New Baby

Congratulations to James and Sally Trotter on the birth of  Jasmine Charlotte Rose born 3rd Feb 2013, 9 pounds 5 oz.

A little sister for Jack and Nathan .

Langley Room

Dear Langley Family and Friends,

We have had a super busy and noisy week!! The children have extended on our unit of inquiry, My Family Album, continuing to have conversations surrounding the members of their families. They particularly love looking for and finding their family picture on the wall. The children have also had fun painting their family drawings which are now up on display. Here is what some of the children had to say as they were painting:

Bernie – Mummy brown. She got brown eyes. Daddy blue, he got blue eyes like Harry. Daddy got a beard. Mummy a girl.

Alexander – I gonna do green because Sebastian likes that.

Jack – I gonna do yellow. My Mummy loves red. Charlotte loves pink.

Clementine – I all pink.

We have had rock and roll stars in Langley this week. Children were singing and pretending to play guitars, so we decided to make some real guitars out of cardboard. We gave them a microphone stand and set up a stage to enhance their performances. Bob the Builder and Old MacDonald were very popular hits!      

It’s been very noisy this week too! We have had construction going on in our old car park, and we’ve heard bulldozers, diggers and trucks busy at work. On Thursday we decided to have a look for ourselves, but unfortunately all the diggers and trucks had finished work for the day!

We’ve also been hearing the cars racing around the track for the Clipsal. On Friday we went out into the big yard to watch the very loud planes do a spectacular air show right above us.

Have a great weekend. Best wishes,

Jess, Kerry, Nicole, Sarah and Emily

Mead Room

Dear Parents and Friends,
What a wonderful week we have had in the Mead Room ! Many connections are developing as we explore how we can look after our planet. The children have been planting different types of seeds including Jock's rockmelon seeds that we dried from last week. We have discussed where birds live and how we can look after them and their homes.
Angus: We need to look after them if they are sick.
Tom:They live in the trees.
Toby: Baby birds come out of eggs.
Charlie A.: If they go into a window and fall down we can look after them if they have a wing that is hurt.
Tom:We need to look after the trees.
Angus: There might be nests in the trees and the birds won't have anywhere to live... so we need to let the trees grow.

Today we have watched a tree feller cut down a tree up in the big school and saw how he used a cherry picker, ropes and a chainsaw to take the tree down.
Alex: Dey cut de srees, da sound.
Jock: He cutting da tree down. He swinged it?
The teacher asked, "What machine did he use?"
Charlie M : A cwane!
Angus: A Erevator!
Jock: A wope! (rope) Then it falled down.

We are looking forward to having a bird watching picnic next week up near the big oval to use our homemade binoculars.
Kind Regards,
Emma, Pip and Amelia

Cooper Room

Dear Parents and Friends,

This week has been filled will all sorts of adventures in the Cooper Room. Children have invited their Dads in for show and tell. Zac and his Dad even played the guitar for us while we sang a couple of songs together.
"My Dad plays the guitar. He plays the bass guitar. His precious guitar is black. He plays in the Beatles band and James Bond too!" said Zac.
Children have also loved creating family portraits and using our water palette paints to add detail to them.The children have carefully selected the colours which best represent their skin colour and hair colour. The children have been using mirrors and photographs to make their comparisons.
The fire station has once again been very busy attending to all the fires and accidents in the room. We have been interested to see the way the children are also including other emergency staff such as police and ambulance officers who have also been involved in the call outs for help. The children are now precise in their emergency calls.
"Where are you? Is anybody in the house? " said Oliver
"We can't see you yet. Wait until we are at the top of the hill. Then we will ring again," added Liam
"Is anybody hurt?" asked Jack "We better call an ambulance too!"
The Clipsal has also brought some rich discussion into the classroom this week. On Friday we walked up to the back oval and watched the RAAF Roulette Flyers zoooooooom over the school. The children laid down on their backs and watched in awe as the six planes performed some amazing tricks overhead. At times we thought they were heading straight for us.
"Who is driving those planes?" asked Gabby "Is their Mum driving them?"
"Why do they have smoke coming out?" asked Jarrah "I think they have a teeny, tiny, little switch to turn the smoke on."
"They are doing loop the loops up there!" said James
"There are six planes they are flying fast Mrs Lock" added Florence
"They are in a straight line. It looks like an eleven now," said Gabby.
What an adventure! Even counting in the sky.
Enjoy a wonderful weekend with your family.

