PRE-SCHOOL

We are excited to be exploring ‘How We Express Ourselves’ in Preschool during Term 2!   To launch our Unit of Inquiry, each Preschool class were invited to bring in works of art created by children, family members, or other artists, for our very own Art Gallery.  We even had works of art by staff members from Preschool and Kindy!  We are all artists when we express ourselves through the arts.

Preschoolers then had opportunities to explore the art gallery.  The children were interested in what materials were used to make the art works, the colours used, and particularly sharing their family artworks.  You can also see how focussed and respectful the children were in visiting the gallery.  

Students and staff alike are excited to have lots of artistic exploration and expression ahead in the term.  We are planning to express ourselves through a range of forms and media: music, dance, clay, wire, painting, collage, etc.  Any artists within our school community are warmly welcome to come and share their skills and creations with Preschool - don’t hesitate to get in touch. 

The Preschool Team

KINDERGARTEN

It's so wonderful to see so many smiling faces when we open the Kindy doors each morning! Students have begun to settle nicely into our daily routines, are building friendships and developing skills to become curious and independent learners.Here’s just a snapshot of what we’ve been doing so far.

Everyday we are working on our reading skills with the Decodable Readers Australia (DRA) program. Through our daily practice, we are learning sounds, letter names and how to correctly form each. We love to sound out, stretch out and then “snap it” to confidently read two, three and four letter words, and are even beginning to read short sentences!

In Maths, Term 1 saw us building our number sense from 0-10. We practiced writing numerals, created collections of objects and learnt a range of counting strategies. This term, we are working through the teen numbers, developing an understanding of place value using tens and ones.

We have just finished a fun unit on Who We Are where we explored similar and different ways people around the world celebrate or commemorate events in our lives.This week we began our new unit, How the World Works and are preparing to become scientists who investigate the natural world. We are reading the classic book, Who Sank the Boat by Pamela Allen and  will explore materials and develop thinking skills to help us with our design project.

YEAR 1

In our ‘How We Organise Ourselves’ unit of inquiry, Year 1 students have been demonstrating their thinking skills by exploring a variety of ‘what if’ questions about push and pull forces. We have been observing how different strengths of force can affect the motion and speed of objects through a range of investigations. One of our favourites was the car launcher activity, where we measured how far our cars travelled based on the strength of the pull force applied. It’s been an exciting and engaging way to learn about motion and cause and effect!

This week, Year 1 enjoyed an exciting excursion to Questacon, where we explored our growing understanding of forces. Through hands-on exhibits and engaging demonstrations, students investigated how things push, pull, spin, slide, and bounce. Experiences like these help bring science to life and deepen our learner’s understanding of how forces affect the world around them—while also sparking curiosity and wonder!

In Maths, our current focus is on skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. Skip counting helps children recognise number patterns and build a strong foundation for multiplication and problem-solving. It also supports their ability to count groups efficiently—like counting pairs of shoes, bundles of pencils or coins. Practising skip counting in everyday situations helps children develop number sense and prepares them for more complex maths skills later on.

In literacy we are practising our retell skills. Retelling helps learners understand what they read or hear by encouraging them to think about the characters, setting, problem, and how the story ends. It also helps build vocabulary, sentence structure, and memory skills. When children can retell a story in their own words, it shows they truly understand it—an essential step in becoming confident, thoughtful readers and writers. As one learner said this week “so, retelling is like going home and telling my family what I learnt”. 

How many animals can you see in this image?

During our SEL MindUP lessons, we’ve been practicing mindful seeing—a calming strategy that helps us focus and strengthens our prefrontal cortex. This is the part of our brain that helps us make thoughtful choices.

YEAR 2

Year 2 has hit the ground running in Term 2!

In maths, we have begun to focus on patterns. Year 2 has explored patterns continuing by a set amount. We have loved to use physical manipulatives to represent our patterns - including paddle pop sticks, counters, blocks and MABs. Our developing skill of skip counting has been really helpful in building these patterns. Skip counting helps children recognise number patterns and build a strong and fluent foundation for further maths concepts. Skip counting off the decade (for example, starting at 3 and counting by 10s: 3, 13, 23…) further deepens their understanding of patterns and prepares them for more complex maths concepts such as algebra and mental calculations.

In literacy, we have begun a text study on Jack and the Flum Flum Tree by Julia Donaldson. We have explored the rich vocabulary of the text (including some made up words!) as well as some idioms (“Don’t get your knickers in a twist!”). Language comprehension is about how children make sense of what they read by using what they already know, understanding word meanings, and recognising how language works. In writing, we have begun to express opinions on the characters from Jack and the Flum Flum Tree by writing sentences that use modal verbs (must, needs to, should) and the conjunctions of because and so that. 

Our current unit of inquiry, How the World Works, has surrounded the central idea of ‘Science helps us understand the world’. We inquired into the function and properties of materials when we designed a package using recycled materials to keep a biscuit safe from the rain, heat and when being dropped. This term, we have also begun to inquire into sound and how the properties of a material can impact the sound it makes. We are creating instruments to make different sounds and are looking forward to sharing them at our learning journey next week.