucky Lao Shi provided us with an antidote…red!! We splashed lots of that happy colour around our Chinese New Year kitchen and cooked up lots of stir fry!
We would like to welcome Jacob and his family to our classroom and are also thrilled to invite Miss D to join Edgerley Room
Looking forward to next week
Kind regards
Mel, Pip, Sinead and Rachel