Kind regards
Susan and Coral

Chapple Room

Dear Chapple Room Parents and Friends,

You may have noticed that the children have been very busy measuring things in Chapple Room this week. This was inspired by Oscar's Show and Tell session last week. He chose to bring in a tape measure of his father's and shared his love of measuring things with the class. The children were fascinated, so the following week we put out some rulers and measuring tapes for the class to explore. They have been intrigued and enthusiastic about measuring everything and anything in the room. We have measured each other, measured the furniture and their building projects, recorded numbers and used the rulers to draw pictures. All the children have been involved. It is a wonderful example of how the Show and Tell program affects the whole class in Chapple Room. By allowing children to make their own choices on what to bring in each week, they choose things that are meaningful to them. Their passion and enthusiasm during their session captivates the class and promotes better listening skills from the group. Teachers can then use each individual child's interests as a provocation for the program, producing learning experiences that are more meaningful and interesting for the class. We have had many other great Show and Tell sessions, such as Jacob's photos and stories from the ferry to Tasmania, James W's book, program and CD from Cirque de Soleil, books, cards, games and stories of interest to the children. Keep up the good work and thank you for your support with the Show and Tell program.
Chapple Room Team

Edgerley Room

Dear Edgerley Families,

You wouldn’t believe it, just after Show and Tell time, the Edgerley children got ready to go outside for a play… we got outside and there was tons and tons of rubbish: newspapers, bubble wrap, crepe paper littering the whole entire yard! What was also surprising was that Mrs Rocca and Mrs Baird were ready with clipboards for notes and cameras for pictures just to record what the children’s reactions would be.

Alex: “What happened over here?”

Toby: ”Oh my goodness! ”

Jacob: ”There’s heaps of rubbish!”

Angus: ”There must have been a party here last night!”

Rayan: ”So much people have messed up the PAC track.”

Caleb: ”Look at the tennis court. There’s so much rubbish!”

Bruno: “I’m a rubbish man – I’m picking up the rubbish.  Then the children can play.”

Angus: “We don’t want it to be dirty.”

Cooper: “I’m taking rubbish to the rubbish dump to make it clean again.”

Owen: “Get the green bin! Get the green bin for all the paper ones.”

Felix: “Bubble wrap in this one. Bubble wrap! Bubble wrap!”

Owen: “We can use it again – we can make stuff with it!”

Cooper: “Don’t mix them. The rubbish man might not know what’s in there and he’ll collect the wrong one.”

After the big clean up, most of the boys and girls chose to play in other areas but a small group of boys turned the bikes into rubbish trucks, one for the paper and one for the plastic and did laps and laps of the circuit picking up rubbish and advertising to the other children to keep the area clean! We’re very proud of the Edgerley children for taking action to make our areas so clean and safe.

Next week you will find in your child’s locker a blank poster (with instructions). We would like you to record in any way you choose just how your family looks after the environment from your home. You might like to draw a map, write notes, draw pictures, make a collage etc… This will then be your child’s Show and tell for Week 7.

Have a lovely weekend!

Coney, Juliana and Katherine

Curriculum Night

Don't forget our Curriculum Information Evening next Thursday 28th Feb at 7pm.  All parents are invited to join us for a relaxed but informative evening !

ELC Team

Clipsal Road restrictions

Next week is the Adelaide Clipsal . This means that many of the roads between PAC and the city are closed from 23rd Feb until 4th March. This causes huge traffic delays and you will need to allow lots of extra time at peak periods to get to the school. You may also need to change the route you normally use to get here.  Please be particularly mindful of this at the end of the day in order to arrive by 6pm.

Jeanine

Sleep and your Toddler Seminar

A seminar run by Dr Sarah Blunden for parents of 1-4 year old children  with sleep concerns will be held at WCH on 12.3.13. The flyer is on the parent noticeboard inside the first double doors.

Door Code Pad

Dear Parents ,

Please do not allow your children (even school age ones) to use the front door security pad. It tends to get "out of sync" when several numbers are pushed at the same time and then does not work for the next user. As its main purpose is security we also ask that you do not give the code to your older children or allow them to use it.
Please also be aware that you should not allow other people to enter without the code if you do not recognise them as ELC families.

Thankyou for your help

Edgerley Room

Dear Edgerley Families,

If you’ve missed our children when you have  dropped by this week, that’s because they’ve been climbing the beanstalk! We have been reading Jack and the Beanstalk, role playing the story, writing our own versions and publishing them, using magnifying glasses to study Magic Beans AND conducting science experiments by growing our own magic beans two ways! Mr Wagenfeller even put beans in our No Chilli Con Carne ! Please stop by to view (but please don’t touch) our science experiments – we are waiting for our beans to grow… or perhaps they’ve already started…

Coney, Juliana and Katherine 

Chapple Room

Dear Chapple Room Parents and Friends,

We are continuing to have a great term and are now feeling very settled and at home in the Chapple Room. Each day, as part of our relaxation program, we participate in a short Yoga session. It's been great learning all the new stretches and positions. We are all developing and progressing well. Some of the poses we have learned include the butterfly (which Raph is doing in the photo), the washing machine, the swinging tree, shining star triangle and dancing hands. After the warm up, we act out the story Blast Off,  where we travel to space in our rockets and walk on the moon. It's a fun way to exercise and rest our bodies. Next week, we will also include the story of Out in the Garden, which will introduce us to new and fun poses.
Namaste!
Chapple Room Team

PS- an interesting article on the link between folic acid and the risk of Autism can be found at http://theconversation.edu.au if you're looking for some weekend reading!

Cooper Room

Dear Parents and Friends of the Cooper Room,

It has been a fun week in the Cooper room learning a new song about "Green Jelly Beans," taking off to the moon, fighting fires and inviting our Mums in for Show and Tell. We even managed to finish our Chinese Dragon - ready for a noisy and vibrant Dragon Dance. Wearing our red clothes for good luck and making as much noise as we could we toured the ELC sending away any bad luck from last year. The children loved dancing and singing with Lau shi. Tomorrow we will head up to the Prep school to share our wonderful dragon with the Reception classes.

“The lion came while we were eating. It was so noisy,” said Henry

“Red! It means stop at the traffic lights.” said Harrison

“My lion didn’t look like that, my lion had a little mouth and it tickled me!” laughed Henry

“I can see money. The red envelopes mean giving money,” said Liam

“I go to the restaurant and Mummy give me money to put it in dem (them) envelopes.” added Henry.

“They buy toys with the money. They get money in the red envelopes.” said Jarrah listening to the story carefully.

 “I saw the lion, dragon dance. It’s tail is so, so long.” said Pauline

Good luck for 2013 from the Cooper Room!
Coral and Susan

Mead Room

Dear Parents and Friends,
We have had such a busy week in the Mead Room, deepening our investigations about birds and their habitats.. The children are fascinated with ways we can observe birds in their homes and have become fascinated "bird watchers" with our home made binoculars. Jock brought in some special binoculars belonging to his great grandfather and we had lots of fun testing them out....
Jock: "Dey my gwampa's.."
Tom: "Dey so great"
Alec: "Can I have a turn?"
Jock: "Be careful with my gwampa's binoculars!"
James: "I going to the jungle"
We all tried a yummy homegrown rockmelon from Jock's vegie patch this week too. The children thought it was delicious!
Toby: "It's orange on da inside"
James S: "Dere's seeds!"
Harry M: "I love it"
Angus: "Can I have some more please?"
Harry M: "Me want more... bit slippery!"
We are really excited by the way our inquiry is moving along... Hoping to see lots of you at our Curriculum meeting next Thursday night.
Many Thanks,
Emma, Pip and Amelia

Langley Room

Dear Langley Family and Friends,

This week we have continued exploring the concept of sustainability by using recycled materials to create new pieces of artwork – come and have a look at our growing gallery of masterpieces!

A owl. There is a owl. Got big nose- Knox

I making a fish. I making a rainbow- Tommy

I making something. I make elephant. You like it?- Zander

It’s a box. I sprinkle some things on it. It’s a fing (thing). It a cage for dad- Harry F

It’s a circle. I use stinky tape. I write my name- Patrick

A gokidile- Angus RR

Thank you to all the families who have brought in their family photos. We have been using these to talk to the children about who is in their family and have then been creating our own family portraits – we can’t wait to share them with you when they are finished. While creating our portraits we have been talking about our families.

Harry, H for Harry. Bernie, my not got sandals. Me draw Mummy, that’s Mummy. Dat’s a big Daddy, Daddy got legs, Daddy go to work, Daddy silly – Bernie

I know Harry,     Mummy and Daddy, Charlie, Zo Zo, dat Digby – Harry CH

Mummy, dat Daddy, yeah, Sophie – Angus T    

Daddy, Mummy, dis Gabby - Rachel

Best wishes,

Jess, Kerry, Nicole, Sarah and Emily